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Parable of the Sower (novel)Parable of the Sower is a 1993 science fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler. It is an apocalypse science fiction novel that provides commentary on climate change and social inequality. The novel follows Lauren Olamina in her quest for freedom. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north and learn of a religion she has crafted titled Earthseed. In this religion, the destiny for believers is to inhabit other planets. Parable of the Sower was the winner of multiple awards, including the 1994 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and has been adapted into a concert and a graphic novel. Parable of the Sower has influenced music and essays on social justice.

Parable of the Sower is the first in an unfinished series of novels, followed by Parable of the Talents in 1998.

Plot
Beginning in 2024, when society in the United States has grown unstable due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed, Parable of the Sower takes the form of a journal kept by Lauren Oya Olamina, an African American teenager. Her mother abused drugs during her pregnancy and left Lauren with "hyper-empathy" or "sharing" � the uncontrollable ability to feel the sensations she witnesses in others, particularly the abundant pain in her world.

Lauren grows up in the remnants of a gated community in Robledo, California, twenty miles from Los Angeles, where she and her neighbors struggle but are separate from the abject poverty of the world outside. Outside of the community are numerous homeless and mutilated individuals who resent the community members for their relative affluence. Public services such as police or firefighters are untrustworthy, exploiting their positions for profit and making little effort to help. Lauren's father, a Baptist pastor, holds the community together through mutual aid and careful use of resources, such as making bread from acorns. However, Lauren is increasingly certain that despite all efforts, society will continue to deteriorate and the community will no longer be safe; Lauren secretly prepares to travel north, as many do in search of rare paid jobs. The newly elected radical, authoritarian President Donner loosens labor protections, creating a rise in company towns owned by foreign businesses. Lauren privately develops her own new belief system based on the belief that "God is Change" is the only lasting truth, and that humanity, dubbed Earthseed, should "shape God" in order to aid themselves. She comes to call this religion Earthseed.

Lauren's younger brother, Keith, rebelliously runs away to live outside the walls of the community. For a time, he survives by joining a group of ruthless thieves who value him for his rare literacy, but he is eventually found dead after torture. Later, Lauren's father disappears while leaving the community for work and is accepted as dead.

When Lauren is eighteen in 2027, the community's security is breached in an organized attack by outsiders: most of the community is destroyed, looted, and murdered, including Lauren's family. She travels north, disguised as a man, with Harry Balter and Zahra Moss, two survivors from her community. Society outside the community walls has reverted to chaos due to resource scarcity and poverty. U.S. states have become akin to city-states, with strict borders. Money still has value, but travelers constantly fear attacks for resources or by pyromaniac drug-users, cannibals, and wild dogs. Mixed-race relationships are stigmatized, and women fear sexual assault. Slavery has returned in the form of indebted servitude.

Lauren gathers people to protect along her journey and begins to share the Earthseed religion, which is developing into a collection of texts titled Earthseed: The Books of the Living. She believes that humankind's destiny is to travel beyond the deteriorating Earth and live on other planets, forcing humankind into its adulthood, and that Earthseed is preparation for this destiny. Lauren begins a relationship with Bankole, an older doctor who joins the group, and agrees to marry him. Bankole takes the group to the land he owns in Northern California, where the group settles and Lauren founds the first Earthseed community, Acorn.

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