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Parable of the Sower
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Parable of the Sower
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Parable of the Sower
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Parable of the Sower

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this ebook

A New York Times Notable Book: In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future.

“A stunner.” —Flea, musician and actor, TheWall Street Journal
 
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.
 
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author’s estate.

Editor's Note

ZORA Canon…

A celebrated dystopian classic by a sci-fi legend. Set in the year 2024 (um, way too close for comfort), climate change has devastated Earth. As the world falls apart around her, a teenager born with hyperempathy must use her power to protect the people she loves. Both “Parable of the Sower” and its sequel are included in the ZORA Canon, a list of 100 of the greatest books written by African American women.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 24, 2012
ISBN9781453263617
Author

Octavia E. Butler

Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) was a renowned African American author of several award-winning novels, including Parable of the Sower, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year in 1993, and Parable of the Talents, winner of the Nebula Award for the best science fiction novel in 1995. She received a MacArthur Genius Grant and PEN West Lifetime Achievement Award for her body of work and was acclaimed for her lean prose, strong protagonists, and social observations in stories that range from the distant past to the far future.

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Rating: 4.359649122807017 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed the dystopian/post-apocalyptic elements, which felt plausible enought to satisfy me. It's also great as a coming-of-age story through difficult times. The protagonist, Lauren, is a strong and interesting character.
    My one caveat is that I found the attempts at creating a new belief system (Earthseed) dull and unconvincing, and wasn't sure how seriously I was meant to take this. This edition has a Q&A with the author included though, and the answer seems to be: quite seriously.
    It's easy enough to glide over those bits if you're not into them, and the story rips along pretty well after the first 100 pages.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Revisiting an old favorite via audio. This is a tale of a near-future dystopia which seemed much less likely when it came out than it does now. It's also an exploration of religion, and how an ordinary young girl can become the head of a new religion called Earthseed. Parts of this seem a bit fuzzy to me now, which is why I'm knocking it down one star from my original review. It's still an edge-of-your-seat ride, with an engrossing plot and interesting characters. Butler was a good writer who died way too young. I wish there were more of her books to look forward to. Here's my favorite verse from Olamina's Earthseed- it's one that resonates with me, so much so that I have it by heart:

    "All that you touch
    You Change.

    All that you Change
    Changes you.

    The only lasting truth
    is Change.

    God
    is Change."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is on my desert island list. Although it is not cheerful it is full of hope and truth and beauty. Despite the 1993 publication date, it looks disturbingly prescient today, 15 years later. Let's hope things things do indeed change, and not in the way Butler describes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I seldom read science fiction, but this book was excellent. Octavia Butler's recent, accidental death was tragic. We have lost an inspirational and thought-provoking writer who also created completely believable alternate worlds and who told a great story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I've read this at least 5 times. How does a religion start? Is a religion created, made up? Does it grow on it's own?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    According to the new religion of Earthseed, God is change, and the only thing that stays the same is change. In the post-apocalyptic world in which Lauren lives, acceptance of change is a valuable virtue and coping method. After her community is destroyed and her family is gone, she travels up north with a group of disciples, in a sense, to find refuge away from all of the destruction. In addition to the standard challenges, Lauren also has hyperempathy - she can feel the pleasure and pain of others, and there is plenty of pain to go around. Parable of the Sower is a very grim, but also very thoughtful, piece of dystopian literature, and a good read
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A beautifully written, compelling, dystopian tale. I'm looking forward to reading the sequel.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was probably one of the best books that I have read this year so far. I enjoyed the main character, Lauren Olamina, and her understanding of the world around her. I've been describing it as a dystopian novel, rather than post-Apocalyptic book. There are still humans living in the United States, but living in communities that are under siege. Safety is nearly a commodity. Clean water and guns are hard to come by, and you have to keep watch all of the time. She joins up with people along the way, as she's traveling northwards.The other aspect of this novel that was intensely compelling for me was Earthseed, the new "religion," or ideas of faith that Lauren discovers within herself. She wants to create a colony of Earthseed followers, to help bring the world some sense of balance. The ways that she describes Earthseed, and the snippets of "doctrine," or closest that there is in the book, are compelling, saying that God is change, and that change is inevitable, but also changeable and malleable.Butler deals with issues of sexuality, race, and class in compelling and very subtle, but powerful ways. There is no two ways around the topics, as they are part of daily life for Lauren. But, the way she does them is so beautiful that all I could think is "I wish I could write that way."The book gave me a lot to think about, was well written, and compelling.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Really good book. Not so much a christian book as a religous book (developing religion?). Wonderful story and realistic characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm glad I finally read [Parable of the Sower]. It was published in 1993, but it's so timely now: It's set it a world of runaway global warming, a wrecked economy, eroding labor laws, police corruption, and hostility towards migrants. The protagonist develops her own worldview while learning how to build and maintain a community when everything's falling apart. I cared about the characters and hope everything works out for them. I look forward to seeing what happens next in [Parable of the Talents].
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    On second reading, I think Butler's riff on post-apocalyptic travails hit me harder than the first time. After seeing the devastation in New Orleans on television and talking to friends and others whose relatives made it out of the city, the concepts of civilisation falling apart and humanity's worst nature coming to the forefront seem a lot closer and more likely... events in general since I first read the book have certainly not reached anywhere close to what Butler predicts in this novel - (which is the United States falling into total economic collapse, with violent drug addicts and criminals preying on anyone weaker than themselves, citizens forming walled communities which are only temporary havens from the inevitable tide of violence, debt slavery growing, as rich corporations and exploiters from richer countries come in to use Americans as a disposable third-world workforce....) - but it seems more and more every day that this is a nation in decline.

    Most post-apocalyptic tales feature some gigantic catastrophe - a nuclear attack or an asteroid hitting the earth, etc... but in Parable..., although global warming has rendered the south of the US a desert, and water is a precious commodity, there has been no single, sudden catastrophe - and other parts of the world, and even the USA's rich - are still doing fine... companies are coming out with new advances in entertainment technology, the government is even completing missions to Mars... it's been a gradual decline, with the masses left to fend for themselves if they can... and this makes it that much more terrifying a vision....

    However, against the horrific backdrop of a cautionary tale, Butler's parable, which refers to the Biblical parable, but can also work as a parable for today, is a tale that is ultimately hopeful, as her heroine, Lauren Olamina, struggles to find a life for herself, along the way gathering to herself a group of decent people and persisting in trying to start her own religion/spiritual path called 'Earthseed,' still believing that humanity may have a great destiny among the stars.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In a disturbingly plausible near future where government services have faltered and people are basically left to fend for themselves, Lauren, a teenage girl, has a realistic view of her future and is preparing for the worst. While she's honing her survival skills, she also creates a new religion which she calls Earthseed. The main tenet of her religion is that God is change.From what others have told me, this book should not be sold as a stand-alone - apparently all of the complaints I have about the first book are resolved in the second.So having said that, here are my complaints.My biggest problem is that Lauren's religion is completely implausible. Lauren does not have the charisma or the power of a prophet. She comes across as just a girl who thought of some stuff and wrote it down. It does not seem believable that so many people would follow her leadership and start to believe in her religion.Lauren's empathy also bothered me, but mostly because it is mis-named. When she called it "empathy," I assumed it was an emotional connection with the people around her. Instead, it is entirely physical, and only works with people she can see. So if she sees someone with a wound, she feels their pain. This is treated rather inconsistently throughout the book, like Butler didn't really think through all the implications of it.Unfortunately, this book didn't leave me wanting more, so I don't have any plans to read the second book, even though that might change my opinion.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have read many dystopic post-apocalyptic novels, some of which are classics. Some of those, written before Parable of the Sower, include I Am Legend, A Canticle for Liebowitz, The Stand, and The Postman. I did not find anything that made this book stand out from all the rest of those that I have read. The protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is appealing except for her need for religion. And not the religion of her parents (her father was a Baptist minister), but a new religion that is described this way by a character, Bankhole, who has become her closest friend:"It sounds like some combination of Buddhism, existentialism, Sufism, and I don't know what else, he said." (p 261)By this point in the story Lauren has escaped from her besieged home and, joining with a small like-minded group, been on a journey from southern California to some point north of Sacramento. Along the way, and even before, she has been developing a new religion called Earthseed that provides the belief system that she appears to require to support her quest for peace and freedom. She describes the religion this way:"The essentials are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families, and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny." (p 261)She goes on to make the claim that Earthseed is what "kept her going." I will leave it to other readers to find out if that will be the case.The bulk of the story is about avoiding the terrors of gangs of marauders that seem to have taken over most of California. It is told in the form of a journal, the journal of Lauren Olamina. Civil society has reverted to relative anarchy due to resource scarcity and poverty. Notably there is no plague, no invasion, no war. Things get a little bit worse each day, people get a little more desperate, the first few breakdowns are fixed, and then it becomes harder and harder to fix everything. Missing is an explanation why this is happening and how widespread it may be. There is also an inexplicable lack of real change as the novel proceeds toward its end. Lauren is her same empathetic self (she has a special gift for extreme empathy) and she is surrounded by a group of peaceful like-minded people. Her religion has not seemed to make a difference and wile the group is relatively safe for the moment, one is not sure how long that moment will last.This is not a typical dystopia. It is the first-person journals of a teenager and then a woman who saw that things were getting worse, prepared herself as best she could, and went on a journey in order to survive. The book is successful, if it is that, in only a limited way for this one group of survivors. The rest of the world may or may not continue to implode.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The novel begins in a small walled compound of about 12 houses in Robledo, a suburb of Los Angeles, in July 2024. The compound is walled because the world outside has become desperate and dangerous. California suffers from a prolonged drought: there are few jobs to be had; any semblance of a social safety net has crumbled and gangs roam the streets; everyone has guns in their houses; towns have been taken over by companies and debt slavery has been legalized.Lauren Oya Olamina, 15 years old, the daughter of a professor/Baptist minister has learned the arts of survival from her father, step-mother and books. Quietly she has renounced her father's religion and created her own based on the idea of constant change. Coming to the realization that things are getting worse, she has packed a knapsack with emergency supplies, plantable raw seeds and her savings. When the inevitable disaster comes, she heads north, gathering a small band of fellows with her. Butler's tale is a dystopian fable told by a young woman with a determination to survive. Parable of the Sower is followed by Parable of the Talents -- which I shall read as I found the first novel absorbing, while no dazzling as literature.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Octavia Butler covers an amazing range of personalities all thrown into a cataclysmic time in the world. Reading this book felt she was the sower giving the world a parable about all the destructive things we're dealing with right now. She deals with everything straight up, from the way people de-evolve under pressure to how we discover the best within us in the same way. The different levels of prose mixed with metaphysical poetry make this one of the most amazing novels I've ever read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Content-rich story of post-apocalyptic America featuring a young African-American woman as the hero. Lauren Oya Olamina is a "hyperempath" who actually shares the pain of others in her own body. When her Los Angeles gated community is destroyed by violent anarchists, Lauren escapes. Dressed as a man,Lauren travels north meeting other refugees who, like her, search for a safe place to live. What sets Parable of the Sower apart is Lauren's philosophical take on the collapse of society: she is inspired to found her own community, named Earthseed, which will not try to recover what was lost, but instead will prepare for a new society among the stars. The novel is studded with pages from Lauren's Earthseed journal: Books of the Living:"Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Slow paced yet provocative story about Sci-fi and religion. Apocalyptic conditions give rise to religious thoughts from a YA perspective. The story takes place in a California that is suffering drought, drug epidemics, economic and social breakdown. An eighteen year old woman escapes from her firebombed gated community to start a trek and build a community of Earthseed based on the idea that "God is Change."
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Well-written with many of the same themes present in Butler's other books. Empathy and healing play major roles as well as indoctrination and violence.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Very interesting. She didn't delve into the political which is what brought this book up from 2 stars to 3. The story was a little flat, but the events are vivid and it really makes one think about what one might do in similar circumstances.

    I can tell I would hold Ms Butler's political views in revulsion, but the fact that she chose to just tell a compelling story (albeit rather flatly)without getting into why, to me was a teastment to her story telling ability.

    It's too bad I found the underlying premise a little lame.


  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This novel is scary and hopeful at the same time. I could not put it down and I know I will reread it. Octavia Butler is one of my favorite authors and this has become one of my favorite books. It's not sci-fi along the lines of Kindred or Fledgling. This story seems all too possible.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When I read The Parable of the Talents before reading this book, I was afraid that I would be a little disappointed when I went back. I am, a little, but I wonder if I would have liked them better if I had read them in the correct order.There is much of what I liked in The Parable of the Talents here, including how prescient it still seems fourteen years later. However, something about it seems less unified. Possibly it's because the bad times are really just beginning. Things have been going downhill for years with the climate and water shortages, and Lauren has been living in her walled neighborhood because of it, but the head of what will become known as Christian America is just becoming the president, and company towns run under slave-like conditions are just emerging. In general, the dangers Lauren and the rest of her group face are more in the way of random encounters along the road than a strong, centralized system. This might be what gives the entire story more the feeling of a series of events than a story with a beginning and an end. (Of course, it was not the end, but Butler didn't mean for The Parable of the Talents to be the end of the series, either, and its ending still felt satisfying.)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is riveting. It's the story, told by a hyperempathetic California teenager, of American society in 2024, about ten or fifteen years after ecological collapse. We meet Lauren, the narrator, when she's about fifteen years old. She's a bright, contemplative preacher's daughter, who has decided that she has found her own God: change. The book is sprinkled with discussions of her beliefs, which she's named Earthseed, and free verse from her "Book of the Living". By her eighteenth birthday, terrifying new synthetic drugs and an "eat the rich" mentality have taken hold outside Los Angeles, and the American government has relaxed business laws to the extent that debt slavery has become more common than ever. Lauren is a wise, clever, and sympathetic protagonist, and the world she inhabits is engaging and perhaps a little too plausible. I plowed through this book in just a few hours, always eager to find out what would happen next, who'd make it through to the next chapter, and what was on each new character's mind.(One further note -- I know plenty of folks who require a touch of the fantastic in their reading. If you're one of those people, you may as well know: This is NOT sci-fi. It takes place in the future and there's one mention of an improbably tiny radio. That's all you get.)
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The first part was so slow that I had a hard time getting into it. The second part went much faster, redeeming the novel.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I so regret not reading this when I was an actual young adult. This blows all the apocalyptic books that millennials read these days out of the water. It's realistic, not cliche, has an extremely diverse cast of characters, and is unapologetic. Even though I'm an Atheist, the religious aspect didn't bother me at all.It's kind of scary that the socioeconomic chaos that the United States is in in this book is not so far off from where we could end up especially considering the book's apocalypse began in 2016 after the elections.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    When the story starts, Lauren is a 15-year-old girl living in Southern California in 2024. She has hyperempathy syndrome, a condition caused by the drugs her birth mother abused while pregnant with Lauren. Because of this, Lauren can feel others' pain (if she can see them directly). In a future where climate change has caused massive droughts, the economy is on the verge of collapse, the rich hold themselves up in large compounds with protection while the poor (and the people people of color) have to fend for themselves in walled communities while fighting starvation, disease, thieves, murderers, rapists, and "pyros" who set fires for the thrill, Lauren is determined to survive. She knows that to do so, people need to accept that "God is Change"; thus begins her spiritual journey with Earthseed, a religion that she is slowly discovering/creating as she observes the despairing world around her. Octavia Butler is truly a master of her craft; she depicts a failing country with an unflinching eye toward the violence and danger, yet also depicts moments of great beauty and human compassion. Most of her characters are people of color, and she was a proud feminist, which makes for a great, strong lead in Lauren. This book may feel a little too timely, given the current political climate. But that just means it is all the more important.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I <3 this book.

    This is pretty amazing, and alarming.

    In the not-so-distant future, life has continued on the path we're on now. Rampant despoiling of the earth, rampant despoiling of the people. Well off people are living in walled compound/mini societies protecting themselves from the poor, the abused, the uncared-for violent (which, btw, is happening right now if anyone is paying attention), and corporations are everything (ditto).

    The main character, Lauren, is a girl living through these times, her parents would be my contemporaries, which really brings the story home. She survives the downfall of her compound/community and gathers with a small band of people traveling north from the LA area looking for work and survival.

    The general degradation and downfall of society is happening all around and they're trying to survive.

    What I loved about the book was how real it was. I love Butler's writing, and she does a phenomenal job, not only making me feel the reality of what's happening, but showing how we can get there from *right here*. It really is amazing, and scary.

    A lot of dystopian writing showcases society after some major event or downfall, but this book takes you *through* the actual downfall.

    What I didn't like about this book? A large part of it is Lauren's religion - how she "discovered" or created it. How she wants to use it to build a better life. And I understand that in a world of hell where you need to pass on values and knowledge (especially if the knowledge isn't available as books and on computers), creating a religion bothers me. Religions are easily corrupted, and used more often than not to control people, so as sane as her particular flavor of God is, I just can't get on board with it.

    And a random aside - The Road by Cormac McCarthy has a lot of similarities (post-apocalyptic, travel down the highway), but this is way, way better.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I can't believe how good a writer Octavia Butler is, and how her works remain relatively unknown. This book was much better than I thought, as I had expected the Earthseed aspect to get more emphasis than it actually did. I would describe it as an abbreviated "The Stand". Substitute studly grandpa for grandma. Good post apocalyptic fiction with a bit of survivalist info.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The story is set in the not too distant future (2026) with rather frightening scenes of where a society with too many guns and too many drugs could end up. Powerful tenets from Earthseed the Books of the Living begin each chapter. Frightening, gripping, literate, thought provoking this would make an awesome book discussion book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Octavia Butler's vision of a crumbling, near-future California, wracked by global warming and hordes of tweakers, is perfectly believable. Fellow fans of post-apocalyptic fiction will find it greatly satisfying.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I may be in some danger of becoming a ravening Octavia Butler fangirl. There is something about her prose, her characters and her world view that just resonates with me like two singing bowls calling to one another. I love the clarity of her prose, the bone deep pragmatism of her characters, the way that community is always a part of the equation no matter how difficult the situation becomes, oh I could go on ad nauseum. It just works for me.

    As other reviewers have said, this is a post global warming California where the US is falling apart under the pressure, and one teenage girl sets out to survive and try to pull something together. Very bad things happen. Beware. If you are easily shocked or horrified this one is going to upset you. Post apocalyptic stories about teenagers not exactly an underserved literary market either. None the less I highly highly recommend it.