Octavia E. Butler: Parable of the Sower (1995, Women's Press)
299 pages
English language
Published Aug. 8, 1995 by Women's Press.
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean …
In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.
Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.
When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.
Adapting & building community during social collapse. Prophetic for its time, remains unsettling. God as Change could be a genuinely useful belief system. Only half a book, with ending sudden & too convenient (there is a sequel).
Reading time 5 days, 62 pages/day
Which feels like a cheesy thing to say in a review about dystopian fiction, but I genuinely didn't realize this book was published in the year 1993 until I read Butler's biography at the back and realized she passed away in 2006. It feels... pertinent
Others have said this is a pretty grim novel. I agree. It hurt to read, quite often. I feel like I've mostly moved out of my dystopian fiction era but this one hooked me a lot harder than most I've read. I haven't finished a book this quickly in quite a while.
I think Parable of the Sower has a lot to say about eco-fatalism, as well as the many "fatalisms" of neoliberalism in general, which it delivers on very well. I also felt like it would have a lot to say about the value of religion, divorced from the way people in my life …
Which feels like a cheesy thing to say in a review about dystopian fiction, but I genuinely didn't realize this book was published in the year 1993 until I read Butler's biography at the back and realized she passed away in 2006. It feels... pertinent
Others have said this is a pretty grim novel. I agree. It hurt to read, quite often. I feel like I've mostly moved out of my dystopian fiction era but this one hooked me a lot harder than most I've read. I haven't finished a book this quickly in quite a while.
I think Parable of the Sower has a lot to say about eco-fatalism, as well as the many "fatalisms" of neoliberalism in general, which it delivers on very well. I also felt like it would have a lot to say about the value of religion, divorced from the way people in my life and I suspect many others in the west tend to equate religion with Christianity. It delivered on the former part, but not so much the latter in my opinion. Still very compelling, and very well written nonetheless.
maybe I was expecting too much because I'd heard about it in adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown's podcast and thought this was going to be extremely mind-blowing. I kept expecting the story to go somewhere, to develop in some direction but it just kept being a bleak, lost earth and people trying to just survive on it. seemed to me like the plot just fizzled out.
Cuando estaba más joven la ficción y la ciencia ficción eran espacios que me hacían sentido para conectar con la imaginación y con la posibilidad de pensar y sentir la vida fuera de límites que percibía en mis presentes.
Como estos ámbitos de la literatura no resonaban tanto en algunas de mis redes cercanas, me alejé un poquito de éstos por algunos años y me metí a libros más teóricos y "serios". Pero desde que empecé a leer a Octavia Butler, por recomendación de una amiga, volví a interesarme en textos de (ciencia) ficción.
Octavia reflexionó sobre la ausencia/invisibilización de mujeres negras en un contexto donde predominaba una ciencia ficción de escritores hombres y blancos. También propuso escenarios que abordaran los pasados-presentes-futuros y que estimularan la imaginación y la creatividad como posibilidades ante las crisis que seguimos viviendo.
En Parable of the sower, Octavia tejió temas como: sensibilidad hacia otrxs …
Cuando estaba más joven la ficción y la ciencia ficción eran espacios que me hacían sentido para conectar con la imaginación y con la posibilidad de pensar y sentir la vida fuera de límites que percibía en mis presentes.
Como estos ámbitos de la literatura no resonaban tanto en algunas de mis redes cercanas, me alejé un poquito de éstos por algunos años y me metí a libros más teóricos y "serios". Pero desde que empecé a leer a Octavia Butler, por recomendación de una amiga, volví a interesarme en textos de (ciencia) ficción.
Octavia reflexionó sobre la ausencia/invisibilización de mujeres negras en un contexto donde predominaba una ciencia ficción de escritores hombres y blancos. También propuso escenarios que abordaran los pasados-presentes-futuros y que estimularan la imaginación y la creatividad como posibilidades ante las crisis que seguimos viviendo.
En Parable of the sower, Octavia tejió temas como: sensibilidad hacia otrxs seres; críticas al capitalismo, a las desigualdades socio-económicas, a la explotación y hacia la crisis climática; formas de construir relaciones y comunidades basadas en el reconocimiento mutuo; cercanías y comprensiones diversas con la tierra y la sostenibilidad de la vida (entre muchas otras cosillas).
Algo que me parece muy curioso, es la manera en que Octavia toma aspectos del libro, que como lectora me estuvieron haciendo cierto ruido de forma muy sutil, y los hace evidentes en la secuela (Parable of the talents). Creo que no es sencillo plantear todo un imaginario y luego construir una narrativa que lo replantee o que muestre sus matices, al menos de forma convincente. Por eso, aunque Parable of the sower es un libro que aprecié haber leído, verlo de la mano con Parable of the talents fue aún más apreciable para mí.
Mostly bleak and brutal, but very good. I didn't think I was in the mood for anything dystopian, but I basically couldn't put it down once I started it. Really interesting to watch Lauren Olamina discover/develop her worldview and then share it with others and advocate for it as the book progresses.
Until I read this book, I always thought the sci-fi genre was not for me because I find stories about faraway space aliens difficult to chew. This book is so solidly grounded in the black female experience that it feels almost surreal, a wholesome experience. I thank Butler for introducing me to Afrofuturism.
The beginning of this book is dark and very distopian and I had to set it aside for awhile. Picked it back up and the story picked up speed and I finished it the same day. I can see why this is so highly recommended. I'll definitely be reading more from Octavia Butler after finishing this one.
This was the first of what will certainly be many books by Octavia E. Butler in my TBR list. My copy (2019 reissue with great foreword by NK Jemisin) was a gift from @leahlove@mastodon.world and I thank her for it!
Like Jemisin, I'm sure this book will mean different things to me each time I read it, but two things fascinated me on this read. First, the view of a belief system at its origin reminds us that before such beliefs are collective or cultural, they are individual. Ultimately, their essence and purpose is to help each of us make sense of the world, so in truth, there are as many religions or belief systems as there are people (and probably more, in truth).
Second, I love that Butler endowed the protagonist with a quality that could be a superpower or could be a disability. Through Lauren, Butler explores with …
This was the first of what will certainly be many books by Octavia E. Butler in my TBR list. My copy (2019 reissue with great foreword by NK Jemisin) was a gift from @leahlove@mastodon.world and I thank her for it!
Like Jemisin, I'm sure this book will mean different things to me each time I read it, but two things fascinated me on this read. First, the view of a belief system at its origin reminds us that before such beliefs are collective or cultural, they are individual. Ultimately, their essence and purpose is to help each of us make sense of the world, so in truth, there are as many religions or belief systems as there are people (and probably more, in truth).
Second, I love that Butler endowed the protagonist with a quality that could be a superpower or could be a disability. Through Lauren, Butler explores with us how it can be both -- which can lead us to reflect on other qualities (in ourselves and others) that we assume to be one or the other.
Eerily accurate, hopeful, and written in a cool journal style. Highly recommend.
We might not have quite reached this level of dystopia but having nearly reached 2024 nothing seems too farfetched. Butler shows that she needs nothing supernatural to power a story. This one will stick with me should I manage to live through the time period it is set in.
Me deja un poco frío la idea de religión como sustituto del resto de las instituciones sociales en un tiempo apocalíptico, y no acabo de ver qué papel juega la hiperempatía en todo esto, si es mero atrezzo o un elemento verdaderamene importante. Lo veremos en el volumen dos.
Desde luego es un terreno de juego completamente diferente del de Xenogénesis.
On a second read, I feel a lot differently than I did the first time around. I can't separate uncomfortable feelings of reading about a teenager basically starting a cult and attracting people who are at their absolute most vulnerable to join. It doesn't sit well with me to read about Lauren's glee to "raise babies in Earthseed." And the intense, intense, dehumanization and otherizing of people using drugs, making them into physically unrecognizable monsters, is something I can't get past. If Lauren has hyper-empathy, and is more sensitive to people in need of help, then why does the buck stop with people using drugs?
Imagine a dystopian novel about fleeing the collapse of society and trying to build a new community written from the viewpoint of a brilliant womanist. Talk about a book that is highly relevant for today1
Comparing the art to the Kindred adaption, obviously the artist is the same, but I didn't find it quiet so overwhelming visually. My negative side wonders if this has to do with reading it frame by frame digitally, rather then parsing it page by page physically, but I don't know. My gut says it is a bit more parred down and more pleasing to my eye. Which is obviously super important - not. As the story does revolve around Lauren's religious speculation there is a lot of quotes and excerpts included alongside the art. As always, re-reads and digital comics are both a bit hard for me, but that is a me problem not a book problem. It's a super timely read not only for the actual timeline of the book being in the 2020s but also just because of how prescient it feels. This does fall into my appreciated …
Comparing the art to the Kindred adaption, obviously the artist is the same, but I didn't find it quiet so overwhelming visually. My negative side wonders if this has to do with reading it frame by frame digitally, rather then parsing it page by page physically, but I don't know. My gut says it is a bit more parred down and more pleasing to my eye. Which is obviously super important - not. As the story does revolve around Lauren's religious speculation there is a lot of quotes and excerpts included alongside the art. As always, re-reads and digital comics are both a bit hard for me, but that is a me problem not a book problem. It's a super timely read not only for the actual timeline of the book being in the 2020s but also just because of how prescient it feels. This does fall into my appreciated sub genre of the "hippies" kind of winning, or at least that might does not make right at the end of the world. I feel like the past few months of mutual aid and caremongering has perhaps shown us that humanity can be even more compassionate, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see...?
Gender and race are both pretty central to Lauren's mission with Earthseed. She talks several times about needing to create a diverse community of people. That said, things end up feeling pretty heterosexual.
My biggest complaint is the extreme drug stigmatisation that goes on. I mean, it's not unique to her, but it is unfortunate. Maternal drug use is also the reason why Lauren is disabled and that certainly brings up a lot of bad connotations.
Class is less of a monolith, and all the characters do rough it, but it does feel like there is judgement there. Kind of hard to untangle from the general fear of the outsider that is part of the sub-genre.
A great story about an African American girl who grows up in a small sub community in Pasadena in an American that has fallen apart. A poignant reminder of how thin the veneer of civilization is. Powerful and prophetic for a book written in the early 1990s.
