You have probably heard of Octavia E. Butler, who was a renowned writer of science fiction novels and who wrote at a time when there was not a lot of female sci-fi writers, let alone Black ones. Sci-fi is not a genre that I gravitate towards, so I had never read any of Butler’s novels. But since I am always expanding my reading horizons, I wanted to give Butler a try and came across Parable of the Sower. It turns out Parable of the Sower is not so much sci-fi as it is speculative fiction. It is set in a dystopian future where climate change has led to the break down of societal and economic norms. I think Parable of the Sower is an interesting novel, and I am glad that I read it, but to be honest, it does not inspire me to want to read the second novel (Parable of the Talents). I kind of wish that I had picked another one of Butler’s novels to read instead.

Parable of the Sower was first published in 1993 and it is set in California in the 2020s. The novel is told through the journal entries of Black teenager, Lauren Olamina, who lives with her dad, stepmother, and brothers in a gated community. Lauren and her family are by no means wealthy, but her dad still has a paying job at a college which allows them to barely scrape by. Lauren’s family and their neighbours work together to keep their community safe from the desperation that thrives outside its walls. The changing climate has led to societal and economic chaos where jobs are scarce, food is scarce and expensive, and water is even more scarce and expensive. Company towns and the indentured servitude (of mainly Black and brown people) that they offer have made a comeback; police and firefighters require payment for their services, but they cannot be trusted; Black people are being forced back into slavery; interracial relationships are frowned upon; children are kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery; and a new type of drug leads to rampant pyromania because it gives better pleasure than sex. Lauren is not allowed to go outside her community, except when her dad takes her for shooting lessons. Outside are starving, naked people, dead bodies everywhere, and packs of wild dogs that hunt people for food.

Butler has been called prescient, but I think she just really understood human nature and American society a lot better than most people. Nothing that happens in Parable of the Sower, no matter how horrible it is, surprises me, and that is not a good thing because I see the seeds of it taking root right now. I feel like the US is a Ron DeSantis away from reinstating racial segregation and slavery. For me, Parable of the Sower is a how-to manual on how to survive our future when things get worse than they already are.

Lauren is an incredibly intelligent and level-headed teenager, almost to the point that it is unrealistic. She sees how tenuous life is in her gated community and knows that one day it is all going to come crashing down, but when she suggests preparing for this inevitability, nobody wants to hear it, so she secretly prepares to leave with the intention of heading north to Oregon, Washington, or even Canada where there are still supposed to be paying jobs. Lauren also has hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to other people’s emotions, which she knows can be a liability. But Lauren is tough, and when it is time for her to leave home and head north, she is more than capable of doing whatever it takes to keep herself alive.

My problem with Lauren, though, is her “religion”. Lauren, like a lot of people living through such horrific circumstances, turns to a religion that she has created in order to explain why things are they way they are and how one can make things better. She calls her religion Earthseed, and her gospel is that “God is change” and that people can shape God through conscious effort to influence the changes around them. Lauren also believes that we will outgrow our planet and it is our destiny to go to other planets and spread humanity’s “seeds”. I do not have much love for religion, so I just cannot empathize with Lauren’s faith. But honestly, I think the most difficult aspect of this novel to swallow was Lauren, an eighteen-year-old woman, lusting after a 57-year-old man who is older than her father.

Parable of the Sower is a heavy read, and I would not recommend it to the casual reader. It was supposed to be the first in a series of novels, but apparently while writing book three, Butler got so depressed by the series that she stopped writing it. Nope, I definitely will not be reading book two.