Parable of the Sower [Paperback]

Octavia E. Butler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000

When unattended environmental and economic crises lead to social chaos, not even gated communities are safe. In a night of fire and death Lauren Olamina, a minister's young daughter, loses her family and home and ventures out into the unprotected American landscape. But what begins as a flight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny... and the birth of a new faith.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Octavia E. Butler, the grande dame of science fiction, writes extraordinary, inspirational stories of ordinary people. Parable of the Sower is a hopeful tale set in a dystopian future United States of walled cities, disease, fires, and madness. Lauren Olamina is an 18-year-old woman with hyperempathy syndrome--if she sees another in pain, she feels their pain as acutely as if it were real. When her relatively safe neighborhood enclave is inevitably destroyed, along with her family and dreams for the future, Lauren grabs a backpack full of supplies and begins a journey north. Along the way, she recruits fellow refugees to her embryonic faith, Earthseed, the prime tenet of which is that "God is change." This is a great book--simple and elegant, with enough message to make you think, but not so much that you feel preached to. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Butler's first novel since 1989's Imago offers an uncommonly sensitive rendering of a very common SF scenario: by 2025, global warming, pollution, racial and ethnic tensions and other ills have precipitated a worldwide decline. In the Los Angeles area, small beleaguered communities of the still-employed hide behind makeshift walls from hordes of desperate homeless scavengers and violent pyromaniac addicts known as "paints" who, with water and work growing scarcer, have become increasingly aggressive. Lauren Olamina, a young black woman, flees when the paints overrun her community, heading north with thousands of other refugees seeking a better life. Lauren suffers from 'hyperempathy," a genetic condition that causes her to experience the pain of others as viscerally as her own--a heavy liability in this future world of cruelty and hunger. But she dreams of a better world, and with her philosophy/religion, Earthseed, she hopes to found an enclave which will weather the tough times and which may one day help carry humans to the stars. Butler tells her story with unusual warmth, sensitivity, honesty and grace; though science fiction readers will recognize this future Earth, Lauren Olamina and her vision make this novel stand out like a tree amid saplings.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Updated edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446675504
• ISBN-13: 978-0446675505
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 0.9 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (158 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Octavia Estelle Butler, often referred to as the "grand dame of science fiction," was born in Pasadena, California on June 22, 1947. She received an Associate of Arts degree in 1968 from Pasadena Community College, and also attended California State University in Los Angeles and the University of California, Los Angeles. During 1969 and 1970, she studied at the Screenwriter's Guild Open Door Program and the Clarion Science Fiction Writers' Workshop, where she took a class with science fiction master Harlan Ellison (who later became her mentor), and which led to Butler selling her first science fiction stories.

Butler's first story, "Crossover," was published in the 1971 Clarion anthology. Patternmaster, her first novel and the first title of her five-volume Patternist series, was published in 1976, followed by Mind of My Mind in 1977. Others in the series include Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980), which won the James Tiptree Award, and Clay's Ark (1984).

With the publication of Kindred in 1979, Butler was able to support herself writing full time. She won the Hugo Award in 1984 for her short story, "Speech Sounds," and in 1985, Butler's novelette "Bloodchild" won a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and an award for best novelette from Science Fiction Chronicle.

Other books by Octavia E. Butler include the Xenogenesis trilogy: Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988) and Imago (1989), and a short story collection, Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995). Parable of the Sower (1993), the first of her Earthseed series, was a finalist for the Nebula Award as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. The book's sequel, Parable of the Talents (1998), won a Nebula Award.

In 1995 Butler was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship.

AWARDS

1980, Creative Arts Award, L.A. YWCA
1984, Hugo Award for Best Short Story - Speech Sounds
1984, Nebula Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild
1985, Science Fiction Chronicle Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild
1985, Locus Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild
1985, Hugo Award for Best Novelette - Bloodchild
1995, MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Grant
1999, Nebula Award for Best Novel - Parable of the Talents
2000, PEN American Center lifetime achievement award in writing
2010, Inductee Science Fiction Hall of Fame
2012, Solstice Award, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America

Amazon Author Rankbeta 

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#58 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#66 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction

#58 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

#66 in Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Science Fiction

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvellously written June 2, 2000

By Kali

Format:Mass Market Paperback

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.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Frightening future vision December 31, 2001

By Rick Hunter

Format:Mass Market Paperback

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.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars An Okay Read May 7, 2009

By J. Powell

Format:Paperback

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.