Parable of the Sower (Earthseed)

Depressing! An interesting portrayal, but thank goodness, not that realistic. This is pure dystopian that is weighed down with abject hopelessness. I prefer more realistic speculative-type fiction. Anyway, I'm glad I sampled Ms. Butler's work, but I'm not interested in pursuing anything else of hers.

Even though I was literature major, I stopped readily fiction about ten years ago. I agreed to rread this novel as part of a book club selection. We were told that this book and the trilogy are really good, but I found the story depressing and flat. Maybe I don't read enough fiction or maybe I'm missing something. All I know is that I'm glad I'm done reading it so I can get back to reading worthwhile nonfiction.

I bought "Parable of the Sower" on the recommendation of two friends. Maybe this is a great book, maybe I am missing something but I just haven't enjoyed it on any level so far. The picture of a post apocalyptic world that Octavia Butler portrays definitely seems plausible; it's the kind of scenario in fact that I fear. But the first part of the book is so unrelentingly depressing and what I saw from skimming forward so similar that I can't grit my teeth hard enough to force my way through the rest of the book. When I am reviewing the state of the planet we find ourselves in with global warming, depleting oil supplies,economic and social unrest it is easy for me to see things getting worse over the next few decades. To have this reflected in fiction without much to look forward to to replace what we we are already losing in some deeper spiritual way is hard to swallow. If it's in the Parable of the Sower you need to wade through a lot of depressing chapters first. Maybe it's a question of style but this just does not come over as great literature to me. One reviewer I read see mastery in every page that Octavia Butler writes. I didn't see it in any of the pages I read.

My rating is according to personal preference only--I'm not seeking to make a complete value judgment on the book as a work of literature. This is, after all, the rare work of ecocritical fiction by a person who isn't white and middle class, and that in and of itself makes it worth a read if you're into environmental lit. I gave it an extra star (that sounds so arbitrary, but really) for that distinction, but again: this book was absolutely not for me.

It needs a gigantic trigger warning slapped across it, and the triggering content kept me from reading as far as I would have liked. Sexual violence is used in the novel to create a hostile environment for the female protagonist, and the issue (and its victims) are treated as objects of that intended environment rather than humans. Because the content is triggering to me, I acknowledge that I am sensitive to the treatment of victims of sexualized violence--your mileage may vary.

If sexual violence isn't something that might prevent you from finishing a book, there is a lot of interesting material here to read critically. (I read it as a college student for a class, so my experience with it was as a critical text rather than as a fun read.) But, again, I would strongly advocate taking a critical view towards Butler's treatment of victims of sexualized violence, regardless of your ability to withstand the reading.

Moment of confession: After the first (or second?) Earthseed journal entry, I stopped reading them.

Skipped right over them. Without guilt. And without missing anything.

The story isn't the best of Ms. Butler's I've read, but it isnt the worst (that's Earthseed #2, which I didnt even read 10% of because it sucked).

Like good scifi, the story was solid and mostly believable. Overall, it was okay. Just...okay.

A strong-willed, independent young woman finds that the true path to happiness, overcoming environmental disaster and economic decline, comes from sleeping with an older, wealthy man.

I was a little surprised, but as a middle-aged doctor myself, I found this encouraging.

Literary torture porn. I really wanted this book series to be better. Eventually it got to a point that, you knew every new character introduced had a horror story which would be told in gross detail, AND would be killed in some even more horrid way within 50 pages. Motivations for characters were often fuzzy and manipulated to fit the narrative. Much of this series seems to be about Butler trying to establish a religion (a la Herbert). I would not and cannot recommend these books. There is the added horror, that the President who creates the most havoc is just like Donald Trump (even the recent immigrant ban makes an appearance. This book was written over a decade ago, but I wonder if Butler didn't see the future afterall.

This book is grammatically correct and it's easy to follow. From the first sentence to the last, it flowed in order. I'm not gonna buy another book from her. The vocabulary seemed middle school.
Easy and fast read-- not because it's a page-turner.

Lauren Olamina isn’t like the other kids in her neighborhood, a walled-off city block in Robledo, just twenty miles outside of Los Angeles. Born to a drug-addicted mother, Lauren is afflicted with hyperempathy – the ability to share in the pain and pleasure of others, whether she wants to or not. This makes her an especially easy target for bullies – brother Keith used to make her bleed for fun when they were younger – so Lauren’s weakness is a carefully guarded secret, one shared only with her family. In this crumbling world, a near-future dystopia that’s all to easy to imagine, humans already devour their own: literally as well as figuratively. Lauren won’t make herself an easy meal.

As if her hyperempathy isn’t alienating enough, Lauren has another secret, one that she only shares with her diary. The daughter of a Baptist preacher, Lauren no longer believes in her father’s god. Instead, she’s cultivating her own system of belief – Earthseed:

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

Lauren gathers these verses into a book that she comes to think of as “The Books of the Living.” Her new religion? Earthseed. Its destination? The stars.

PARABLE OF THE SOWER is Lauren’s journal (of a sort). Begun on the eve of her 15th birthday and concluding more than three years later, through her diary we witness the collapse of Lauren’s fragile world. In a country wracked by poverty, climate change, mass unemployment, homelessness, drug abuse, class warfare, and unspeakable violence, Lauren’s small community is a fortress of sorts. Though they’re far from well-off, the diverse neighborhood manages to produce enough food and goods (and occasionally for-pay labor) to sustain itself. The residents put personal animosity aside to protect and care for one another: rotating night watches keep would-be thieves at bay; when one resident’s garage catches fire, everyone becomes a firefighter; and Lauren’s step-mom Cory schools the neighborhood kids in her own home, since it’s too dangerous to venture outside the walls.

It’s not much, but it’s home. But even at the tender age of 15, Lauren can see it unraveling: “We’ll be moved, all right. It’s just a matter of when, by whom, and in how many pieces.” (page 136)

After a series of blows – the disappearance of Lauren’s father; several successful infiltrations by thieves; a fire that claims all but one member of its household – Lauren’s community finally falls. Drugged out on “pyro,” a group of painted arsonists torch the neighborhood, killing and raping its residents. Lauren is just one of three to escape. Along with Zahra – the youngest of Richard Moss’s wives – and fellow teenager Harry, they hit the road in search of water and work. A safe place to pitch their (proverbial) tent. And, for Lauren, a safe haven in which to establish the very first Earthseed community.

PARABLE OF THE SOWER is a must read. A straight-up masterpiece. Originally published in 1993, it’s still painfully relevant – and painfully realistic – today. (Even as the gap between present and future has narrowed to a scant ten years; PARABLE OF THE SOWER takes place between July 20, 2024 and October 1, 2027.) Butler weaves together myriad social and environmental justice issues into a powerful social critique that feels neither forced nor preachy. Antebellum slavery, indentured servitude, police abuse, sundown towns, the underground railroad, the conflict between security and privacy, the privatization of public resources, polygamy, human trafficking, sexual slavery, child rape, border wars, water scarcity, passing as male – all of these and more merit a mention (or sometimes many mentions) in PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

Butler’s also created a cast that’s not only incredibly diverse – but also mostly lacking in white protagonists. (How refreshing!) In this future America, racism is alive and well: neighborhoods often segregate themselves according to race, making Lauren’s mixed-race home an anomaly. (Lauren is black, with half-brothers who are of African American and Mexican American descent.) As her mixed-race, mixed-gender group of refugees/would-be converts trek through California, they earn more than their fair share of suspicious stares. In a world where people distrust those who don’t look like them, Lauren’s community’s principle of “we all look out for each other” is a source of confusion – and not a little hostility.

After finishing PARABLE OF THE SOWER, I was angry – angry that I wasn’t taught Butler in high school, right alongside Atwood and in lieu of the half dozen+ works of Shakespeare I labored through. (Someone please tell me this has changed?) My first Butler book was LILITH’S BROOD, which I loved; PARABLE OF THE SOWER is even better! I think I was more easily able to relate to the characters and the situations in which they found themselves minus the alien elements of LILITH’S BROOD. PARABLE OF THE SOWER is just a more accessible and easily-imaginable story.

I was worried that I might be put off by the more religious aspects of the EARTHSEED series, which is one reason why I put off reading it. Instead, I found Lauren’s new religion rather enchanting, and well in keeping with my own beliefs. (Two words: starstuff and dust.) More of a philosophy than a religion per se, Earthseed posits that the ultimate truth is change: everything changes. Change is constant. Change is unstoppable. Sometimes we can mold change; other times, change molds us. Rather than fight change, shape it when you can; when you can’t, bend to its will as needed. God is not a person; rather, God is change personified. Because a humanoid deity is what people have come to expect from their religion, Lauren makes the tactical decision to give it to them. Fellow traveler Bankle describes Lauren’s new religion as a blend of Buddhism, existentialism, and Sufism.

Just as God is change, Heaven is the stars: it is Earthseed’s destiny to travel to the stars and settle other planets in the universe. Humanity’s past is here on Earth; its future is there in the stars. As much as I love the idea, this is where I must part ways with Earthseed: humans have already destroyed one planet, and I’d rather not see it do the same to any others.

PARABLE OF THE SOWER gets 200 billion stars: one for each star in the Milky Way.

Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 novel, “Parable of the Sower” is a story of a near-future American dystopia. It tells of a United States in which large parts, including California, have become wastelands of burned buildings, violence, drug abuse, and economic degradation. In other words, it’s like Detroit of the 1990s all over. The world suffers from the effects of global warming (which at the time of the writing of this novel was only beginning to become political fodder for the benighted members of the Right). Fido can’t be trusted not to eat you--there you go, St. Augustine—and the landscape is inexplicably dotted with torn limbs. The reason for all this decay is unclear. Certainly Butler hadn’t anticipated American politics of the 2010s, and one hopes she wasn’t being prescient.

The protagonist of the novel is the teenager Lauren Oya Olamina, who is the daughter of a minister in a walled community in Southern California. After a band of violent, volatile addicts attacks the community and burns it down, apparently killing all her family, Lauren sets off for the North, and along the way attracts like-minded souls seeking security from the killing, raping, pillaging, and cannibalism that seemingly marks just about everywhere. Lauren is also the originator of a new religion, called Earthseed, which makes change itself its god, and which is to prepare humankind for its destiny among the stars. In addition, Lauren is hyperempathetic, which cripples her whenever she is in contact with someone in severe pain.

The novel has been described as science fiction, but it more properly belongs strictly to dystopian literature, like its contemporary, “The Children of Men, by P.D. James. “Parable of the Sower” is dark, often unredeemingly so, with the rape of children and cannibalism prominently featured in the violence. Earthseed is not a very compelling religion, as Lauren’s companions often remind her. Making a god of amoral change, good and bad, is not very comforting. Lauren herself is an interesting character, mostly because of her strength. Her debilitating hyperempathy gives her a certain vulnerability, but I often found it difficult to understand: the condition seemed to afflict her some times more than others, and as a plot device it did little to move the story along or make it more exciting. It just made things more of a bummer.

The resolution of the story was sufficiently satisfying, if it also made me feel a little nonplussed. I suspected that a sequel must follow (“Parable of the Talents”). If the point of the novel was to say that the fall of the American Empire could result in these terrible and terrifying conditions, well, all right. But did we learn anything about human nature? Was the true condition of humanity cracked open for us to examine? Did we even care enough about the characters to want to pick up the next book? That would be three strikes for me.

One thing this book strongly promotes is the use of firearms for self-protection, especially against the drug addicts. There you go, NRA, a book to warm the cockles of your heart—if you had one.

In this novel, Octavia Butler has created a horrifying view of the future. The story begins in 2024 (a time that was much farther off when Butler wrote the story in the early 1990s). Climate change has wreaked havoc-- droughts here, floods there. Society has largely collapsed, and so has much of the economy. Government still exists, but largely as an ineffectual sham. Police and fire departments have become little more than corrupt organizations that charge "fees" for services that are performed badly or not at all. Cities and even smaller towns have become overrun with masses of homeless, hungry people who will do whatever they can to survive. Gangs run rampant. In a futile effort to revive the economy, labor laws have largely been abolished, allowing for the resurgence of "company towns" and debt slavery. Adding to the general misery and chaos is the spread of a new drug called "pyro," short for "pyromania"-- a drug that causes people to derive intense pleasure from setting and watching fires.

In southern California, where young Lauren Olamina lives in her walled-off neighborhood, things are very bad. The only people who live relatively "normal" lives are those who live in walled-off communities such as hers-- a small cul-de-sac neighborhood with a wall around it, topped by barbed wire, "Lazor" wire, and broken glass. Her father is a professor at a nearby college. He is also the minister for the Baptist church in the community. Her stepmother, who formerly taught at the college, now teaches a school for the children of the neighborhood. Water is more expensive than gasoline, and gasoline has long since become too expensive to use as fuel for motor vehicles. When people venture outside the wall, they do so on bicycles, in armed groups.

Exceptionally bright and thoughtful, Lauren has, by age fifteen (when the story begins), long since ceased to believe in her father's Baptist faith, although she takes great pains to conceal her apostasy from him. She has begun her own search for religion, for philosophy, for God-- but her search is for a religion and philosophy based on fact and reality, not on myths and faith and mysticism. She concludes that the only real "God" is change, because change is the only constant thing in the universe. She realizes that if change is God, then human beings have the ability to shape God through their own decisions and behavior. She realizes that ALL religions and philosophies are lacking, and that what is needed is an entirely new philosophy, an entirely new way of looking at things and of making decisions-- and thus she creates her "Earthseed" philosophy.

Lauren also recognizes what others in her little walled-off neighborhood don't want to think about, much less prepare for-- that the situation "outside" is steadily growing worse, and that it's only a matter of time before her little walled-off neighborhood is breached, invaded, and destroyed by the masses of hungry, starving, desperate, and/or crazy people outside. She does what she can to try to warn others-- which isn't much, since they don't want to listen-- and she make her own preparations for the day when-- voluntarily or involuntarily-- she will have to leave her walled-in neighborhood and face the world "outside." She prepares a pack of what she considers essentials that she can grab and run with at a moment's notice. She also realizes that if she is to carry out her goal of spreading her Earthseed philosophy and the purpose it has given her, she must eventually leave and migrate north, where water is more plentiful and there might be at least a chance of establishing a community of like-minded people.

Thus, when disaster does finally strike-- in the form of a gang of pyro addicts who use a truck to smash through the neighborhood's gate-- Lauren is the only person who is even halfway prepared to survive. She escapes the fire, destruction, and killing, and begins her trek north, accompanied by two people from her neighborhood. As she travels north, her small group of three grows-- and she realizes that she is beginning to form the first "Earthseed" community. Can they find a place to settle? Can they make it through all the chaos and lawlessness and destruction and find a safe haven-- as safe as anything can be-- to begin a new life?

One of the things that has always struck me about Butler's novels is her unflinching willingness to look at horrors most of us would rather not think about. She doesn't dwell on such things, but neither does she shrink form them. In this book, one of the most jarring scenes is when Lauren and her band of followers come upon a group of four wild children-- aged from about eleven to about fifteen-- roasting a human leg over a fire.

Butler presents a compelling and convincing view of what would happen if our modern civilization fell apart and devolved into savagery-- and at the same time, she offers a small ray of hope as to how that savagery could be avoided and, eventually, overcome.

There are some flaws in Butler's story: First, she doesn't explain how, in an economy that has largely fallen to pieces, the few people in the small community who have jobs are able to earn enough to support multiple dependents-- which may include not only their own multiple children, but their multiple grandchildren. Nor does she explain why these people-- most of whom have no jobs and no prospects of anything better-- keep on having children they can't support.

Second, Butler seems to have little grasp of how much "stuff" will fit into a bag or pack and how much it will weigh. When Lauren makes her "grab-and-run" pack, she does so by putting one pillowcase inside another, thus doubling it for strength, filling it with items she considers useful and necessary, and rolling up the whole thing in a blanket. However, the amount of "stuff" listed wouldn't fit into any pillowcase ever made,and even if it did, it would be far too heavy for even a large, strong man to carry.

Third, Butler doesn't explain how-- in the horribly dangerous world "outside," anyone traveling alone could manage to survive for more than a day, or how a pair of young women could travel without being raped and murdered, or how a married couple with an infant could travel without being robbed and killed.

Those flaws don't really detract from the story, but they do make the reader pause and think, "Huh??"

Various people have done a great deal of yapping about Butler's focus on "minorities." I don't get that at all. What strikes me about Butler's writing, in all her novels, is the message that race doesn't matter, and that what DOES matter are the traits, both good and bad, that make us all human-- pride, greed, indifference, cruelty, kindness, sympathy, indifference, love, hate, and on and on and on.

An interesting and incredibly relevant entry in the dystopian genre, Parable of the Sower was written in the '90s but feels far more realistic and likely-to-occur today, due to the current social, economic and political climates.

I received this book along with a dozen or so others as part of a 'women writing sci-fi and fantasy' Humble Bundle a fair while back and have only recently started working my way through them. Some of my early choices haven't aged well, but Parable of the Sower feels modern and recently-written. The prose makes it a mostly easy read -- the things to hold a reader up will more likely be graphic or depressing content, or perhaps the strong religious tones for those not religious or highly religious and not fond of a book about building a cult. For the most part, the language suits a teenager who is educated, from a religious family, and has been made to be very responsible from a very young age (due to her hyper-empathy and the need to keep it a secret, and because of her environment where she takes charge of children in her step-mother's homeschool). Only once or twice did the language jar me out of the story due to its age ("going with" someone to mean dating them - I've only ever heard that term from very dated tv/movies).

Octavia Butler creates an interesting and varied cast from the get-go. Good guys who aren't as good as you first assume. Bad guys who still have some heart and love in them. People whose ideas of good and right clash with each other. Selfish people, practical people, those who want to survive at any cost versus those who want to help others. It's a great look at everyday people and communities trying to survive, and later which types of people can survive on the move after disaster. It's a bit The Walking Dead (before TWD was ever made), except there are no zombies, just cruel and crazy people.

Lauren's mental, emotional and physical journey are all interconnected. As she finally moves closer to realising her dreams of finding her own physical location in which to live, she becomes a more compassionate character - though I do question that much of her compassion seems to rest on how receptive people are to the cult she's creating. I appreciate that Lauren is a mix of visionary and practicality. I love seeing female characters who can both badass 'steel myself to survive' as well as showing consideration for others and a soft touch for women, mothers and children. The two don't have to be exclusive, but media often goes for only one or the other.

My biggest issues with the novel are several facets that are glossed over very quickly. Around the point of the first major change, there's a lot of one-line discussion of this woman getting raped, that girl's been raped, that child's been raped. No depth, no consequences, just rape rape rape, okay now move on and never mention it again. What was the point, apart from trying to shock and/or prove how bad the random antagonists are? Secondly, Lauren falls in love with a man older than her father, who reminds her of her father, with pretty much no lead-up or explanation. Ick in any case, but especially when it's seemingly for no reason. They don't even seem to get along that well, either, as the power imbalance almost instantly raises its head with Bankole trying to control her and claim she is his and therefore she go where he wants / do what he wants her to do. The preview for the next novel in the series again makes it sound like they're not well matched, as excerpts written by one of their children talk about how their father should have known he could never stop their mother from achieving her destiny.

The religious/cult aspects were slightly off-putting to me at times, but not overly so. Certainly not as much as the above issues. But your mileage may vary depending on your tolerance for fictional religions/cults.

It was a mostly enjoyable read, so I give this book 3 stars. I will give the sequel a try, but perhaps after something else to give me a break from bleak dystopia.

Reading this book is a crystal ball gazing view into a near-future I pray will never come. What's even scarier--this book was recently listed as one of the 10 top scariest books ever read--is that much of what Octavia Butler writes about is already here. This is a world with power-mad corporations who literally enslave their workers, egged on by equally power mad demagogues, one of whom campaigns beneath a familiar slogan: "Make America Great Again." Meanwhile, government is far away and toothless, while the police are uniformly on the take and murder who they choose. There's also a series of climate-change disasters going on: drought and fire. Drug fueled gangs wreck random, utter destruction on the few small communities--a few families here and there--still trying to maintain some kind of normalcy. Here's a dystopia that could be right around the corner! Butler's writing is muscular and the story is both enveloping and painfully evocative. This book can be read as a powerful opener to a "family/world saga" for the books that follow in this series. It may also be seen as an amazing example of nightmarish prescience.

What a page-turner! I could not put this book down.

Lauren Olamina is not your normal teenager, even compared to the other teens in the gated community she lives in during an economic and social apocalypse. The violence outside has started infiltrating the community, and she's trying to get everyone to prepare for the worst--when their community falls and they must flee. But her minister father is the only one who agrees with her and he's already been preparing, like making all 15-yr-olds learn how to shoot. But it's not enough.

There's a lot of really fascinating ideas in this novel. Lauren is something of a genius, the kind that I can imagine a scenario like an apocalypse might shape a genius teen into being. While most would descend into terror or depression, Lauren hyper focuses on survival, both mental and physical. Moreover, due to a drug her mother abused while pregnant, Lauren has hyperempathy syndrome, causing her to feel the physical pain and pleasure of those around her. This is a huge disability to someone having to fight to live, because every person she hurts, or those around her hurts, hurts her as well.

Finding the Christianity her father follows and other religions to be spiritually useless during a apocalypse, Lauren founds her own religion, Earthseed. The novel is written as a diary, with each entry beginning with some of the parables of Earthseed. In Earthseed, God is change, and change can be shaped. So instead of letting bad things happen to you as God wills, and praying and trusting for better times, you try to shape the times you want, to change as the environment around you changes in order to survive.

I'm surprised more people haven't read this, with survivalism being such a hot theme. It's such a compulsive read, fast-paced, thought-provoking, energetic. And it would make such a great movie.

4.5/5

A bit long, a bit slow, but quite good. "The Road" for a more diversity-conscious audience. In a nearly post-apocalyptic world, where capitalism has ruined the world economy, everything is balancing on the edge. Lauren Olamina's family lives in a walled suburb, everyone working together to keep out raiders, murderers, and the drug-addicted pyromaniacs who are burning the world down. Lauren has a harder time than most people, as she was born with hyper-empathy, and can experience the pleasure and pain of those around her. And when the only way to survive is to kill, that makes life all the harder.

While this book never plods, it only has one high-energy moment, for me. Which means that, since I was listening to the audiobook, there was definitely a lot of time where I found my attention wandering. And it didn't hurt my understanding of the plot all that much. This book reminds me a bit of the journey of Lord of the Rings. Walking walking walking, having food, walking walking walking, fight. More walking.

I'm still eager to see how the next book goes, but no longer quite so rabid. I tend to organize my book priority on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 as highest. I had this book at a 5, just because I am so excited about Octavia Butler, but after finishing this book, the "Parable of the Talents" is now down to a 4 on priority.

Yikes… not at all what I was expecting! This novel seemed a bit more like the promotion of a rather nonsensical religion rather than a post-apocalyptic novel. The violence was tremendous, the continuous addition of unnecessary characters was frustrating, and the obscure passages about Earthseed were not only unclear, but rather peculiar. The idea of our nation diminishing in such an extreme manner seems eerily feasible in our current state of affairs, but I was unimpressed with the execution.

I'd heard such rave reviews of Octavia Butler; however, this novel just didn’t do it for me. Sigh…

Well, that was bleak. It was also surprisingly hopeful. So, yeah, definitely a story for our times.

I liked Lauren, and I love that writing is a source of strength and serves as an outlet for her. Also, Earthseed makes perfect sense to me. Though I choose to believe in God as all that is good in the world because that is also a thing that persists/is constant, I found myself nodding along with a lot of the verses of Earthseed as I was reading.

I'll definitely be checking out the next book.

To expose the social effects of global scorching, as well as its physical ones like wildfires, read Octavia Butler's 2-novel truncated trilogy (she died before starting the 3rd book), PARABLE OF THE SOWER and PARABLE OF THE TALENTS. This is really a review of both novels, since they are one continual story.

SOWER begins in the escape of a straggly, racially mixed band of refugees from California, northward. It’s written from the viewpoint of the group’s leader, Lauren, a black woman from California, from her teens and marriage (SOWER) to her death in old age, when the narrative is continued by her daughter (TALENTS). The author was a brilliant black science fiction writer from California who won just about every sci-fi award for her outstanding stories and novels, but these two novels are special because they are prophetic, focusing an intelligent, rational, science-admiring, spiritually searching sensibility on the gravest peril facing our world, rapid global climate change. She doesn't bring in all of our troubles. There are no endless foolish wars since she wrote these books in the 1990s, a decade with only limited wars and few US war fatalities. Nor do we get much of the national political breakdown except rumor, or of crises other than in California, since distance communication is all but gone and Lauren wouldn't know. But without being preachy, both novels are permeated with a yearning for a humanistic spiritual transformation that will bring people together in understanding and mutual aid, not separate them. Her fictional religion, Earthseed, has been adopted--and probably adapted--as a real theology here and there in the real world.

Whatever you think of the Earthseed faith, Butler shows how easily our civilized veneer can be lost, how vulnerable ordinary people are to chaos, anomie and anarchy, and that our only hope is in community and mutual aid. Please read these novels!

I cheated on my family this week. My body was with them, but my mind was with the incredible heroine of this incredible dystopian novel. It envisions a future where the country and government have slowly fallen apart; a future where jobs that pay a living wage have dried up, along with the rain.

This novel, like Stephen King’s “The Stand” and Emily Mendel’s “Station Eleven,” is primarily a road trip story. The characters flee chaos and build relationships along the way. What makes it extraordinary is the protagonist’s vision of how to spiritually reimagine the world based on a God of change. I loved that philosophy.

The ebook contains a preview of the next book, and that’s where things get real: amidst the chaos, a new presidential candidate emerges, one who vows to Make America Great Again....

A very compelling story. The details around Pyro and Paracetco were some of the least believable aspects of the story to me, but they were introduced early enough and made for enough interesting plot lines that I didn't mind. The story raised very engrossing questions for me around survival and how communities operate and how to build a better world. Each chapter opens with a verse from the Book of the Living, a religious text that the protagonist is creating. I'm not big on poem or song interludes like Tolkien does, but the excerpts felt relevant and meaningful in their own right. I read this book individually and as part of a book club, and it sparked some very good conversations.

I thought this book was awesome! It was very engaging and suspenseful. I found myself reading it every chance I got, and finished the book within a couple of days. I wish the cover of this book was more bad ass, to match the intriguing apocalyptic story line. I thought the ending was a bit boring compared to the rest of the book... but I have already checked out the sequel, Parable of the Talents, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see if the expanded story line makes up for the anti climatic ending of Parable of the Sower. Overall, I definitely recommend this book to those who like well written apocalypse stories with plenty of violence and grim reality mixed in with a group's ability to stand by each other's sides and not give up on humanity despite it's obvious deterioration.

Butler creates a bleak view of a dystopian world. She uses bare language to describe a world of nonstop chaos, violence, rape, robbery and death. How does one remain sane and maybe even hopeful when faced with the possible end of days? How does one prepare for the fight of their life and their humanity. That is what the main character, Lauren, tries to figure out. She is a bright and observant teenager when the story begins. She sees life and the world for what it is and does not lie to herself about it. She suffers from tele-empathy (actually feels what others are feeling) which can be particularly harmful in such a brutal world. When faced with the loss of everyone she loves and everything she owns she sets out into the world with her wits, survival instincts and very few allies. Parable of the Sower is the story of how she fights, survives and plants seeds for her future (and possibly the future of mankind).

I must admit that I really wanted to love this story. I read Kindred by Octavia Butler and was immediately drawn into the story. But this story had a cold detached tone about it. Maybe it was intentional but the main character rarely if ever portrays any emotion, even when expressing herself in her private journal. Since she didn't seem to feel, I didn't either. With that said, it is still a good book. It was well written and I plan on reading the sequel.

It is a brutal future this enigmatic writer foresees in Parable of the Sower, but one that echoes a past none of us remember.

We meet the narrator, Lauren, at fifteen. She's a Baptist minister's daughter, but an independent thinker trying to make sense of what is happening to her world and struggling to imagine a future for herself, her community, her world. It's not easy. This world is awash with suffering, pain, and death, and she feels it all because she's an empath, who literally experiences the pain, and pleasure, of those around her.

Her grit and determination to see an unlikely vision, a new religion based on her observations of the world around her, made reality may be what keeps her alive against ever-increasing odds.

The writing is straight-forward but layered, both brutal and brutally honest. What makes this book something special is the treatment of race. Octavia Butler was an African American woman, writing in a genre where women of color authors were (and may still be) very rare. Her point-of-view is unique.

Lauren's story is extremely painful, both on a personal and worldview level. It is also very, very easy to imagine.

This was a Kindle Unlimited borrow although this book and its sequel, Parable of the Talents, have been on my wishlist for a while based on the recommendations of a number of authors whose work I enjoy. I plan to read The Patternmaster series after this one.

So glad I took time reading this futuristic, dystopian novel. The main character, a teenage,home-schooled Lauren Olamina, has the supernatural ability to feel others pain and foresee the worsening desolate future. In Lauren's futile attempts to warn members in her community of greater environmental degradation and worsening violence outside of her gated neighborhood, she becomes armed and her father disappears. In the midst of a world run amok by self-serving ,corrupt government officials/police supporting the insulated corporations-all benefiting from environmental ruin and indentured slavery of lower-class masses surviving within that power structure. Unwilling to conform, Lauren has aged older before the eventual collapse of civilization sparks her escape after the attack of her home. As a reader and poet, Lauren becomes the eventual messiah of her newly formed religion to find and create a new society.

Ms. Butler has captured my attention from the beginning to hold me throughout every character and situation. Very powerfully written with complex and believable characters. I drew great comparisons with movies like "The Road" as very disturbing and depressing-but thought provoking as a prophetic probability. But so grateful and hopeful it's only a book. I will read the sequel..

As America suffers drought and social collapse, one woman builds a religion based on the tenet that God is Change. This is a grim dystopia, and otherwise not hugely speculative (although I imagine the sequel is moreso); the scope is smaller than I expect from Butler, the ethical issues less complex. It feels restrained--but is nonetheless compelling. The social collapse and the birth of the central religion tend towards infodumpy and preachy, but both the basis for the religion and the intimate, uncompromising detail of the protagonist's experience are unexpectedly convincing, enlivening an otherwise underwhelming dystopia. Butler is often compulsively readable, but this is especially so. I look forward to picking up the sequel.

Parable of the Sower tells the story of Lauren Olamina, a teenager living in post-apocalyptic California. The story is her quest to not only survive, but to also discover her place in her horrid world. It is a first person narrative, which allows the reader to connect with everything Lauren is seeing and feeling about the decisions she makes and the things that happen to her. The book is laid out like her personal diary, where Lauren makes observations about her world. Through this, she is coming to terms with what she believes about God and the afterlife, and eventually creates her own religion, Earthseed. But the story is not just a spiritual awakening for her. Parable of the Sower reminds me something out of the Walking Dead. There is horrible inflation, everything and everybody is for sale, there are junkies names Paints who kill everything and set it on fire, and there are no jobs. I think Octavia Butler did an excellent job creating this world, especially since, now 2024 is not that far off. It felt like a natural progression of runaway corruption and greed. I liked how the author made her main protagonist strong, but not so strong that she is unbelievable. While there were a lot of terrible things that happened in the story, it wasn't over the top. I felt it fit in with the world Butler created, and references to death and rape were appropriate to the tone of the story. A lot of horror, but nothing too graphic. The story is more of a character study, which I think must be typical of this genre. It is not about how the world came to be the way it is. It is not about Lauren trying to save the world. It is about her making do with the people and resources she has. This book is not a difficult read. It starts off oddly because Lauren still trying to make since of what she does believe. But there is sufficient action and suspense to keep the reader turning the page. I'm not usually a fan or reader of dystopian fiction. But I enjoyed Octavia Butler's Kindred with all its sci-fi and historical elements. I enjoyed Parable of the Sower as well.

One of the aspects of Octavia Butler's books I do find fascinating is how she uses the tenets of SF to sort of set the scene and then after establishing the SF premise proceeds to push it sort of to the side so she can talk about what she really wants to talk about. Its an interesting approach and to me shows that instead of being bound to genre conventions for the sake of collecting a ready-made audience or simply because its easier to write about time travel or future dystopias she's merely using it as a springboard for let the ideas play back and forth. Its works for me because it means you can choose to focus on the aspects of the book that interest you most. Since she's good at both, if I don't mind the ideas as clearly fascinating as she does I can focus more on the world she's created and if the world isn't doing it for me I can ponder the issues she's raising. For the full experience you probably need to integrate both in your mind but for those who like to break things down into their base components, it can work. Or maybe I'm just odd.

I only raise this because after reading this book and the book that follows it ("Parable of the Talents" and yes I read them out of order and yes I'm embarrassed about that so leave me alone) the main SF "hook" besides the crumbling America setting is lead character/narrator Lauren Olamina's ability to "share", which means like our most sensitive of Presidents she's quite capable of feeling your pain. Its an accidental gift from her mother as an apparent side effect of taking a certain drug and despite it being her "mutant power" so to speak most of the time it hardly seems to factor into the plot of the book as a whole. It makes her useless in fights (unless she knocks someone unconscious immediately she's bought herself the deed to an acre of pain) and there's a disturbing side avenue to the world where Butler makes the point that those that enslave people particularly like sharers because they tend to fall in line easier. But if you removed the sharing almost entirely it seems to me it would have little bearing on the plot.

Thankfully the plot and the telling of it is riveting. Told in a fairly calm and simple style, we read the journal entries of Lauren as she describes the process that lead her to forming her Earthseed religion, the cusp of which is the phrase "God is change". She's basically forced to do this because the major religions of the US (predominantly Christianity, or at least that's the only one really mentioned) have kind of fallen down on the job of educating people to not be jerks to each other, so in the aftermath of an America where civilization gradually seems to be falling apart thanks to a combination of climate change and economic collapse people are doing what people generally do when the chips are really, really down, namely scrambling over each other for every small advantage and lording it over the ones that can't help themselves. Basically if Black Friday at the mall was every single day and there were only five items on the shelf in the whole store.

Lauren lives in a walled city with her father and brothers as well as the people in the village with them and much of the book deals with the general problems the family has to face living in this world, warding off robbers, trying to find work and food and generally make it to the next day without anything catastrophic happening, which seems like its kind of even odds. Thanks to the style of storytelling its an immersive experience as Butler takes us through the day to day of what people have to do to survive, sparing nothing in detailing how quickly have to grow up in this new world or else run the risk of people being killed or enslaved or worse.

Compared to the next book, which won the Nebula, I actually found this to be the richer reading experience, mostly due to its handling of religion. In "Parable of the Talents", Lauren has more or less established the foundations of Earthseed and is surrounded by people who at least somewhat buy into it, which lead to the moments where it seemed like the book was going out of its way to self-evidently show how Earthseed was the best religion and everything else was tomfoolery. Here she's working it out in her head still and convincing people who are a little more than skeptical and its that tension that informs the book more than anything else, especially when you consider her father's devout Baptist background . . . minus the SF elements the book convincingly reads as a young woman starting to understand that you have to perceive what you see and can't see in this world on your own terms and those terms may be radically different from those of your parents and its something you all have to come to grips with. That idea of awakening to beliefs that run against what you've always been taught but can't ignore because they make so much sense really grounds the book and even if I don't quite see why Earthseed is amazing, I enjoy watching Lauren putting the pieces together of it and finding a way to express these ideas that mean something very deep to her.

And if even the religious stuff isn't your thing, there's the whole "we'd love to make it out of this book alive" aspect of the novel as circumstances eventually lead a good chunk of the villagers to abandon the village and go venturing for somewhere better, along the way encountering of number of people of varying levels of trustworthiness, one of whom will stretch the idea of a May-December romance to its utmost limits (its nearly May to December of the year after). Seeing the wider world gives Butler a chance to engage in some commentary not only on how we'd react if society did indeed take a steep nose dive into a pile of poo but the opportunistic shambling corpse that would reassemble itself in the aftermath.

Its a simple book told simply but she nails Lauren's voice to such a degree that you would assume the book was dictated rather than through the arduous process of actually writing. But beyond the setting and beyond the SF lies a wealth of ideas, about future trends, about race and gender ideas, about love and family in a world where those words can more or less than they used to, about you can be enslaved in ways you didn't expect, especially when you become so desperate you're willing to trade freedom for security and comfort. In that way Lauren's ability to share winds up being a metaphor for how to survive in this world . . . literally unable to stop feeling every time she turns around to witness suffering she can't become numb to anything and thus has to keep moving, keep improvising, eventually realizing that the only way for her to stop feeling pain and be comfortable is to live in a world where we understand what we're capable of doing to each other and the full consequences of those acts, finally able to confront the pain we inflict so thoughtlessly and selfishly. And since that world doesn't exist, all she can do is attempt to create it, starting with herself, which is all any of us can do. Its that voice that shines out the clearest and in a way its Butler's voice telling us still, a voice that maybe we didn't hear enough of and could perhaps stand to hear again until we finally get it through our skulls.

Parable of the Sower isn't the easiest book to read. The prose is clear and uncomplicated, but the content can be hard to take. This is a close-to-home dystopia, one which I found hard to dismiss as improbable. And the world that it depicts is cruel and ugly. Even the well-meaning must do ugly things to survive.

This is science fiction only in the most technical sense. Sure, it's set in a hypothetical future, and the main character, Lauren, has an uncanny/(super)natural ability to feel the pain of others. But there is no reliance upon imagined technologies, alien races or superhuman heroics to move the plot along. The framework of this fictional universe is our own, moved forward in time to a barren future.

Lauren is intent upon founding her own religion. Her ideas are represented by excerpts from her poetry at the beginning of each chapter. As the story progresses, Lauren explains her ideas to many (initially skeptical) people. I was a little bit unhappy with this (central) aspect of the book: the ideas, and Lauren's writing, felt to me a lot less deep and meaningful than Lauren intended.

But what was Octavia Butler's intention? Did she intend these ideas, and Lauren's writings, to be full of meaning, resonance and depth? Was it supposed to be a bit naive and simple, but with potential (which is how I felt)? The answer isn't to be found in this book.

When I finished the book, satisfied at its refusal to come to a pat conclusion or judgment about Lauren's ideology, I found out that there is a sequel. I look forward to it and to finding out whether Lauren's ideas mature once put to the test. Apparently, Butler had begun to work on a third book in this series, but sadly she never completed it.

Oh, one warning: don't read the back cover. At least for the edition I have, the description on the back gives away a crucial, major turning point in the plot that occurs midway through the book. I hate knowing too much in advance, and I would have been really irritated had I seen that beforehand.

Book Review by C. Douglas Baker

Robert A. Heinlein once stated that in writing speculative fiction the author takes a current cultural or societal trend and follows that trend to its logical, if sometimes extreme, conclusion. Butler has taken the anomie of today's central cities in the United States, with the attendant violence, drug abuse, and general disregard for community and painted a frightening and stark world in PARABLE OF THE SOWER. Butler introduces us to an America thirty years hence where to survive communities must be armed, walled, and prepared to take human life to defend themselves; an America where drug abuse has taken a radically violent turn in which a new drug "Pyro" induces the user to burn items, be they animate or inanimate, for a sexual high; an America where life expectancy is short; an America where violence is the norm instead of the exception.

In this stark, surreal world is Lauren Oya Olamina, an eighteen year old girl with a vision. Olamina lives in a walled community that has protected itself by keeping quiet, inconspicuous, well armed, and prepared to defend itself. This all changes when Lauren's brother, Keith, enters the nefarious world beyond the walls and implicitly brings attention to this previously secluded community. Lauren finds she and her community must confront the ugly world outside the walls.

Most of Butler's works have a strong, empathetic female character that seem to carry an unfair burden in life. Lauren Olamina is no exception. Lauren has a condition called "hyperempathy" meaning that she feels the physical pain of others (including animals). Yet, she is willing to kill to defend herself and her family, despite the psychological costs to herself. She remarks that if everyone had her disability, violence would greatly diminish. Unfortunately for Lauren, the world she lives in is not only full of violence but inherently forces a person to eventually commit acts of violence in self-defense. Lauren also has a gradual and evolving "philosophy" called "Earthseed" that takes on quasi-religious status as the novel unfolds. This "Earthseed" is the thread that binds the narrative and makes the conclusion innovative and hopeful.

Butler's work is intricate and impressive in its description of a future America. There are many sophisticated parallels between the ugly future Butler paints and today's society. I really cannot do her work justice by a simple and brief description. I highly recommend PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

In this coming-of-age novel the external world is so bleak, so violent, and the individual's choices so narrow, that survival becomes an end in itself. Interior development becomes a matter of acquiring the necessary skills and attitudes.

The setting is 2025 California. The breakdowns we bewail in modern society have led to disintegration. Lauren Olamina, a 15-year-old black girl, lives in a walled community. Outside are the homeless, predators or prey, the roving gangs, and "Paints," addicted to a drug that finds ecstasy in fire and murder. Lauren was born with what is regarded as a crippling disability - the ability to share the physical pain (or pleasure) of others.

She sees no future for herself within the walls - even if they hold - and develops a personal religion. God is Change which must be shaped and humanity's future is the stars, not earth.

Lauren's father, a minister and community patriarch, insists the community be able to defend itself. He organizes gun practice in the lawless hills where bodies, wild dogs and signs of cannibalism are common. But, for all his precautions, one day her father disappears. The community is overrun, massacred and burned by Paints. Lauren, now 18, her family dead, is on the road, with two other survivors.

Trust is a luxury humans can no longer afford but Lauren's journey is marked by kindnesses to keenly observed strangers. She knows that strength is in numbers as well as firepower. She gathers a couple with a baby, two girls, a motherless child, three runaway slaves with sharing abilities like hers, and an older black man with a cart, a doctor with land in the north.

The journey is tense with vigilance and danger. Firefights, ambushes, an earthquake, all contribute to a harrowing pace. The novel, in spare, lively prose, is written in diary form which gives it an intimate immediacy and carries a warning that even Lauren's survival is not assured. An absorbing, disturbing book in which survival goes to the luckiest, with the best prepared having an edge.

This is not so much a book as a prophecy - a prophecy of what America will become if we do not reverse the growing trend towards lawlessness and violence in our society, and indifference to the needs of communities in which it is growing. The protagonist is trapped in a world in which the damage has already been done and is too late to reverse. Her family struggles pathetically, like a middle class family in China in the Cultural Revolution, to desperately cling to normality as the society descends into choas all around them. Their struggle is all the more heartbreaking because, unlike the victims in most horror stories, they do everything right. There is no time when we can yell at them "you fool - why didn't you -" and thereby safely dismiss thier plight as the inevitable consequences of stupidity. Despite their commitment to peace they do not hesitate to use weapons to defend themselves. They try to avoid every possible risk, and generally try do everything we would have done to preserve themselves and their little scrap of a decent life, so when it is finally ripped away, it is chilling beyond words. Yet Butler is no Kafka or Poe, leading her readers blindly into a nightmare that knows no end. Rather, she has the courage to create a Moses who acts like a hero really does - intent first and foremost upon survival - avoiding unnecessary battles, but showing the bitter courage of a trapped animal when forced to defend herself and those who have come to rely upon her. By the end of the novel she and her own have survived - but like the survivors of the Holocaust, only barely. A fitting sequel would have the protagonist group turn into ruthless dispensers of frontier justice which they mercilessly impose in the name of a higher morality, until they finally become themselves oppressive tyrants which a new group of rebels rises to oppose - but I suppose that's hoping for too much.

So this book is set in the near future where society is rapidly collapsing--it's sort of dystopic, and the main character is a headstrong teenage girl named Lauren who believes Change is the only god there is. She suffers from a congenital condition caused by her mother's use of an experimental drug, and it causes a sort of psychological echo effect where she feels other people's pain. Makes it very difficult to hurt anyone (or see anyone hurt) in a rather violent world, so poor Lauren feels pretty vulnerable. But this is about when Hell really does break loose in her own "safe" neighborhood, and what she has to do to become strong and venture off to safety . . . and what she has planned for humanity's future among the stars. OOHHHH SO GOOD.

Octavia Butler’s novel "Parable of the Sower" is fantastically written and fits very well into the currently popular string of novels and movies centered on older teenagers dealing with societal conflicts. It’s a quick and easy read due to the never-ending action and dramatic twists, making it quite difficult to put down as I experienced. Butler’s writing style easily paints visuals for the reader to follow and remain interested. There were multiple times when I was almost appalled by the graphic nature of her depictions particularly during violent interactions, but I was quickly reminded of the context and gravity of the protagonist’s situation.

The time frame of the novel is not too far off from our own, only about thirty years after it was written in 1993, which is kind of frightening but also reassuring because there’s no way the global economic status could change so drastically in such short notice (right?). Although Lauren’s ways of living are severely different than today’s standards, the mentions of well-known cities and highway routes in California brings the reader back to the realization that these events are happening right here in America. I couldn’t see a clear connection between this novel and global warming until I read the interview at the end of the novel, but there was clearly much religious discussion which I enjoyed reading. Lauren provides some different perspectives of living through her creation of Earthseed, and although I’m a practicing Christian, I saw many of her points as easily applicable to life.

Another large point to mention is the numerous characters of color and of mixed races; Lauren herself is African-American, and there are actually only a handful of white characters depicted in the novel. Race is mentioned many times through the book, specifically when discussing society’s opposition to interracial relationships. This is insanely important in our current society where most main characters are presumably white and the only people of color are supporting or background characters. People of color need to see themselves being represented in novels with strong willed and determined characters, and "Parable of the Sower" does a wonderful job depicting just this.

It is true that this book isn't for everyone. It is not apretty book. It is filled with pain, chaos and endless human suffering, but it is wonderfully written. This is the first book by Octavia Butler I got to read. This writer was a discovery, for me.
It is also true that there are minor flaws in this book. But the comment of one of the reviewers here who said that those who loved this book "ought to get out more" really surprised me. It really is the other way around. What's described in this book is already happening in many third-world countries, and could very possibly happen even in countries like the U.S., if only something pushed us over the edge.
And that's the biggest problem I find with Parable Of The Sower: it is hard for me to believe that the future described (which is only 20 years away) would JUST happen. Without any major, nation-wide catastrophe, all of a sudden there is complete dystopia. Change in climate, however severe, would never be able to bring about the chaos pictured in this book. It's just hard to believe than only in 20 years, the most powerful country in the world is going to fall apart and be plagued by slavery, lawlessness, illiteracy, corruption, hatred and fear. Socio-economical conditions like that take decades to develop. It took the USSR nearly a century (70+ years), to turn into the mess it is now - and still it's not as frightening as the future in Parable Of The Sower. It would all sound better if the author set her story in a further future - like the end of the 21st century or so. It would all make more sense.
The whole Earthseed thing was rather unbelievable as well, not the concept itself, but the idea that anyone would buy it as a religion and follow it. Selected verses did ring true to me and were really well-written. However, it's not something I'd call a religion, and it's not likely to ever succeed in the real world. But don't forget that the protagonist who created it is only human, and is only 18. I liked her as a character, but I did not like her as a person. The arrogance with which she spoke and certain things that she did ticked me off now and then. This only proves just how well-defined this character is. And this is the point I think some are missing: she might be wrong in her every step. Her life is not a saint's testimony, it's only one story of one person's life. See it as you please.

My friend InfoDva recommended this series. The Parable of the Sower is, of course, the first followed by The Parable of the Talents, which I haven't read yet.

Let's see how to summarize this. Lauren Olamina is a young black woman who lives in the United States in what appears to be a nearly post-apocolypse world. It's not, though. Only that humans have destroyed the world. People live in small walled communities or else they have no protection. By "small," I mean neighborhood size. Lauren has "hyperempathy" which means that she can feel what others are feeling. Her family discourages her from telling people about it since it's something that other people are afraid of.

Lauren is developing her own religious beliefs and making plans to leave her community and try to find a less crazy place when her neighborhood is destroyed and most, if not all, of her family killed. She heads out and is soon joined by others who go along on her quest for a better place.

Despite the plethora of typos, this book was phenomenal. The ideas are not that far-fetched, given the state of our world right now. It takes place only a few years from today - 2024-2027. It's not likely that we will, in this lifetime, end up there but I think it isn't impossible, either.

At times I found I had to put this book down although I wanted to continue reading. The story was much too believable to future that could exists providing the right circumstances. It was impossible not to think of what would I have done or how or if I would survive in these circumstances.
The story of Lauren, a teenage girl being raised in a decaying near future society that has fallen to environmental, civic, and political decay, on the verge of complete loss of any resemblance of civilization. She has a unique voice and perspective that appears to make sense and hold onto a set a values that aids in her and those drawn to her to not only survive but possibly have hope for their future.

One of the most haunting and disturbing (and, yes, depressing) books I've read in a while, Butler's novel is also one of the most satisfying; I've just ordered the sequel and eagerly await its arrival.

The author's genius lies in her ability to create a world not unlike the one in which we live: there are no aliens and few technological advances embroidering her story. Instead, she takes our current afflictions (global warming, drug epidemics, lawless gangs, worsening schools, inner-city poverty) and projects them unabated thirty years into the future, creating a civilization that is just a single Great Depression away from our own--or, for that matter, one that already exists in many underdeveloped, war-torn countries.(And I am writing this review minutes after reading a front-page newspaper article about how water prices will skyrocket this summer because of the decade-old drought.)

In this world, the United States has been overrun by drug-crazed gangs, water and food shortages, vigilante groups, and corporate towns. Lauren Olamina must cope not only with this dystopian nightmare but also her own debilitating and psychosomatically-induced empathy to feel the actual pain anyone experiences when hurt or killed in her sight. After the total destruction of her guarded and secluded neighborhood, she heads north, attracting along the way a ragtag band of homeless followers who eventually regard her as their leader.

Much has been made of the "religious" aspect of the novel: some readers find that it resonates with the own beliefs, while others feel that the verses Lauren writes are trivial and her ideas simplistic. An interesting blend of Buddhism and early Christianity written in Taoist aphorisms, "Earthseed" is really nothing more than a realistic and understandable attempt by a teenager to cope with the daily horrors of the world in which she lives. Butler is certainly not trying to create a new religion; rather, she is showing how such philosophies are created and how desperate people sometimes (successfully) develop new principles to deal with harsh changes in their world. As Butler herself points out in an interview appended to the book, she created this religion for her fictional characters: "She didn't have to be always right, but she had to be reasonable." (Both the interview and reader's guide at the end of this trade paperback edition are unusually insightful.)

Octavia Butler is the only science fiction writer ever to be awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. She deserves every penny.

When I first picked up this book, I assumed it would be a typical post apocalyptic, end of the world, type book that just kinda went on from page to page until the end. What I got out of this book was completely different. It’s a powerful story. The book is set in a time where the government has pretty much all but failed, and people are forced to live within a wall. If you go outside, you run the risk of being killed, raped, robbed, and whatever else. As bad is this sounds, life within the wall isn’t all that great as well. Lauren, the narrator, is the daughter of a minister and she makes it very clear she doesn’t believe in the God he does. Do you blame her? I think this book brings up an entirely different idea that we haven’t faced yet, how do you believe in God when everything is going wrong in the world? Terrible things are happening all around her. The break down of law and order, people are dying in the streets, and Lauren’s family is savagely killed. After going through all of that, how do you find the strength to believe in anything? I think this book does a fantastic job of showing people that all you really need is yourself, to get yourself through the horrible things in life so that you can experience the good ones.

Here Octavia Butler refines one of her specialties - a haunting and subtly creepy tale about people struggling to survive in a failed society that they helplessly watch crumble around them. This one takes the classic motif of self-discovery during a road trip but places the characters in a horrific post-corporate future dystopia of indentured slavery, rampant crime, and drug-fueled megalomania. The main character Lauren is leading a scraggly group of fellow survivors away from burned cities toward a promised land that probably doesn't exist. In the process she starts her own religion from the ashes of previous beliefs that have failed to provide comfort in a disintegrating and regressing society. One especially terrifying creation of Butler's here is a growing population of arsonists who are addicted to a drug that makes burning and killing an orgasmic experience, while elitists isolate themselves and crack down on the innocent to maintain their power. One issue here is that the book ends a bit uneventfully and obviously leads into a sequel, but you'll be more than ready to read that next book after being quite disturbed and intrigued by this one. [~doomsdayer520~]

I read this as part of reading Butler's entire oeuvre in preparation for an essay that I was writing about a common theme in her work. With some authors such a task would be daunting, either because of the volume of writing or the disparate nature of their output. So far, as I can tell, Butler's limited publications fall into four distinct groups: her early novels in the Patternist series; Kindred, a standalone novel of time travel and slavery; the Xenogenesis trilogy; and the current group of books, likely to go by the heading of Earthseed. The new novel, Parable of the Talents, is the second in the series, which I have on my shelf to be read, but I wanted to make sure I started at the beginning.
In 2030 the U.S. is a nation under siege from within. Violence and new drugs have combined to make the cities war zones, where the citizens live in suburban walled enclaves and must go out in groups or well-armed to shop or work. One drug in particular, which causes the user to find fire so fascinating that he or she immediately turns to arson, wreaks total havoc. This is a post-apocalyptic society, but instead of following a nuclear war or a plague, it is an implosion of the tensions that we have in society today magnified enormously.
I don't care much for post-apocalypses, and it really doesn't matter if it happened because of war or drugs or plague. It is a setting that seems as if ordered from central casting. I've read it so many times that there is nothing new about it. Unfortunately, Butler does not change my opinion with this book. However, her characters and their concerns were somewhat new--especially the idea of creating a new religion that would help people live in these rough times and deal with the change, as well as her creation of a psychosomatic condition that causes empathy as a side-effect of a total cancer cure.
Still, it was a rough 300 pages for me, made all the more so for its obvious set-up of a longer series. Butler's writing is accomplished and her characters believable. While I was not too excited by this novel, I am interested in seeing where she goes from here, now that all the set-up is complete.

So I was at the library and had one of my (regrettably frequent) forgetful moments and could NOT remember the title of this book. "A dystopian sci-fi novel," I said, "Sounds maybe religious or maybe about needlework." Without even lifting her head, the library assistant said "Parable of the Sower. Great book." And it is. The storyline is powerful, the female lead is strong and engaging, and Butler's writing is so compelling that it propelled me right into the scene. I definitely want to know what happens next! Highly recommended.

Octavia Butler is an AMAZING writer. This book is dark but it's about a search for hope during dark times. There is triumph in the book but you have to look for it. There is hope in the book just like the characters you have to search for it. It's a masterful tale but if you're looking for a feel good book this isn't it. It's a complex coming of age story in post apocalyptic America. One might compare it to Cormac McCarthy's The Road but in my estimation it's far more developed and compelling. I HIGHLY recommend it.

Octavia Butler is one of the most interesting SciFi writers of the past 20 years. She combined an urban, African-American sensibility with classic, complex science fiction structure. This world is dystopian, but yet you can see the way new thoughts, hope, religion, family, and all the trappings of human culture adapt and create something new within the coincidences of a world that one does not control. This book truly made me think. It made me see new things about humanity, and ponder what might be the trajectory of our own culture. Brilliant.

Nice world-building. Dystopian sci-fi presented in a believable manner. Earthseed, Books of the Living, also, a well presented philosophical point of view. Or in this case, a new religion? Loved the book and the gentle, but forceful, mind that penned it. The love affairs and relationships that develop drove the story well. Looking forward to the next book in the series.

I'm a congregationalist minister who likes science fiction/fantasy, and am embarrassed that it took me so long to find and read this amazing book. It deals with religion, race, gender, class and so many other topics with such elegance and authenticity, without being preachy, judgmental or stale. The first person journal narration provides an excellent framework for telling the story and I loved learning about the world. Already started on Parable of the Talents. The best science fiction explores moral and spiritual questions, using the fictional world as a vehicle for teaching us about our own world, and this definitely hits the mark.

I am going to start this review off by asking a theoretical question. There is a huge wave coming, it will wash you and everyone you love out to see. What do you do? Do you back up away from the water? Move to higher ground? Build a boat to ride it out? Or do you turn your back on it, play on the beach and pretend that it isn't coming? Now imagine that it isn't a wave of water, but a wave of violence, crime and people that will be unstoppable. No wall will hold them back. You may have nowhere ideal to go. But you have access to books, learning materials and you have time to prepare, pack. Octavia Butler speculates that most people would ignore the coming onslaught and attempt to go about their daily business, not prepare and not learn. It is scary to move forward and change behavior and scary to imagine the world as we know it is ending. But change is necessary to survival, according to Butler. This is what Parable is about - change, adaptation and working together in a community to accomplish the change in order to survive.

The main character in Parable, a teenage girl named Lauren, is an agent of change. Lauren is unwilling to turn her back on the huge wave she knows is coming; instead she teaches herself through books everything she can learn and she prepares for what she knows and fears is coming. Lauren is inspired from inside herself and is somewhat of a prophet of a new religion and philosophy. Her belief is "God is Change." And she goes out to preach it. The creation of the religion is a vehicle for Lauren's story to be told and for hope to be seeded among her followers.

Octavia Butler published her book in 1995, so many apocalyptic novels have come after hers have incorporated elements that are present in this book. It is interesting for me that Butler appears to have less acclaim but she is the predecessor of so many well-known novels.

There are books that tell the story of the world ending by an apocalyptic event and then there are books that show you what the world would be like during an apocalyptic even - without holding back. Parable of the Sower is the latter. The images of lives being destroyed and violence being wrought on people just for living and just for having something, anything that is wanted by those who do not have anything - these images are described in details. They are not described, I think, for the delight of reading gore, but to serve as a marker of how far society has fallen. And it is a scary world that Butler describes; scary and realistic. Despite that I have absolutely no point of reference for the scenes described in this book, while reading I felt as though it could have been happening right outside my door. There is nothing about this apocalyptic world that is romantic.

In Parable, much of society's downfall appears to have been caused by environmental devastation, which has in turn caused economic and political devastation. Polluted water, toxic chemicals, failed pharmaceutical and science experiments resulting in dangerous addictive drugs. Butler's book is a scary warning of pushing consumer and corporate demands to the extreme.

Reading this book created questions in my mind. Is this book really about an apocalyptic event? It does take place in the US (California) and the society that is disintegrating is American society, but is this an apocalyptic event or the failure of one society? So many apocalyptic books describe world changing events; but in Parable, it is shortages - gas, water, food, governmental collapse (or increasing ineffectualness) but some infrastructure remains. There are police, but they investigate and then charge user fees; there are property taxes and there are colleges; there is electricity and there are entertainment outlets (like televisions, etc.); there are insurance companies and resources --- but everything for an elevated price and most people do not have the ability to pay for these items and services. What happens is that these institutions are not efficient, they are not accessible to most individuals and there is a heavy cost to purchase their services. There are still jobs and corporations and apparently very successful corporations. People without education and without jobs, crowd in to smaller housing and share space. Corporations dominate certain sectors of society and provide protection and infrastructure to those who can afford it. Punitive debt policies and employment policies are in place that hurt individuals but benefit corporations. Isn't this describing the current state of some countries in this world right now - maybe even in this hemisphere? Where there is no protection for the individual beyond what they can obtain from people in their community and families? Don't people already go on migrations to new places (bordering countries, mega cities, factory rich regions) with nothing but a small savings and a hope for anything different? I see this book as an envisioning of what if these situations happened in the United States. The scenarios described in Parable, the extreme violence, the extreme fear and the absolute lack of choices are just so out of the realm of anything most people in the US experience while living in the US that it is hard to imagine, understand and relate to images like written in this book that we may read about in the news, blogs or in non-fiction books. Butler brings it home; she recreates it here and it is absolutely terrifying.

At one point in the novel, Lauren travels disguised as a man but she travels along side a woman who is described as highly desirable, Zahra. Zahra encounters problem after problem because men will just not leave her alone - and in a threatening way. There is no government, no structure - and no laws to protect the weak. Butler describes horrible crimes that happen to females of all ages and most of them sexual. What point is Butler making about the physicality of being a woman? Is she saying that in the absence of the protection of a societal framework a woman is more at risk, simply because she is a woman? Does this mean Butler believes this threat is inherent? I have a hard time accepting this concept, but I also know I approach this concept of equality and physical integrity from an extremely privileged position. The mass rapes that happen in war torn countries, the use of rape as a weapon of wars, and the kidnapping and use of children soldiers - these horrors that take place and demonstrate this fragile place in society that women and children can occupy.

But again, from my extremely privileged position, I have a hard time grasping that in the absence of government and infrastructure, human beings will turn violent and devoid of empathy. The mass chaos Butler describes is only kept out by walls, guns and guards. However, I have mentioned this and been told by some people, very intelligently, that it does not take a majority to create chaos. A minority of criminals and desparados are enough to create the chaos that endangers people, the forces them to withdraw from society and that puts women and children at risk. If the natural condition in a situation devoid of an effective government is chaos and danger, how could society have evolved? Why would we be here? I do think the answer is that people would join together, form a community, work as a group and attempt to protect the community members. And that, is what I think this book is about - community, bonds, joint action and moving forward as a group. The acceptance of change and the trusting of each other.

Like many readers, I keep lists of various books I want to read. For quite some time multiple titles by Octavia Butler have been on one or other of my lists -- in this case on two lists, one for SF writers I have not yet read but want to and one for dystopian novels -- but only now have I finally gotten around to one of them. I can promise that it will not take me very long to get to the next novel.

There is a line from BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER that kept coming to mind as I read this novel. In the marvelous episode "The Gift," that ended Season Five, a vampire is chasing a teenaged boy into an alley, where he intends to kill him. But just before he is able to do so, Buffy walks out interrupting the two of them and after some wisecracking dusts the vampire. Buffy tells the shocked boy to go home he asks her how she managed to take on a vampire and kill it. "It's what I do," she replies. "But you're just a girl." Like Buffy, Lauren Olamina is just a girl. But like Buffy she has taken on responsibilities that no teen should have to.

The novel is set in an utterly dystopian world. The world is our own (or that of the early nineties) gone completely to seed. America is suffering from a complete collapse of society and the economy. Society, in fact, has completely ceased to function. There is no police protection, no organized economy, no functioning government. The novel has more plausibility today than it did at the time it was written, since today we have the heartbreaking anarchy that we witnessed in New Orleans during Katrina, where people fired guns at boats and helicopters attempting to rescue people. Much like in the wake of Katrina the people in the suburb of Los Angeles depicted in this novel, people have become almost animalistic. A great deal of the power of the novel derives from her depiction of the oppressive paranoia that the forces in society place on Lauren. Like they say, you aren't paranoid if they really are out to get you. As her world collapses, taking friends, family, and home from her, Lauren responds heroically to it all, even if she is "just a girl."

What is more, Lauren is a "girl" of color. I have been working on a project surveying the female heroes on television and one of the alarming things about that has been the almost complete absence of nonwhite women in heroic roles. There was a black female pilot on SPACE: ABOVE AND BEYOND, a heroic female in CLEOPATRA 2525 and a tough black chick in FIREFLY (both roles played by Gina Torres), the ethnically indeterminate Max in DARK ANGEL, and Sharon Agathon in BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (played by Korean Canadian actress Grace Park), but while not quite exhausting the list, this comes close. What irritates me is that if TV were to have even ONE black female heroic lead, perpetually reactionary males (and trust me, I know a few) would start howling about PC characters on TV. But how can the almost complete absence of black female heroes be justified? Is there some rule that all heroes have to be white? And for the record, I write this as a white male. Lauren is a wonderful corrective for the almost overwhelming whiteness of SF, literary or otherwise.

One other aspect of the novel that I would like to note is how very, very well written it is. Even many well-known SF writers are simply not very good writers, but Butler is exceptionally talented. As I read it I was continually impressed at how well written it was, at how good, in fact, it was on multiple levels.

I can't recommend this novel highly enough. And the next novel I will read? PARABLE OF THE TALENTS, the sequel to this. And that will definitely not be the last Octavia Butler novel that I will read.

For those of us who witnessed the LA Riots of 1992 and its aftermath, Parable of the Sower (and even Levar Burton's "Aftermath") reads less as fiction than a call to action for individual survival. I can only imagine that like me, Ms. Butler watched the fires in South Central Los Angeles from her front door, her only link to the outside the car's radio or other transitor radios, for in 1992 Los Angeles, we lived without power for a week. Many people were unable to be returned to power for a month following the incident. The police did not respond to the rioting for the first 2 days. In sum, Parable of the Sower is a roman a clef. It is also an angry book. But Ms. Butler has turned her anger into something useful. A primer on survival.
Her book only slightly exagerrates the mindless and random violence of this large city. The prevalence of gated communities clearly give a false sense of security to the denizens inside. And we know that in this country we gladly give up freedom for promised security.
Lauren Olamina's progenitors are the 60's Black Radicals who said be ready when the revolution comes. So, instead of embracing pacifist ideals, she embraces the concept of survival in a turbulent world where the real masters plan re-enslavement of wage earners. She learns to shoot and maintain weapons. She learns to use native plants for subsistence. For survival's sake she learns to kill. For survival's sake she learns to look dispassionately at the real world without the blinders of her stepmother or neighbors.
Will it get as bad as Octavia Butler warns?
The budding prison-industrial complex which houses so much of the Black male population of this country comes to mind in supporting Butler's themes.
Employees pay companies to come in to save their factory jobs.
Schools do seem to be deliberately miseducating our children.
Computers are making people much less likely to interact in person, and many people would rather telecommunicate than commute to work. Shared jobs are becoming an accepted routine, and college educated persons are waiting tables.
Butchery of minorities, gays -- lynching, if you will, is ocurring with greater frequency.
Butler is saying, ok we survive to go to the stars, but first we must survive -- and she sounds a lot like the neo-fascistic Robert Heinlein in saying it. Yet the disconnect is that Lauren Olamina is part of the weakest and least appreciated portion of society -- a black woman. Surplus population.
A reactivating book, I've re-read Parable of the Sower and shared its premise with others of my community, for I believe that the knock at the door in the middle of the night can happen here.
To think otherwise is to ignore history and ignore current trends.

I've held Octavia Butler in high regard since I read Kindred years ago. I wasn't sure what to expect when I started this book and it took me a while to get into it. However, at a certain point, things start to get really good. I love the way Butler builds, destroys and rebuilds communities in this book and creates a main character who is all too human. Furthermore, while Lauren Olamina has a condition called hyperempathy syndrome, Butler does not overuse this condition to drive the story and does not rely on it unnecessarily to create drama. Even though I know nothing about California, she does a great job taking the reader with her on the journey in a post-apocalyptic America. I honestly don't know why this book has not yet been developed as a film with young adult themes being all the rage right now. The protagonist Lauren is a teenager throughout the entire story forced to grow up long before her time. This book could be a great adaptation for a film.

This is a very intense story set against the backdrop of the breakdown of an industrial society. Butler's vision of a chaotic LA is truly chilling, from the near-defenselessness of its innocents to the killing fury of its villains. In a way, it is the most realistic and grim from of all her science fiction, the most likely to happen.
It never ceases to amaze me how ambitious Butler is! In earlier novels, she invents a divide of human speciation as well as a hybrid race that springs from extraterrestrial genetic traders. At the center of this story is an empath - a mutant whose abilities are not as fantstic as those in Butler's other novels - who embarks on a crusade to found and lead a new religion.
Thus, Butler addresses the great themes of humanity with great inventiveness and utterly superb writing. She is a first rate novelist.
Howver, I did find this novel rather slower than her others.
Warmly recommended.

This was a gripping, powerful story. I couldn't put it down.
Masterfully written. It gave me lots to think about and motivated me to take inventory of my ideas about the future of our country. Highly recommend it. Not for the faint hearted.

In this book a young black woman lives in a world full of chaos and fear. It's not much different from this world. I hope our country won't get this bad. Her family hides behind a wall as the rest of the country falls apart. Lauren Olamina is ready for disaster and change. She prepared a bag she can grab and run. Her religion is based on hope and triumphing over the horrors around her. Watch as she continues to hope and bring people together regardless of how horrible things get.

This book was wonderfully written. I had a lot of angst reading this book and felt that it was never going to get better and it didn't. This story made me think about society today and can this actually happen? We do currently have gated communities in America that require you to have a key to access. These communities typically have upper class people living in them and most choose to live in them for safety and to set themselves apart from society and to not allow "others" to come in. Remember the killing of Trayvon Martin the unarmed teenager who was gunned down in a gated community in Florida and the controversial stand your ground law. The author spent a lot of time focusing on Lauren Olamina and her overall feelings and ideas. She was a somewhat complex character with her being able to feel pain to wanting to create Earthseed which she did not want to connect to God but yet her writing had God is change throughout her journal.
This story was very poignant, it hit you hard into thinking could really happen? But to this extreme, I had to really think about where we are today in terms of climate change and if we were to run out of water and resources how would society react. If we had to pay police to come out and investigate and they really did nothing about it. The use of hallucinating drugs and the level of stealing and killing and all out anarchy that occurred made me think if there are signs of this today, maybe not as overt as this but it does make wonder where society is heading. We have over a billion people in America, how long can we keep producing at the level that we are and maintain the standard of living that we currently have. We have a abundance of material things but nature is suffering and can only produce before it starts to bottom out.
The hyperempathy syndrome that Lauren had, while difficult made her sensitive to the world around her. I think it allowed her to be a great leader. I felt so sad for all of the lost that occurred and the barbaric way that her family died. I did not understand why they did not prepare better and did not take the opportunity to leave when it was offered. They kept saying it was a dead end and they were better off where they were but the majority of them died and Lauren was the only one who had prepared herself for the inevitable to come.

I don't often read science fiction, but the recommendation of several readers and its inclusion on our local public radio "Readers and Writers on the Air" series caused me to pick up, with some trepidation, Octavia E. Butler's 1993 sci-fi novel Parable of the Sower. Set just twenty-five years from now, Butler imagines a California beset by severe global warming, with the government virtually collapsed and anarchy run amuck. Written in the first person, Butler's narrator, Lauren, is a young woman who begins the book living in a walled community with her family. Life outside the walls is total chaos, and much effort is spent keeping the "barbarians" - people who have been dispossessed of home or property - on the outside. When her town's security is breached and her entire family murdered, Lauren finds herself on the road, where she eventually gathers a group of people with her, all journeying to the north. Lauren is unique and memorable in a couple of respects: first, a preacher's kid, she sets out to define and found a new religion, which she calls Earthseed, and which takes both the moral precepts of Christianity and the unique creed that "God is change." Second, Lauren has "hyperempathy syndrome", which causes her to feel as her own the pleasure and pain of those around her. Thus, if she sees someone critically injured and in pain, she will herself feel that person's conscious pain. Not a good condition to have when living under circumstances where one must fight to survive, and kill or be killed!
While I found at times the Earthseed material to be a bit "over the top," overall this is a provocative and excellent novel. Butler writes extremely well, and she made the hellish world in which her characters find themselves absolutely believable. Parts of this novel are not for the squeamish. Although very dark in tone, the novel ends on a ray of hope when Lauren's group, after burying the dead from a recent battle, recall Jesus' Parable of the Sower. As the reader may recall, although most of the seed ends up dying, some falls on good ground, "sprang up, and bore fruit an hundredfold." Highly recommended.

Where to begin. Lauren and her family are living in a "neighborhood" (more like what we'd call "a compound" these days, walled in and partially protected from the crazy world outside in the not to distant future (2025). Her father is the preacher of the neighborhood, adn college professor, so these kids nolonger attend "real" school, her family knows the importance of education. Lauren is a reader adn a searcher of knowledge, as well as a spiritual seeker, but in a much different way than her father. She has grown up in a world devoid of compassin and the safety her parents once took fro granted. So in this new scary United States, people try to hold on and live, even if life is a frightening gauntlet of daily dangers, from wlid killer drug addicts to desperately poor adn starving street people willing to kill for food.

Parts of this novel dragged for me. I thought the philosophy Butler was trying to share was interesting ("God is change"), but much like some of the characters Lauren tries to "convert," I had a hard time embracing her poetic religion about life and God. Lauren is an admirable person, courageous, tough and smart. But I never really loved her. the novel si written in a journal form, Lauren's most secretive thoughts, her feelings and her fears. She sufferes from hyperempathy, an innate condition brought about by her mother's addiction to a certain drug while lauren was in utero. This can make her life very difiicult, as anyone who is in pain shares that pain (unknowingly) with her. She tries to keep this secret as well, as it is a handicap that could cripple her and put her in great danger. Lauren's home is eventually destroyed and she and several other people form a close knit band and travel north from the Southern Califorian location where they lived, to a hopefully better life North of the craziness.

I plan to read Kindred next, and I believe the two books are related in some way, possibly the same chaacrster, but I know towards the end of this book there is a lot of tak about the slavery taking place in the US(in the 2020's). While I did not love this story, I did love the writing, Octavia Butler has an awesome voice.

Butler paints a disturbing, interesting and not that far-fetched picture of what life in the U.S. could devolve too if the social, economic and legal safety nets were to be removed. Neighbors band together to protect their communities while hoards of people gone wild and mad victimize anyone who can't protect themselves. Life becomes cheap, - the older generation gradually has to acknowledge that things will never return to the way they were and the younger generation, while hearing their parents and grandparents description of things past, have to re-evaluate what they can hope for and what kind of life and world is still possible.
What struck me the most about this story is that it really isn't far-fetched at all. And my only criticism is that the religious component was pretty silly and somewhat unbelievable.
Overall a great, quick read. I'll definitely read another of this author's books.

A friend warned me, "Girl, if you read this book, it will mess with your mind." Well that was all the incentive I needed to run, not walk to my nearest bookstore and pick up this book. After finishing the last page, I must admit that she spoke the truth. PARABLE OF THE SOWER took common sense principles and a highly realistic backdrop and came up with a sincere manifesto that forces readers to think, think and think a little more. I'm not saying people should run out and start EARTHSEED communities like the main character, Lauren Oya Olamina, but, I will challenge readers to examine her very simple, yet highly sophisticated premise, "God is change." Nothing revolutionary there, but put into the context of the world that we live in now that is overrun with every kind of "phobic" imaginable, I think this book will force readers out of their comfort zone. Some kicking and screaming, but others, like me, who are anxious to let the winds of this extraordinary text sail me into some unchartered waters, will go willingly. Keep on bringing us this thought-provoking work, Ms. Butler.

A MUST READ!!!! I stopped reading Sci Fi when I was about 20, because I got more into non fiction, biographys, ethonographis, historical text, etc. However I was at the library years ago and saw the hard back cover of this book. It had an interesting design with a woman walking it really caught my attention. I checked it out and read the book. One of my favorite of all time of any genre. The novel is about Lauren Oya Olamina a 18 or 19 year old tall female. She inside of a walled community sometime in the near future. The world has gone to hell, homelessness is the norm and the community is in constant threat of attack by "Paints," crazed maniacs that take a drug that makes them paint their face and set fires, if I remember correctly. Gotta read this book again soon. Anyway the story is basically a journey, and everyone is doing what they can to survive. Octavia E. Butler is one of my favorite authors. Her novel Kindred is excellent as well as Clays Ark. If you get the chance pick up a copy of Bood Child a collection of short storied by Ms Butler. I really feel this woman's writing.

Parable of the Sower is a stark imagining of our future by author Octavia E. Butler. The future is grim. There have been environmental and economic disasters and America is a broken land. Water is more expensive than gasoline and those with jobs live in walled enclaves and only leave when they absolutely must. It is said to venture into the open city that people must travel in groups and well armed. Food is precious and almost as rare as water. To help provide a better understanding of the world it should be pointed out that dogs run wild now. Owners can no longer spare the money to buy dog food and dogs eat meat, meat which now must be saved for humans...dogs are an unnecessary expense and live as scavengers and hunters...perhaps like wolves.

Lauren Olamina is eighteen. She is the daughter of a preacher and teacher but she doesn't believe in his god. She has found, or formed, her own. Lauren believes in something called Earthseed. It is a different way of viewing God, that God is absent and that God exists to be changed by humanity. The viewpoint makes a bit more sense in the novel. Lauren also suffers from "hyperempathy", an imaginary but very real disorder where she can physically feel the pain of others. If someone breaks an arm and she sees the injury, she physically feels all the pain from the injury. It works the other way, with pleasure, but there is far more pain than pleasure in the world. The disease is all in her mind, and she knows it, but she still feels the pain. It can incapacitate her and so is a great liability the way the world is today.

At some point in the novel the city/compound/community Lauren lives in is overrun by the homeless, the vagrants, the violent. Most are slaughtered, Lauren escapes because she planned for such an occurance. She begins a trek north to find a place to live and settle and found the first Earthseed community. Along the way she picks up people who are willing to trust and travel together in this time of distrust and danger.

Octavia Butler is one heck of a writer. As brutal as the world is, Butler tells a very human story of survival and hope for the future. Lauren Olamina may bother some readers because she does not develop much as a character. She is a very intelligent young woman who has done a lot of thinking about Earthseed and about how to survive in the world and is willing to take any bit of information regarding survival that she can from anyone. She knows she needs to learn, but she is the same character at the end that she is at the beginning. So, the character development isn't there, but Parable of the Sower has raw power. The destruction of society and the situations that Lauren and company find themselves in...it is astounding to think this could be a vision of the future. But Butler's storytelling is excellent as she brings the reader along on a journey through a wasted California in Lauren's need to found Earthseed. I do not know what Parable of the Talents will bring this storyline, but I am willing to find out.

-Joe Sherry

Prescient, intuitive, and important are the words that come to mind. Butler’s work is believable and is more prophetic than ever in these days and times. It’s hard to believe that, given the existence of her work and the clear warnings it gives about terrible leaders, that current leaders would mimic those in her books. It’s too bad more people don’t read, and I’m very sure Butler agrees with that statement.

I am on page 70 of this book which was written in the early 90's. Reading this sends chills down my spine due to the accuracy of some of the conditions described. "Parable of the Sower" takes place in 2024, yet we are seeing some of the same conditions noted, for example, strange weather conditions, less jobs, homeless people, the increase of disease, more people sharing homes because of the high rents, and even wild dog packs (as no one can afford to keep dogs except the rich)! It makes me wonder if this the future we are looking into?

This book is riveting and I can't wait to pick it up again and finish it!

In the not-very-distant future, America is disintegrating into widespread unemployment, crime, and violence. Lauren lives in an enclosed neighborhood where everyone looks out for each other, but racial divides are still factors. As a young black woman and an empath, Lauren knows her future is dim, but she has a vision of the future she calls Earthseed and is determined to make it a reality. When the trickle of thieves into their community flares into an invasion, Lauren witnesses the destruction of her world, her friends, her family, and barely escapes with her life. She encounters two other survivors and they set off to find a better part of the U.S. Butler's powerful vision of the future is starkly possible, and with compelling characters, she creates a stellar tale of believing in a better world for future generations even as we are mired in our current crises. The book is a powerful commentary on our culture and where it could be headed.

And I mean that. So much of the tragedy in this book struck me to the core...mainly because it was set in Los Angeles, and I lived in LA for a long time. Butler creates a pausible world which is being systematically eaten alive with corruption, poverty, politics, to name a few. I couldn't put this book down - it was that engrossing. It's one of the main things I love about Ms. Butler's books - her ability to create detailed worlds teeming with life and destruction...and in this book there was much destruction.
I am not devoutly religious and was never raised religiously, so Olamina's 'discovery' of 'God is Change' resonated with me. It doesn't matter whether you are religious or not in this case, because the whole concept of re-inventing god in this book was interesting because it showed a world which was in such chaos and turmoil, that even religion was subject to change (thus making change itself a religion). This did not bother me, and again, I found the theory actually drove home the point of how disasterous the environment was.
But I still have a couple of complaints:
I was a little annoyed with the character of Olamina, or maybe I was just annoyed with Ms. Butler, because I never felt this protagonist ever really 'grew' into the story. Olamina's world falls apart and yet despite her god of change, she remains the same. It's as though she walks around with blinders on, and grasps onto her neo-religious convictions. I've read Parable of the Talents (the sequel) as well, and found that Butler spends a lot of time bashing Christian Fundamentalism, but in truth, her character's stubborn hold on a new form of religion is just as ruthless.
One thing I noticed was that Olamina was obsessed with 'converting' the people she befriended, or I should say collected, along her journey... and I found something a bit one-dimensional in this. I also didn't care much for Olamina's insistence of 'Earth Seed's destiny is to take root among the stars'. I found this character to be a bit of a nutcase actually, and never really got to the heart of why. It's as though the inner conflict never came to light, but was always expressed outwardly, by a series of destructive events. Yet the two worlds (inner character's world and outer environment) never intersected, instead running parallel, right next to each other, until I had the distinct feeling that I was losing interest in Olamina's well-being and didn't really care for her at all.
I want to care for my protagonist, even if she's not all that admirable, and I didn't have much reason to like her at all after a while. She acts rationally, she is dependable, but she is a stubborn, bossy young female character living in total denial. And we never really get to find out why, either, which leaves me feeling incomplete and unsure. I think Butler puts a lot of her personal beliefs into books ... which is only natural. But something in me felt like there was nowhere to turn in the story, and the only Change in the book was the destruction getting more frequent as the other characters learned to deal with it.
All the other characters, again, but Olamina.
I just didn't find this character very believable or adaptable, and even though she was a mass of paradoxes and contradictions, Ms. Butler never bothers to explore her depth...and I'm left with the conclusion that it's because Olamina doesn't have any depth at all.
However, this is still an excellent book, and the story is simply brilliant. It broadened my world a little bit, and that is always priceless.

I hesitate to call this post-apocalyptic, as the world Lauren knows is still crumbling. Dystopian will work; society is fragmented, neighborhoods protect only their own, mob rule and survival lof the fittest are dominant, there are no jobs and water is more expensive than food. A 15 year old girl who has hyperempathy (she feels the pain of others - literally) is our narrator; she watches everything and everyone around her and she uses that to develop a new faith, Earthseed. The essence of her faith is "God is Change". When her small neighborhood of safety is devastated, she starts north, in search of a new life - and as she travels, others join her. She tells them of Earthseed and gains converts. Eventually they find a place where they decide to try and start the first Earthseed community.

Butler's writing is simple yet delivers punches. The society she describes is not unimaginable at all, in fact it's easily imaginable and frighteningly recognizable. Lauren, the central character, is intriguing - she's only 15 but comes across as an old soul - a very old soul. The story is simple, covering several years in an a journal format - but very engaging. I really enjoyed it and will be reading more

I started reading Octavia Butler's book when I was at school in Atlanta. A friend lent me a copy of "Wild Seed" and I was riveted from page one and could not put it down. Octavia Butler is one of the best science-fiction writers to come out of the 20th century. Her pages are filled with characters that are believable even though she often puts them in `out-of-this-world situations.' In "Parable of Sower" she introduces the reader to Lauren, a young girl with the unenviable ability to feel the pain of others. A "talent" her father has taught her to hide from others outside her family. The world Lauren is living in is slowly descending into anarchy and Lauren, is living with her family in a small enclave, protected by her Minister father, who thinks one day everything will go back to normal. Lauren however knows that the walls that protect them will not stand forever, and she prepares to leave before it is too late but it is already too late and her family and friends are raped, murdered and mutilated by a vicious gang of drug-addicts. With two fellow survivors Lauren sets off on a quest that will lead them halfway across America, gathering others along the way, such as two young prostitutes on the run from their pimp father, a middle aged Academic, an orphaned child but to name a few. A tentative alliance is forged, one that will enable them all to live through the dreadful times ahead. Lauren carries with her a strange new belief, that of Earthseed, a creed that will one-day lead to the stars and a life beyond a corrupted earth. As she and her slowly growing band of followers' search for sanctuary she preaches Earthseed to them, and soon begins to recruit coverts among her fellow travellers. "Parable of the Sower," is a haunting novel of a world in transition, where only the strong, the cruel and the vicious survive. The weak and the sick are either killed for enslaved. As Lauren and her followers' head for a farm where they hope to find a home, the young girl is witness to history repeating itself. Slavery is making a come back and people like herself who can feel the pain of others are being sought by unscrupulous men and women who have seen the benefit of such having workers that are in tune with the agonies of others. This is a dark novel of how easy it is for humanity to be bought to its knees, but it also a novel about dreams, desire, and the need for a new future. Earthseed might just be the answer to a dying planet's needs and Lauren could be the Prophet who makes it happen. Octavia Butler's writing is atmospheric, exciting, romantic and there is never a dull moment from the time you turn the first page. A marvellous book and I highly recommend it for first time science-fiction readers, as it is easy to get in to and understand.

Science fiction is sadly ignored, especially in the AA community. This book, however, is a fantastic introduction to the powerful words created by Octavia Butler. Not your stereotypical sci-fi (there are no spaceships, interplanetary wars, ray guns, etc.) but this book invites you to condsider what if: What if the world that you knew was filled with gated communities, corrupt police who will investigate a crime for money, drugs that so alter your mind that fire is akin to sex. This book will challenge what you beleive, your faith in a higher being, man , politics. A realistic view of what could be the future. I like to think that this book parallels the problems that we face today: the crack epidemic, religion, classism and crime. This is a book that should not be passed over but devoured.

The Parable of the Sower presents a believable scenario of a dystopian future, this one portraying the US in decline but still functioning. The dollar has not collapsed yet, there are still governments at work, but they aren't working well. The protagonist finds it difficult to believe in anything, so she begins to develop her own creed. Her new religion is bland and not well developed, but that is a credible reflection on the fact that it is a teenager's attempt to make sense of her world. "Change is God" is her mantra, and if by that she means change is the most powerful force and only constant in life, it is understandable how she came to that conclusion. Her whole life has been one of constant changes, and mostly for worse.

The story itself is depressing, as not much good happens as the protagonist seeks to make a better life for herself. In fact, it is rather graphic and horrifying at times. In spots, however, it is brilliantly written. I enjoyed this book, but not enough to want to read the sequel. Had it been possible, I would have given it 3.5 stars for the quality of the writing and the well-thought out scenario.

Post-apocalyptic literary scenarios have been a dime a dozen since well before Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and these days it takes something quite remarkable - like Cormack McCarthy's sublime The Road - to raise even a flicker of interest in this genre from all but the dullest sci-fi fanboy. Octavia Butler's essay on the same theme is now getting on for 20 years old, and stands up well - indeed, it so closely anticipates McCarthy's novel that you have to wonder whether he was aware of it. That is not to suggest plagiarism, however, for the similarities are general indeed: an un-described catastrophe has caused the total breakdown of society and forced a family unit on the road, where they fend for themselves against allcomers in vain hope of a promised land.

While Butler employs a couple of nice devices - the P.K.Dick-eque hyperempathy condition is a neat literary device - much better in fact than the hokey "Earthseed" concept which gets unwarranted prominence in the story - but Butler doesn't do nearly enough with it to make it worthwhile. In other aspects, the novel is a little flat. There's not a much in the way of a plot arc - it's more linear: things sort of episodically muddle along to a fairly uninvolving conclusion - and nor do the characters get well fleshed out or developed. Like her protagonist Lauren, Butler throws quite a lot of "seed" about which then appears to fall on stony ground: Lauren's father disappears, presumed dead but unresolved - to no effect. Likewise, Lauren's original sweetheart is introduced, developed, and disposed with for no discernible plot-functional reason.

My hunch is that Butler was more interested in developing a quasi-religion than writing a science fiction novel, yet 20 years later, the post-apocalyptic road story is the only part that really holds up. But, all the same, it pales in comparison with Cormack McCarthy's bleaker, more eloquent visualisation, and ultimately I couldn't recommend this novel over, or even really as a complement to, The Road.

Olly Buxton

Because of "Lilith's Brood" and "Kindred," I became an ardent fan of Butler's writing. I consider her one of the world's all-time best authors. If you've never picked up a Butler book and you're into fantasy or sci fi, you're shorting yourself of a great experience. She was such a fantastic writer that the reader swears her created worlds and characters are real...somewhere, sometime. In that light, reading this book ripped me to pieces. I am tempted to say I didn't like the book because it is quite believable that this could be our future. Yet, it is superbly written. If you're prone to depression or emotional reactions to books, you might steer clear of this one and go for "Lilith's Brood" instead.

Other than her short stories -- which I wish she would write more of -- this is my favorite of Butler's works that I have read so far.
It's a smart, engaging book, with an edgy, unpredictable plot and her most compelling heroine. Lauren Olamina is a crazy genius, and it is her self-confidence in her own genius that makes her come off so lifelike. Her voice is chilling in her ruthlessness, yet warm and engaging in her determination and empathy. The fire and ice combination works, and telling the story in the first person was a very smart move.
Much like her heroine, Butler's vision of the future is astonishingly bleak, yet curiously without despair. There are some very nice touches, like the feral dogs and the terrifying water stations (which evoke much of the same panic as war-torn Lithuania in Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections"). The book's only missteps are the flat side characters (especially the drug-crazed homicidal punks), and the Earthseed religion, which comes off as rather half-baked.
Nonetheless, a very compelling read.

A very heavy read. Octavia Butler launches the reader into the America of the future. The story is set in southern California during the years 2024 through 2027 where, through the journal entries of Lauren Olimina, we learn of the savage and degenerative state of the nation. A nation where the ability to feel the pain of others is a disease that could lead to death; where communities and neighborhoods are walled off for protection from the less fortunate. Violence is rampant. Citizens are armed to capacity. Fear permeates your every thought and action.
"Parable of the Sower" is an engaging read on so many levels. The narrative is highly symbolic and open. The story is framed in the biblical tradition yet it calls to question our notions of God and religion as they relate to the survival of the individual spirit and community. Although futuristic in setting, the story renders an immediacy that was at times uncomfortable for me to fully digest. In the year of 2003, 2025 doesn't seem that far off. Although I found the prose clear and concise, I wasn't able to devour the book with the eager anticipation that I would typically apply to a novel as well developed as this one. I didn't understand this self-imposed resistance to surrendering myself completely to the story. It became clear to me midway through the text that - unlike most really great novels that I've read - with "Parable of the Sower", I didn't necessarily want to know what would happen next. The unfolding of the story generated more angst in me than curiosity. On a subconscious level, had I slipped into a comfortable denial of what could occur to a people who have been failed by their religion, their governments, family, neighbors, and friends. As America stands at the ready for war with Iraq, had the future of the nation as imagined by Butler become too close to reality?
Any novel that causes this type of internal reflection deserves wide spread readership. Published originally in 1993, "Parable of the Sower" spans the past, present and future as it depicts a nation that has lost its connection to everything. This is my first read by this award-winning author. I have a lot of catching up to do. Highly Recommended!

Reading through these reviews, I see a lot of people saying that the novel is warning of things to come. Personally, I don't anticipate such a radical collapse of American society in the time frame Butler presents, but I don't think that is the point.
The first part of the book, in the enclave, struck me as an interesting dystopian take on the burbclaves of Snow Crash. I was really caught up in it, imagining what it would be like to live in a place like that. Then, I realized that their world exists today in America, in several inner city neighborhoods -- she only moved it to the suburbs to make it hit home with middle class people. Brilliant move.
Once Olamina leaves the enclave, she begins a journey through even more horrors. While I doubt the range of hardships they endure have been experienced by any single group of people, there is nothing that happens in the book that hasn't happened to real people in the recent American past and in the present world (look at the genocides in Africa, and at famines and government collapses around the world).
I may be reading more into this part than Butler intended, but I saw the experiences of Olamina's group working their way backward through American history. The enclave is an inner city hell, then she meets travelers on the road, looking for work (Dust Bowl/Grapes of Wrath period) and the temptations of factory towns (turn of the century mill and mine villages). Then she meets people who were outright slaves (American slavery) and endentured servants (like many unwilling American immegrants). Finally, the band rediscovers the frontier at Bankole's land and has an opportunity to begin again and, hopefully, not make the same mistakes.
Did anyone else get this impression?

Octavia E. Butler's PARABLE OF THE SOWER is one of those rare, dangerous novels that succeeds as both fascinating fantasy and uncompromising social commentary. Within its first dozen pages, we encounter a typical family armed with guns on their way to church, a headless corpse, a naked homeless woman, a community walled in by terror, and a young woman dreaming of stars. The dreamer is 16-year-old Lauren Oya Olamina, the would-be sower and teller of this parable. The place is California. The year 2025. And nothing in the United States is how it once was. Lauren is a "sharer," or what some might describe as an empath. With her family destroyed by lawless ravagers, Lauren becomes the leader of a band of desperate wanderers. Despite constant violence, hunger, and the threat of firestorms sweeping across the land, they maintain their vows to protect each other and even find love among their numbers. Nearly at the bottom of hell, these characters levitate naturally toward a sense of family in order to survive and flourish. Racially, socially, and temperamentally diverse, they manage to achieve a strained but functional unity. Filled with deep thought and elevated feeling, Butler's PARABLE OF THE SOWER highlights and magnifies the social ills of the years 2025-2027 to forge a mirror that reflects much of what too many people choose to ignore in 2004. Despite that, every page shimmers with hope and inspiration that makes this book one fantastic read.

Aberjhani

author of ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE

and THE WISDOM OF W. E. B. DU BOIS

I read this for a class, and found it to be an interesting read.

In the early part of the book, there were a lot of characters to keep track of, but as the story progressed, there seemed to be fewer...with those we were introduced to, expanded on.

The story centers around the California-based protagonist Lauren Olamina, who starts off as a 16-year-old who lives in a dystopic future that has race and class issues. Two years later, she travels to Northern California in order to build a community around Earthseed, which is focused on shaping God and Destiny according to the needs of her community that is supposed to escape the negativity that has befallen society.

There isn't really much at stake, or a sense of urgency; it's more of a soul-searching book.

I understand that this book is part of a two-book series, which was going to be a trilogy before the author passed away. Still, I plan on reading "Parable of the Talents" in due time.

I rarely write reviews for books or products, but I just looked this book up to provide the link as a recommendation to a friend, and I feel compelled to chime in with my five stars.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Mind you, I write this as a person of Caucasian ethnicity, and I have to say that the main character in this book- a young, African-American girl -provides a heroic voice that we hear far too less of in American popular culture. It is so refreshing to have such a strong, confident, capable young female as a heroine in science fiction literature. Despite the dystopian content of the book, Ms. Butler is able to imbue Lauren, the main character, with such life and personality that one cannot help but be proud of Lauren's everlasting belief in herself and the humanity that she is striving to protect. For this alone, the book is worth a million readers.

The book is a testament to the spirit of hope and survival that lives in each one of us.

This book should be on high school reading lists. I remember reading all sorts of classics when I was in high school about dysfunctional heroes who end up failing. This book was a pleasure to read. The only thing not dysfunctional is the soul of the teenage heroine: she lives in chaos and lawlessness; she has a handicap that she constantly needs to compensate for. Despite all that she becomes the leader and savior of a band of people.
I couldn't put the book down. When I finished reading it, I felt inspired. Next to this book, The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies and Brave New World pale by comparison. I wish I had read The Parable of the Sower when I was a teenager -- even at 40, I got a lot out of it.

Humanity is facinated with the concept of the world coming to an end. Almost every world religion has their end times tail, and this book works on the premise that you will be interested in Mrs. Butler's version of it. It doesn't dissappoint, esp. if you are a fan of the genra. However, I found myself more interested in the road trip of sorts, than I was with the concept of Earthseed. While Earthseed was interesting, and I found it had many good points, I occasionally wished the book would have a little less to do with the religion. However, I was not distracted by it, and to most people, after reading their reviews, enjoy those parts, so maybe I am just and odd person. Other good books if you liked this would be: Into the Forest. That was also a good book, and I am sure you would enjoy it as well.

Dismal, violent view of the near future, in which shortages have become so acute as to destroy the social fabric. The book is in the form of a diary of a teenage girl, whose determination, courage, and optimism put her into the role of a survivalist, and ultimately a religious leader.
To criticize the book for a lack of realism misses the point. It is science fiction, and where it has a ring of truth it makes you look at reality differently. Butler is writing fiction, and does not promise that she thinks everything will ever be as she describes it in this mesmerizing book.
Personally, I am not actually a fan of science fiction, but this book hooked me. Couldn't put it down.

Octavia Butler's writing style is not grandiose or particularly outstanding; as a matter of fact, she can lull a reader into thinking they are reading a very simple story. Then, before you know it, you're wrapped in a tale with the multiple dimensions of meaning that mark true genius.
PARABLE OF THE SOWER is too often read as a simple dystopian magnifying glass on the potential hell our society may become. Earthseed can be mistaken for a panacea. But Butler is deeper than that. This is not only a tale of the stark trajectory we may very well be headed for if we continue our disdain for the environment and each other, it's a story of how cults of personality can develop around a common misery.
This is a difficult book. Her images paint horrific nightmares of a society disintregating to hideous barbarism. But she sheds vital insight on what conclusions may arise from some of our current premises, and she does it brilliantly. This book could change lives, if allowed to.
But don't read it without reading the sequel, PARABLE OF THE TALENTS, which is brilliant as well. It rounds out the vision with hope. And hope married with action is exactly what we need.

One of the best-written series I've ever read. Amazing how prescient she was writing this in the early 1990's. It reads like it could be a commentary on contemporary times.

One of the most gripping books I've ever read. I had trouble sleeping until I finished it.

I read enough books that few of them leave a mark on me anymore. This series certainly has.

I almost feel another review is not needed. Everything that has been said sums it up.
Parable Of the Sower is one of the finest books I have ever read. Octavia's slight weakness is characters. They seem at times a bit flat and disingenuous. Her great strength is the examination of society and the brilliant way she integrates a fictional world parallel to our own decaying one. I cried, shook in my seat, and shivered at some of the images and ideas pouring forth. She's nothing short of brilliant.
I don't consider this a science fiction book per say but a great work of fiction. It spans all lines of class and race. Everyone should read this and come away examining themselves and their world in a very different light.

In this book, Octavia Butler proves that a dystopian America doesn't need imaginary technologies, aliens or warps in space-time. She definitely paints a portrait of a more "realistic" world in the not-so-distant future.

The plot makes you question the concept "survival of the fittest". Who is equipped to survive? In this story, the most unlikely characters survive an environment plagued with violence and deprivation. I devoured each chapter with the anticipation of each character's fate. I soon learned that those who are prepared, rational and cautious are the ones mostly likely to stay alive.

The more I read, the more I realized how frighteningly possible it is for a nation to experience this book's level of despair..especially one that has been failed by its religion and government. This book connects us with the past, future and present. It had me asking myself, "have we really made progress, or is humanity slipping backwards?" Octavia Butler's writing is distinctive and passionate.. there is never a dull moment from the time you turn the first page. This is a must read for those willing to embrace a melting pot of Feminist literature and Sci-fi.

I didn't give this book 4+ stars because it was so brutal to read. It felt much more real and possible than any of the dystopian books I have read and it was hard to get though at times. However, I thought it was really good and I still can't believe this was all written before I was born and that I'd never heard of Butler before. I will continue with the series after I read some more fluffy books.

What's interesting about Butler's writing is that it remains excitingly contemporary and quasi-surreal. There are elements that make you wonder if her stories press the mind to contemplate a new world.
The story of Lauren Olamina seems to give credence to the religious adage that "a child shall lead them." Its her vision that eventually engulfs others into searching for a "future destiny," to a better land.
The fact that the setting is on soon to be "modern-day" earth, one inadvertently contemplates how far our so-called civilization is from manifesting such "life-style."

I have followed and loved Octavia Butler from short stories to novels for years. But this is one of her best! The characters are so real. I got scared. It could happen. It haunted me for weeks, and I reread it many times. Being a family physician,I enjoyed that one of the good guys was a family doctor. I have envisioned what I would do in such a dystopic society and I am glad I would still have a place. I am so suprised and pleased she is continuing but am fearful of opening the sequel. No one can make aliens and alien society (which LA is to me) more believable than Ms. Butler. May she have a long writing life. I would like to thank her for all the pleasure she has given me. I paid a great deal for a copy of Survivor when I found it was no longer in print and I am glad she is being reissued. Read everything she writes - including the Bloodchild stories

The book is a really good read. Sometimes I find it hard for myself to read a science fiction book. Octavia talks about the future, in 2024. Lauren is the main character/narrator and starts off as her fifteenth birthday. Things seemed to be very expensive and scarce, and work is hard to find. Her neighborhood has limited protection from homeless people, thieves, and vandals. Lauren has hyperempathy, which she can feel pain and other sensations from others. She develops a philosophical and religious system in the remnants of the gated community she lived in while living in Los Angeles. When the community security gets compromised, her home becomes ruins and her family gets killed. She finds some survivors and they all travel north where they begin a new community.

This is a fascinating and stimulating read. Butler gives us a dystopia with heart, faith, hope, love and all in the midst of a picture of the absolute worst in human nature when turned desperate. It gives a startling glimpse of what religion looks like when placed up against suffering and injustices that seem to have no exit strategy or end in sight.

This one is also theologically packed. The characters are rich and deep. Fantastic book. It is almost like reading McCarthy's The Road if it had depth of character and purpose.

WHEN THIS BOOK WAS FIRST REFERRED TO ME, I ACTUALLY WAS RELUCTANT TO TRY. THE BOOK WAS VERY GOOD, AND VERY PERSPECTIVE. LAUREN'S VIEWS OF RELIGION ARE SIMILAR TO MINE, AND CONNECTED WITH ME ON A SPIRITUAL LEVEL. I WAS READING THIS BOOK, AND FELT THAT I WAS NOT ONLY READING A NOVEL, BUT A POETRY BOOK, AND A BIBLE. THIS WONDERFULLY CRAFTED TABLE IS DARK AND EYE-OPENING. BUTLER'S VIEW ON FUTURE L.A., OR ON A BROADER VIEW, BIG CITY, U.S.A., SEEMS TO REALLY HIT HOME, BUT ONLY TIME WILL TELL. THE EXAMINING OF CHILDREN GROWING UP SO FAST, AND MAGNIFYING THE ILLS OF SOCIETY THROUGH LAUREN'S SICKNESS REALLY DID IT FOR ME. I AM EAGER TO PURCHASE MORE OF MS. BUTLER'S NOVELS.

This text, written in 1993, is an interesting depiction of the future of the United States--California in particular--between 2025-2028. The world Butler paints is one of environmental, social, economic, and poltical chaos. A lot of what happens seems very probable--and scary. The book is presented as the protagonist's, Lauren Oya Olamina, journal. This is an interesting way to present the story but because the narrator, Olamina, is so young the text is not written in the complex postmodern way of many of Butler's contemporaries. This makes for a relatively easy read but nevertheless engaging and thought provoking. The author has a way of realing drawing the reader into the novel and experiencing this reality.

However, I must say, that some of the events that took place I found to be forced just so the text could move along. This didn't happen a lot, but a couple of times. For example, the random finding of thousands of dollars after an earthquake by one of her companions. I felt that it was too unrealistic in such a destroyed, poverty stricten,greedy, and chaotic future. It's suggested that the earthquake is somehow responsible for it but it's not explained and leaves the reader thinking, "please."

My other complaint is that Butler's reclusive lifestyle and age difference from the characters were too apparent. There was no sense, in regard to language, of anyone's age, economic background, or ethnicity. Though these would be based on generalizations I think it would have been realistic in a future of poverty where few people have even attended grammar school.

That being said, it is a wonderful book, particularly for teenagers, that I would recommend in a heartbeat. Too many books with teenage protagonists present the teenagers as dumber than they are. Olamina is a confident, intelligent, and determined teen who thinks on her own--a welcoming change from the standard bildungsroman.

I bought this novel for a class on utopian and dystopian literature. I ended up doing my final research paper on Parable of the Sower. Butler's critique of our current world is unique, as her character pursues the world through the eyes of a young, black woman. Very few utopias or dystopias provide a framework to view the world with the way Parable does.

Parable of the Sower is a vivid, often harrowing, story of survival, loss and companionship, set in a United States in the near future, where the environment and society have degraded to the point of breakdown. An account of a young woman's journey away from the dangerous neighbourhood of her childhood, and of the perils and the people encountered in the search for a safe haven, this novel is about the triumph and resilience of the human spirit. Although I felt it would have been just as good without its religious element, reading this story was ultimately an uplifting experience.

When I first read this amazingly gripping tale about Lauren Oya Olamina I was still a teenager, struggling with questions about religion and how dreadful the future was going to be (hey, that's what kids do these days). The effect this book had on me then, and again now that I've just reread it for the 4th time, is indiscribable..... It gave me a sense of hope, of beauty....but most importantly Lauren Olamina's words rang true to me. Aside from this brilliant fusion between religion, science fiction and this dreadful not-too-impossible future, Butler has yet again amazed me by her brilliant writing style, her wonderful descriptions and beautifully rounded characters. A must read, I've recommended it (and gave it as birthday presents) to most of my friends. Not only a terrific read, but it may affect you in a way you hadn't thought possible.

Parable of the Sower may be among the darkest, most disturbing view of post apocalyptic America that I have read in a long time, partly for the countless horrors, death, heartache and the non stop struggle to survive for those left alive. There are almost no redeeming virtues left in society in this vision of a post apocalyptic nightmare, where the rag tag band of survivors who comprise the story have to sink to unthinkable depths themselves just to be alive to see another sunrise. In this supremely bleak future, the have nots murder the haves for their belongings, nowhere is safe, the cops are little more than thieves and murderers themselves, drug induced pyromaniacs burn down anything and everything, corpses are picked over for anything valuable, debt slavery is the new fad and through this true nightmare travels Loren Olamina and her group of desperate and hopeless followers.

Octavia Butler has also added some extra ingredients, perhaps mystical and perhaps religious in nature, that give the book and the story a bit of something new. For starters, Loren is an empath, personally feeling the suffering or joy of those around her as if it were happening to her. Also, Loren has a unique take on the world, crafting her own "religion", to put it one way, that equates God with the force of change in nature, an odd philosophy that even now is slightly confusing to me, but still works within the story. It works primarily because her philosophy shifts the role of God from someone you pray to in order to get help from your suffering and places that responsibility on you yourself. You want to make it? Get your rear in gear and do what you have to do. Whatever that is. The nature of God is the nature of Change in the world, and that is something you can actively control and shape. Change your future, shape your future, take hold of the changes in the world and be active and not passive. At least I think that's the gist of it, confusing as the argument seemed to me.

This book deserves to be on the reading list of all apocalyptic fans. It is truly chilling and the unspeakable things that happen throughout, chapter after chapter, will keep you glued to the page. On a deeper level, though, there is a glimmer of hope for the future of humanity within the belief system of the main character that should have you reaching for the sequel (Parable of the Talents) to see how things turn out. Buying into her view of the nature of God was not that important to me, although some may argue that point and downgrade the book for it. Regardless of that odd philosophical undercurrent, however, Loren and her small group of "followers" are worth rooting and praying for, and that carries the story through to the end and makes it compelling reading.

This book was a really entertaining read that kept me very interested in both the plot and the characters themselves the whole way through. The character development is the novel is superb, so much so that you actually care what happens to the characters, whether they're main protaganist or background antaganist or any combination of the two.

If Butler description of the what the world will be like in the near future is accurate, then we're all pretty much screwed, but until the world gets this way, this is a really good on many different levels.

A middling dystopia, probably worth 3 or 3.5 stars, but the 1st edition hardback I borrowed from the library has so many typos, misused words (boarders/borders), and an overwhelming number of punctuation errors (mostly dialogue marks; too many here, not enough there) that I had to knock off at least one star. The world building was strong, and most of the characters were well-realized, but the protagonist's invented religion ... was unclear, at best. Which is a bad thing, since it's so central to that character's life, choices, and motivations. I thought I understood until about 2/3 of the way through the book, another character's objection made it clear I hadn't grasped the Earthseed thing _at all_. A total failure of communication between the author and myself. So: 2 stars.

Updated after reading the sequel: I cannot recommend this book, as its sequel is little more than torture porn. Read these books only if you are a masochist, looking for pain and suffering. (Copied from my Goodreads review)

this book was written in the mid to late nineties, but the story line is surreal in that it reminds me of what happened in 2008 and what continues to happen with the global economic crisis. reading the parable of the talents now and am amazed by the writing style of this great author. she was so ahead of her time. RIP ms. Butler.

Reading this book makes you long for what was, as though you are with the characters in 2025. Every time the world looks bad right now, think of this book and you'll know just how much more dark and out of control it's capable of becoming.

The simple style of the writing is both beautiful and addictive, drawing you in until you're worn out by the end. A must read for those who like post fall of civilization stories.

This was an excellent book. Not only was the scenario peppered with realism, but Butler has a way of pulling her reader into the story with the characters. It is a wonderfully heart-wrenching tale of community and survival.

The story is set in an economically destitute America. As the reader, you will travel with a young woman as she struggles to survive, understand what has happened, accept the reality of her situation, and build a future for herself and those she comes to call friends.

A very thought-provoking book and entertaining read.

I disliked the categorization of the book on the jacket. The blurb says this is a road-trip story and a coming of age story.

To me it was much more of a story as a vehicle for philosophical ideas. Butler is clearly discussing human nature (exploitive vs. cooperative) and the continuum of societies from slave-based to free. Butler is also examining how religion and ideology shape our society and interact with human nature.

The characters are compelling enough. The story is good.

The story is written in the from of a diary or journal, so it's not as descriptive as modern writers often are expected to be. I read on book on writing that explained the difference between 19th Century novels and modern novels as being that in the 19th Century it was like the audience watching a stage with the actors delivering their lines off stage. Modern audiences usually expect to see the action for themselves.

Because "Sower" is told in journal format the narrator has to infer and give second-hand accounts of some of the action scenes.

Parable of the Sower is a troubling, dystopian vision of a speculative near future. It is a visceral read. While it is suffused with violence, one feels that the violence is somehow needed to fully paint a picture of lawless chaos, where might makes right, and the vulnerable are fair game. One can not help feel that the U.S. could be on the road to this dark place where only the wealthy have access to education or security, and where Right Wing populism and the politics of resentment lead us down the path of self, civic and environmental destruction. Uncomfortably believable.

The sequel, Parable of the Talents, does not read as smoothly as Parable of the Sower. The use of multiple voices is sometimes jarring. (I listened to the audio book, so perhaps it is not so jarring on the page.) Readings from the Earthseed Bible were not always compelling, or convincing. Still, Parable of the Talents is a continuation of the story, the warning really, of a dark possible future -- one where only the wealthy and the brutal survive and everyone else lives in a state of wretchedness and fear. The demagogue character, Jared, is a composite of the dastardly demagogues grabbing the reins of power today. Troublingly believable!

I felt that this was an interesting read. The author really had great insight, considering what is going on in our world today. I didn't quite grasp the whole significance of Earth Seed, but that's ok. Overall, I would recommend reading this book.

Descriptions of this novel do not prepare you for the freshness of Butler's writing, the appeal of her protagonist nor the urgency of her vision. I would advise you to do what I did and take a chance on Parable of the Sower.

The world lost a true talent with the passing of Octavia Butler - this book is a prime example of it.

In "Sower," the country is deteriorating and the poor have to suffer. There isn't any protection from the law - that corrupt institution, preying on the underclass while somewhat protecting the upper crust of society. Politics goes on, but no longer cares about the violence, crime, and dangers facing a newly orphaned teenagers and her destitute companions as they travel north through California trying to find someplace they can live in safety. Another powerful read.

This is the kind of book that will change your life and the way you think about the world. Butler is a true genius, and offers us a very useful and practical way of looking at spirituality in the process of telling a gripping story about a potential dystopian future.

I utterly enjoyed reading the novel. It is truly a treat. I never thought of myself as a science-fiction reader; however, Butler changed my beliefs. Lauren's journey in a not-so-distant world of destruction and cannibalism is fascinatig! I recommend Parable of the Sower to everyone from young adults, college students, and professional adults. Butler has definitely obtained a number a numbr one fan!

I actually read this book years ago, but haven't read it in a while, so I had forgotten most of what it was about. Butler is almost frightening in her prescient understanding of the future we might be facing. An excellent read.

This could very well be our future in the USA if narrow-minded politicians have their way and we allow them to take over. I am glad I read this book because it gives me useful information on survival in case the "right-wingers" get their way. I was an educator for 40 years and I've learned it is far easier to control and manipulate a poorly or uneducated population. One can see the writing on the wall if social conservatives and other non-thinkers get control. WAKE UP PEOPLE!

This was my first experience with this particular author, but not my last. found myself taken in completely. the book stirred emotions with in me like no other, to the point that I am looking forward to the other books in the series.

Parable of the Sower is a story about Lauren rising to the occasion and creating her own religion after her father went missing which everyone assumed he was dead. After conducting the funeral, later her stepmother and brothers she believed were dead after the gang violence, arson fires, and earthquakes. She went north with friends and later met other bystanders on the highways to branch off and start their own sectioned community.

I read this book probably in 1994. I still remember now how blown away I was by this book. It's one of the greates works I've ever read. The ideas in it are very unique, the character very believeable. There's a good measure of action and thought, and I could identify with the journey the main characters had to take. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

I have just finished Parable of the Sower. It was my first book by Butler, and may not be my last. The story caught my attention in the first fifty pages. I was hooked on the fate of a girl my age in a situation that could be my own. Now you must understand that the book is si-fi. It takes place in a world that is slowly being destroyed, like the torture of a war prisoner beaten to his knees, but in this world Butler deals with issues that every girl faces. This is a coming of age story. Like Catcher in the Rye the main character deals with loss, love, and a changing world outlook. Don't misunderstand this book will never be a classic it is not written in a way to speak to many people on many different levels, but it is a great quick read for women ages 12-35 or anyone who feels like they are still dealing with the pangs of adolecence. Butler is an excellent writer and I will continue to place her on my summer reading list.

The was the first Octavia Butler book I had ever read. Her story has great plot and character development. You feel for these people and wonder how could this ever happen to the world? You can see today's iamges in her book. Gated communities, criminals who have NO regard for life, and people attempting to survive anyway they can. A definite must read.

I read this book for a retreat that I'm attending this year. I'm not naturally a fan of supernatural and was unaware of Octavia Butler. After I finished reading this one, I had to run to my local bookstore for Parable of the Talents, I was so intrigued and wanted to know more about Lauren Olamina and the Earthseed movement. Now that I've read both, I am a big fan of Octavia Butler.

This is a brilliant prophesy of a future America that will not leave the reader resting comfortably. Having read this, I immediately went on read the sequel, Parable of the Talents, which is even more chilling. The genesis of this fiction is here, right now, and something I see nearly every day. The question after reading these books is not will our future look like this, but is this avoidable? There are powerful and astute observations in these - and truth which has haunted me for weeks.

This novel, and its sequel, have affected me more than nearly everything else I've read. Written almost 20 years ago, this near-future dystopia has gotten almost everything right, so far. It is completely plausible, and completely terrifying. Read it for a haunting vision of where we may be in fifteen years.

Enjoyed this tale of generations surviving (&some not) when government is about the 1%
And I now order everything by using the storeSmile & a portion of my payment now goes
to "Doctors Without Borders". - Sweet!

The premise of the plot is ingenious. However, the prose was a little boring at times and too narrative in style. However, it does qualify as a page-turner since it keeps you wanting to know what happens next.

Some authors claim to think up their stories by playing "what if." What if there were a drug that made people have orgasms by watching and starting fires AND the water supply in California dried up (this is the most realistic What If) AND all of California was like South Central Los Angeles.
If all that, then you have the scenario for this sad book. It's frightening as heck, that's for sure, but it's implausible.
It seems that Ms. Butler was possibly trying to inject some metaphysical philosophy into the book by having her protagonist, Lauren Olamina (her surname is Yoruban, so we're told), keep chanting the refrain "God is change." But as her father-figure lover, Bankole (it's Yoruban), tells her: those are only words.
I guess the idea was that in a frightful society, nobody could possibly remain a Christian, much less adhere to any other "traditional" religion.
Bankole asks at one point: "Would Jesus be Christ if he were here today?" Puleeez, don't let the Rapturists hear you talking like that!
This book will frighten, anger, and depress, and to that extent, it certainly creates emotion, if, that is, you can finish it. Don't try to read it in one sitting. Have another book with a little lighter and happier tenor on hand to alternate from time to time.
By the way, I live in South Central Los Angeles, and what Butler describes in this book is really not too far off from what we have in South Central, but without the pyromaniacs and the bad water situation, thank goodness for that. IF such a drug were invented, getting off sexually on fire-starting, then POSSIBLY Butler's scenario could become plausible.
Diximus.

Excellent character formation. Scary in a real life picture of a future we may experience and maybe a present some people are already experiencing, where war, destruction, pure self- interest and one against all for survival reign. Yet her ending renews hope, not in a fairy tale ending, but in the holism of life even with its vicissitudes.

I read this book for a class of mine. I think my religion professor is nuts for making me read this and write about it as a religion. Otherwise it is a good read. Parable offers a glimse of a twisted future. The religion itself offers beautiful prose, but i feel it needs to be more substantive. Anyway, I am not a science fiction fan but Octavia Butler has got talent and it shows in this book. I will surely be checking out her other stuff. Another note, I read this book over the weekend when my roomates were gone and I was alone. Do not do that, this book makes you get chills down your back every so often! Enjoy!

I have read many sad books and novels with depressing themes, but I have never read anything so terribly upsetting as this book. There is nothing positive or happy in the entire novel- NOTHING. The action described is so horrific, I actually had a nightmare about what I read. I hated this novel more than anything I've ever read. I can't think of one good thing about it and I'm typically a very fair person. I would never recommend it to anyone and I just wish I hadn't wasted my money on it!

This was an excellent book. Not only was the scenario peppered with realism, but Butler has a way of pulling her reader into the story with the characters. It is a wonderfully heart-wrenching tale of community and survival.

The story is set in an economically destitute America. As the reader, you will travel with a young woman as she struggles to survive, understand what has happened, accept the reality of her situation, and build a future for herself and those she comes to call friends.

A very thought-provoking book and entertaining read.

A wonderful experience when you have a true love for literature. Butler writes sci-fi that makes you wonder. The offer of hope will always keep us. A powerful read, however at times, depressing and sad.

I'm sorry it took me too long to discover this author.    A friend was reading the other "Parable......"  but I wanted to go back and read how  it started. I read "The Hunger Games"  and it's distopia  subject and found this to be every bit as entertaining  I can't hardly wait to read the second installation  It‘s sort of scary.  Are  we heading in that direction as a society?

This on one of those rare, extremely rare, books that are just perfectly written. If you are even reading this review then you must be interested so go ahead an get this book. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Not since Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land has a novel had such a intoxicating mixture of religion, future dystopia, and science fiction. Butler has an uncanny eye for taking our present troubles (even if the novel is a few years old) and extrapolating a realistically frightening future. The burgeoning religion philosophy of Earthseed by the protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is done skillfully and with spirtual power. I recommend the book - an excellent read!

I feel like this book accurately depicts the future state of America. The downfall of the government, the droughts in California. A really great read. I think Octavia Butler is my favorite writer so far.

I got this book because an author recommended it as something to read if you like science fiction and authors like Margaret Atwood. What a huge disappointment. The violence is so excessive that it's difficult to read. Dogs eating babies, corpses with their skin torn off, dangling limbs, rapes, 5-year-olds burned to death... The body count is so high that it's more irritating than enlightening. People die right an left, including family members, and there is no clear sense of loss or mourning. Other than the light poetics of Lauren's journal writing, the prose is very limited.

The protagonist supposedly shares (hyper empathy) the pain of others, but then runs through so many violent encounters where the author seems to conveniently forget this plot detail and just let her skate through. The world she creates is very difficult to envision. It's so chaotic, so full of anarchy, and human life has so little value that it's hard to take any of it seriously. I have to agree with another reviewer here, who said that the religious philosophy is underdeveloped and ultimately falls very flat. What Lauren says and what happens in terms of plot are very different. The take-away message: whoever has a gun wins.

I was also hopeful that race, class and gender would be closely examined, but I was disappointed again. Simply including a racially diverse cast of characters is not equivalent to fully elaborating on race relations in this future world.

Plot inconsistencies: It allegedly hasn't rained in 6 years or more, but the family has a variety of citrus trees and a large garden. Several times Lauren's hyper-empathy seems not to matter.

I have been a big fan of Octavia Butler ever since reading Wild Seed. She continues to include enriching narratives, creative ideas and philosophies, historical significance, deep character development, and a remarkable story to tell. What intrigued me about this book was not only Lauren's passionate language on life and spirituality but her encouraging positivity on self and collective resilience and growth. Great work, Ms. Butler.

"Parable of the Sower" is a great book for all the science fiction lovers out there. The plot, the characters, everything gets molded by Butler into a masterpiece. This book makes me want to read "Parable of the Talents", because I don't want the adventure to stop. Lauren Olamina is the best heroine for this epic story, because with her hyperempathy syndrome, she has to overcome more than anyone. Overall, one of the best books I've ever read

Parable of the Sower is a look in to the future. Octavia E. Butler imagines a world of rampant crime and endless homelessness. Lauren, the narrator, lives in a walled neighborhood in southern California. When she is forced to flee northward with a couple of local aquaintances, a real struggle for survival ensues. Along the way, she encounters new people. Some are good, most are not. Parable of the Sower is a true survival tale of the future and really makes you think.

Although I've heard good things about Octavia E. Butler, this book was the first of hers I read, and it wasn't worth it. The idea is OK, but not enough to carry the book without better writing. The writing conveys action, and some thought, but not much more. The plot starts off well, becomes slightly implausable (but still able to be carried of), and then abruptly ends. I found out a couple years later that a sequel came out, and thus explains the abrupt ending that basically dumps any buildup from the plot out the window, in order to set up a sequel. Without the plot dump, it would be a decent book. With it, it's not even worth reading.

Some writers have a talent for describing current reality in the guise of science fiction. Octavia Butler was one of the best at this. Her dystopia in this and the sequel Parable of the Talents is so close to our own reality that it is quite scary. It is also a quick read. Her work has always been good reading and this is no exception. Want to see the end product of rampant corporatism? Read the book. The way things are going in the US of A, we may well need a leader like the heroine Lauren Olamina Bankole but you can get some of Lauren's wisdom from reading Octavia's Parable books for yourself. You won't regret it. A few of her words below.

"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought

To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.

To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists that control the fool

To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen

To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies

To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery."

Octavia Butler's "Parable of a Sower" addresses our selfishness as a people to think homelessness and poverty is someone elses problem. Her lead character Olamina, finds strength in her faith the only thing that can not be stripped from her. I found the book compelling as well as frustrating to see a glimpse into our own possible future. A very unforgettable story.

This may be my all time favorite book. Seriously, I even got a tatto of an acorn after reading Parable of the Talents. I have a hardback copy already but desperately want a copy on my kindle so I can have saved highlights and notes. the store gods please read this!

Not a good book. Not science fiction. Setting a story in the present to near future does not make it science fiction. This story could take place anytime in the 20th or 21st centuries with no changes. Ridiculously and graphically violent for no apparent reason. After multiple descriptions of torture, child rape, children shot in their mothers arms and thrown into fires, dogs eating babies... really, what's the point?

The created world it not believable. The characters do not develop and neither does the Earthseed religion. You know exactly how the story will unfold to the end after reading the first fifty pages. I should have put it down and left it at that point.

Pros: This book was very realistic about how our decadent and misguided society could end - gradually and brutally. It helped to inform me about resources we have here in California that have gone unnoticed or unused for a long time. A few of the characters were extraordinarily drawn, and the hints of exciting new cultural trends slipped in among the everyday tales of survival and stark reality.

Cons: As stark as the world was, it did not have a lot to contrast with it. Like 1984, most of the world was bad or worse, and there was very little to offset it. Further, the story is told initially by a 14-year-old, and the narrative matures with its fictional writer. While this is a pretty cool device, it really makes the first 150 pages sound like an overblown prologue to the real story that is about as long. The characters in this prologue are the more potent ones, and those die without a rewarding climax or real culmination of their destinies save for one. That sort of senseless loss would be a great setup for a heroic saga, but it's far more bland than could be believed. The characters begin to stack up until many are difficult to distinguish as anything noteworthy. The whole thing ends with a whimper, with a group of desperate and ill-defined characters clinging to one another with an accepted fatalist outlook. Its hard to get into the main character, as she seems to reinvent herself, as someone coming of age does, too often to figure what is going on. There are also symbolic religious items that are glossed over quickly, and most readers would miss them for what they are, too subtle for a struggle of this magnitude.

Conclusion: It seems like such a great idea, and there are setups for intense conflict and some heroism or villainy to ensue. However, it is too humble and too realistic in its portrayal. All is confusion and chaos, and the nature of things is never revealed. While this is pure in concept, it makes for troublesome storytelling. This is not like other books, but it still does not charm the reader with its naked sincerity. In many ways, it resembles the book that it takes its name from. I think I should like to read something else by this author and see if her other experiments came out better.

I hate reading long reviews so I'll keep this one short & to the point. I found this book to be a rival to ANYTHING Stephen King. Why has the world been hiding this author?? I feel I must read all of her work ASAP!

I thought Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower was a decent science fiction novel and a poor philosophical one. It is a work of speculative fiction set in America in the year 2025. The novel is a first-person narrative from the perspective of a young woman, Lauren Olamina. In the beginning of the novel, Lauren lives in a middle-class, gated community just outside of Los Angeles. Civilization has drastically declined due to a combination of global warming and the loss of resources like clean, potable water and petroleum. No one except the very wealthy use gasoline powered automobiles, and food and water are hugely expensive commodities. Outside Olimina's enclave, the streets are filled with violence and chaos. Butler pointedly never quite spells out exactly how the world came to be this way, thus clearly implying that we are already moving in that direction - hence the genre categorization of speculative fiction. Butler uses the novel as a warning to the world. At the same time she's writing this speculative science fiction, however, she is designing a philosophy called Earthseed, which she expounds upon using her protagonist. In the story, Olamina has invented the religion Earthseed and it is the main focus of her life. She is determined to escape the enclave and spend her days refining and then teaching the canons of Earthseed, the most central of which is that "God is Change." In the back of the Grand Central Publishing edition of novel, Butler explains how she decided to make this the basis of the religion. "I put Earthseed together by asking myself questions and coming up with answers. For instance, I asked what was the most powerful force I could think of? What one thing could we not stop no matter how hard we tried? The answer I came up with after some thought was `change'" (335).

It's certainly not a unique tactic to use a dystopian view of our future to exemplify the parts of the true human spirit we're in danger of losing if we continue on in our greedy, selfish ways - think Brave New World. But honestly, the biggest downfall of the novel is the fact that it seems like the actual concept of Earthseed, with all of its philosophy should be the thing the reader walks away with. It seems like Butler probably wrote the novel around the religion, but it does not end up working out that way. Few reviewers had much to say about the passages in the beginning of each paragraph, which apparently come from what will be Earthseed's bible, and truthfully I felt the same way. The story was interesting and I can even see it being a good warning or lesson for Americans and our "gimme gimme" mentality when it comes to water and food and oil, but the "God is Change" and the "Take to the stars" concepts didn't stick with me. While I by no means hated the book, I was decidedly unimpressed with it. It is a cross between a Lifetime movie and George Orwell's 1984. I could have done without the former, so I leave you with the recommendation to just go for the latter.

I found this alternately depressing and empty, not connected enough with today's real world to be inspiring on an immediate level, yet not far-out enough to be inspiring on a far-out level.
There's a lot of adolescent-like musimg about the meaning of life, which might be paraphrased as "God is change, that's all I know, I can't explain it any further but I know it with a passionate certainty..." There's too much "I can't explain it but I'm really really sure."

This was a much quicker read than I thought it would be. Character development was sketchy and the heroine was just too brave. It was sort of a pre-apocolyptic scenario dealing with extreme climate change ---- we're almost over the edge but not quite.

I borrowed this from the library. This review is a heads-up to those awash in the blindly gushing 5-star reviews here.

This is an awful read. Sophomorically conceived (the heroine is the author--young, buff, sexy, perceptive, fearless, and without any hint of human moral weakness, unlike the other characters), it has no plot to speak of (it's a road trip, assuming that every road trip has a provocation to go on the road) delimited by terse, unrealistic dialogue in which each of the characters talks exactly like all the others. But that's not even close to the worst of it.

This is the worst-edited and most carelessly-written hardcover I've ever read in my 60 years. We're led to believe that certain characters are well-educated and intelligent, but the text contains one inexcusable grammatical error after another. For a while, I tried to believe that was an artistic ploy to express the earthiness and street-cred of the characters, but there was no consistency to back that up. Words are mis-spelled and misused in ways that might be excused as thoughtless, except that they often TOTALLY change the meaning of what is being written. Punctuation is dropped, inappropriately added, and misused so that it is unclear what the author is trying to tell us, and impossible to know which of the characters is speaking, or whether a phrase is dialogue or just a thought bubble. The publisher does not deserve to be in business.

Do you still think this miasma is "artistic?" I will tell you that it was VERY distracting (having to try to read the author's mind, decipher what she really was thinking and meant to say, then fit it into the story and resume reading) and would have garnered D grades for writing in any 7th-grade English class, even if the premise was creative.

Finally, the book arguably centers around the protagonist's creation of a new religion or philosophy of living. We are tempted by frequent hints of this in chapter headings ("Why is God? To shape the universe. All that you touch, You Change. God Is Change.") and pedantic snippets of dialogue, but the book ends abruptly with no development of the concept whatsoever. Again: we are lead to believe that a teenager comes of age, loses her family and her town, kills several attackers and buries a bunch of children, meets good downtrodden folk and the love of her life, all without garnering the slightest insight into what she represents beyond her most superficial observations. I could go on, but won't.

In order to be considered as being a quality dystopic novel it must contain the following items; a realistic view of future events, a rational reason for the world being thrust into a chaotic state, a believable central character that the reader can identify with, a clear path that leads from introduction to conclusion and if not containing a moralistic tone having one that echoes foreboding. This novel has none of those characteristics. Instead we are lead from chaos to chaos with a heavy thrust of cultism along the way. Yes, the author can write using complete sentence structures but that, alone, should not be only foundation for a person think they can become an author...

The narrative has no sense of pace. It just plods on from event to event, told in mechanical prose. We went here and this happened. Then we went there and that happened. No building of dramatic tension, little development of theme or character progression. A flat recording of events.

Odd that the novel posits a new religion but draws its title and its ending quote not from the new scriptures written by the protagonist but from the Bible, which the protagonist says she doesn't believe. The chapter headings are drawn from the protagonist's new scriptures, so why isn't the novel's end-note?

This is my first time reading Octavia E. Butler and it will most likely be the last; I was coerced to read this novel for one of my classes in college--unfortunately. The book falls flat and is more bland than anything else. The writing style is as follows: cause and effect, cause and effect, cause and effect. It is uninteresting and uninspiring; also, the main character, Lauren, her religion or silly "philosophy" is weak and has more of a floating effect than something that is concrete. All through the book she mumbles: "God is change", but Butler does not even attempt to go any further. I fail to realize what Lauren actually meant: oh, and the ending is horrible. Do not read this book: it's a slow read and boring.

In the 2020s, global warming has created an ecological disaster, and post-peak oil resource shortage threw most of the United States into Third World-like poverty. California is a very dangerous place to live in, far more so than even modern-day Brazilian favelas; in modern-day Rio de Janeiro, the homicide rate is 40 per 100,000, but through this novel, so many people are killed that I am surprised that the population of California still numbers in the millions. A teenage African American girl, the daughter of a college professor who is also a Baptist minister, grows up in a gated compound in the suburbs of L.A. Her brother becomes a drug dealer and is murdered, then her father is apparently kidnapped and murdered, then thieves and arsonists break into the compound, burn it and kill most of its residents. The main character, aged 18, escapes from the compound with two other people, a white man and a black woman. They trek north in search of a place to get a job and settle; the main character invents a religion, a pastiche of Buddhism and Taoism, and preaches it to her trekmates. They are joined by a mixed-race couple with a baby, two prostitutes who escaped from a bordello and killed the pimp, who was their father, and a 57-year-old black man, who becomes the main character's lover. The man rescues a 3-year-old boy whose mother was murdered by gangsters; the boy is adopted by one of the prostitutes; they are joined by a woman who escaped from a job in slavery-like conditions with her small daughter. Through the trek, they confront robbers, who murder one of the prostitutes, and kill a few of them. At last they come to the 57-year-old man's sister's farm, only to discover that she and her children have been murdered months ago. The group tells the police, buries the bones, and settles there. There is a sequel about the group's life on the farm, but I don't feel like reading it. I only read this novel because it was assigned to my stepson by his 11th-grade English teacher, an African American woman who belongs to a writers' circle that celebrates racial authenticity.

Just awful. Maybe I don't get it or something, but the "religion" is just laughable. "The only thing constant is change." That's a religion? What? There's nothing else to it it makes no sense. That's why all these people are following her?

One star for some ok dystopian future ideas. Not worth it though. Waste of time.

Having just finished this book, I am still wondering why I stuck with it to the end. The main reason was, I think, that I wanted to see if the main character, Lauren, would finally realize that her father, who was right about so many things, was also right about his faith. The story is primarily about the struggles of dealing with the awful world that has come to exist in the mid 2020's. Survival depends mostly on looking out for oneself and being ready to kill anything or any one who is a threat. So there is a lot of death and destruction.

Meanwhile, woven in, are little tidbits describing Lauren's new view of God (or, perhaps more properly, her invention of her own vague god). The story contains very little about her father's faith, but it appears that he adheres to the Gospel of Christ, the one true source for what is needed to survive the times in which they live. Lauren abandons the Gospel and imagines that God (or her god) is change and/or that change is God. There is no real explanation of how this new religion works or how it is helpful.

Although Lauren is between the ages of 14 and 18, this book is not appropriate for youthful readers. The violence, casual sex, and odd religious tidbits are not edifying. Even if it doesn't give them nightmares or put strange notions in their minds, it is just a waste of time. With thousands of good books, including many about facing and overcoming difficult challenges, pick one of the others.