Paperback, 345 pages
English language
Published Aug. 7, 2000 by Warner Books.
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.
Everyone should read this book. The kind of book that wounds you - as Helene Cixous preaches. Painful, wretched, and beautiful.
Hace tiempo que leí Xenogénesis, pero de lo poco que recordaba de ella era cómo la autora nos conducía, de la mano de un punto de vista, a la comprensión de fenómenos totalmente ajenos.
Aquí no es precisamente la ajenidad lo que nos atañe, sino un posible futuro nada impensable. Pero nuevamente, el punto de vista de la protagonista nos lleva de la mano y nos explica un futuro casi apocalíptico, con desgracias y miseria constantes, pero siempre, siempre, con esperanza.
An eery book to read: Written decades ago, it shows us a dystopian future starting in July 2024 where climate change and political turmoil have left the US, and much of the world, with civilization crumbling, similar yet different from what we know today.
Pushing politics-induced anxiety aside, I expected an exciting novel with social commentary. What I got was... a novel with social commentary.
The first half seemed like a near-endless introduction to me - of the protagonist, her family, and her community. This part was definitely too long for my taste - a lot of characters are introduced, but never brought up again. The bits of information about the outside world seem detached and irrelevant to a certain extent.
The protagonist has a supernatural ability that only comes up after a while, and is described inconsistently: Sometimes her heightened sense of empathy for others' emotions and pain overwhelms …
An eery book to read: Written decades ago, it shows us a dystopian future starting in July 2024 where climate change and political turmoil have left the US, and much of the world, with civilization crumbling, similar yet different from what we know today.
Pushing politics-induced anxiety aside, I expected an exciting novel with social commentary. What I got was... a novel with social commentary.
The first half seemed like a near-endless introduction to me - of the protagonist, her family, and her community. This part was definitely too long for my taste - a lot of characters are introduced, but never brought up again. The bits of information about the outside world seem detached and irrelevant to a certain extent.
The protagonist has a supernatural ability that only comes up after a while, and is described inconsistently: Sometimes her heightened sense of empathy for others' emotions and pain overwhelms and nearly cripples her; sometimes it doesn't come up for dozens of pages although people around her are feeling, well, lots of things. This jerked me out of the immersion of the story, and left me more confused than anything.
Our protagonist also sets her mind on founding a new religion, and spends considerable time thinking/writing about it, and discussing it with others. I didn't find this aspect of the story interesting at all.
All these negative aspects aside, the plot, especially in the second half, is interesting enough: I kept reading to find out what would be next. At least some characters are likeable AND interesting. It is obvious that this novel is the first part of an unfinished trilogy -- lots of things are brought up, but not resolved (yet).
Octavia E. Butler's writing is just great - every chapter, every scene drew me right in, and I painfully felt as if I was there, in crumbling California, with the cast of characters.
Overall, the good and the bad of this book made me end up leaving a mediocre rating of three stars. I'm not sure I'll read the second book, [b:Parable of the Talents|60932|Parable of the Talents (Earthseed, #2)|Octavia E. Butler|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1170553715l/60932.SY75.jpg|249012]: I'm afraid the religious themes will only grow, plus there is no third part to conclude the series because Butler never wrote it.
I’ve had a story idea rattling around in my head for years about a character with a supernatural degree of empathy. I was talking to a friend about this idea and he mentioned Octavia Butler’s Parable series. If you haven’t read them, they revolve around a young woman with a “hyper-empathy” condition – she feels acutely the pleasure and pain of those around her. This is not the central driver of the plot, but it is an interesting characterization, and an idea I’ve been fascinated by for years.
This post-apocalyptic story is strangely prescient, a novel written in the 80s that you would swear is imagining a near-future post-Trump America. But that also isn’t the central driver of the plot.
Rather, this story is driven by Earthseed, a quasi-religion that seems to be loosely influenced by Buddhism, but with an evangelical flavor. I really admired Butler’s frank and self-assured …
Great vision of where we could easily find ourselves in the year 2024. Though things haven't (yet) turned out as bad as envisioned in the book, it definitely hits close to home. Was nice to read a pre-post apocalyptic (what to you call it when the apocalypse is ongoing?? Just apocalyptic?) novel that didn't have zombies everywhere. I enjoyed the elements of religion and thinking about how one would start a new religion that wasn't as laden with hundreds of years of doctrine and dogma as what we have now.
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
The best "post-apocalyptic" story I've ever come across. So good, it puts most of the others to shame. Also just a great story on its about community, religion, and how to believe in and work for a better world. I wish it was recommended reading in school.
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.
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.
Both right-wing and left-wing preppers will find something for them in this book. Written from the POV of a teenager in a life-or-death situation, the book is pretty much on survival mode the entire time, with the accompanying lack of nuance and fear permeating throughout. Still, seems like an important and balanced read.
If you have the stomach to read a book about how to survive an apocalypse right now, this is a banger. As created literary religions go, Earthseed is better than most, and Lauren Olamina is just such a well-written, thoughtful character.
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 is book is a modern rendition of Earth Abides (by George R Stewart). It is superior in many ways. It is so much more well-written, more believable and a lot more emotionally attached.
But this was not a book for me.
Its diary format lends itself to a single-subject, single-threaded narrative that is too far from my preferred storytelling which is parallell storylines reminiscent of that in modern tv series. The diary format also leans into slower, observational progress which is probably intentional, to make it feel more genuine and grounded. But for me that just takes away excitement - everything is just a string of situations, there's no feeling of story arc.
For some this is probably an indication of quality, but I want my fiction to be fiction.
