I know, I know, I literally just talked about this book only one or two posts ago, but I think it is time to dive headfirst into one of the best books I have read all summer, Octavia E. Butler’s fantastical, yet terrifying speculative fiction of the modern day, “Parable of the Sower.” As stated in my previous post “Audiobook August,” it is the perfect time to begin reading this book because the first diary entry of the book begins on July 20, 2024, and continues all the way into the future of 2027, so without further ado, let’s compare Butler’s terrifying predictions to reality!
About the Book:
Released in 1993, “Parable of the Sower” became Butler’s 11th book, following her two previous book series’, the Patternmaster Series and Exogenesis Trilogy, as well as “Kindred,” her well renowned standalone novel. While there is a sequel to this novel, “Parable of the Talents,” I will only be discussing the first today. Being written over 30 years prior to the book’s setting, Butler speculates a dark dystopian tale of capitalism and climate change that has ravaged the world, though, we only see the true extent of the chaos from Lauren, our main character’s view, while living in California.
Lauren lives with her large family in a poverty-stricken community near Los Angeles, her neighbors and family are forced into a tight nit homestead of sorts as they have built walls around the cul-de-sac they live in to better protect themselves. The small community is ever shrinking as family members die off or are killed in raids, as well as some just disappearing, never to be seen again. Lauren struggles to exist in a world filled with pain because of a condition she was born with that causes her to have hyper-empathy to other’s hurt, emotionally and physically. With that, she is very close with the members of this hidden group, though, she does not share the same beliefs that many of the others do, especially with her Baptist Priest father. While she loves her family dearly, she has a bitter relationship with the Christain God, and instead, forms her own religion of sorts known as “Earthseed.”
Reviews of the Book:
Without spoiling the plot, I will stray away from further summarizing as this book is jam packed with so much action that it is difficult to discuss. Instead, I would like to talk more about the world-building and compare that to the 2024 we live in today. It is no denying that climate change has begun to rampage small communities and even countries around the world, something that is ever present in Californian minds’ today. From flooding to firestorms, Butler effortlessly predicts many of the major natural disasters that have been ramping up in recent years, but even more interesting is how much she correctly depicts the politically corrupt environment that we can see in news broadcasts. In the story, we also hear about many failed experiments that cause the spread of disease and drugs, such as “pyro,” a drug that makes the user essentially addicted to fire and arson.
Because of many of these accuracies, Butler has seen mass praise, but also backlash from the political comparisons. Even at the time of release, Butler faced criticism for calling the book “speculative fiction” rather than “science fiction,” a common complaint that many writers face, but in the case of “Parable of the Sower,” it seems that a nerve has been grasped, not just touched. I personally find this book to be fascinating for these reasons, even down to the smallest details there exists many tethers to the world around us, in my opinion, Butler’s work is absolutely genius, and I can’t wait to read the prequel to indulge even further in our speculative dystopian future. If none of my other book suggestions have sparked your interest, then I hope that this is the exception, because this book is so insanely different from anything of the likes I’ve read before. I have no means in scaring you away from the devastation explored here, but this book is so telling of the reality we live in, and it has honestly become somewhat of a wake-up-call to see how easily Bulter predicted the present day.
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