Octavia E Butler - Parable of the Sower

Publisher – Headline

Published – 1993

Price - £9.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook

We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.

America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to feel the pain of others as her own, records everything she sees of this broken world in her journal.

Then, one terrible night, everything alters beyond recognition, and Lauren must make her voice heard for the sake of those she loves.

Soon, her vision becomes reality and her dreams of a better way to live gain the power to change humanity forever.

The idea of the world falling into dystopia is a staple part of science fiction from Mad Max to the recent TV show The last of Us. There is a fascination with the idea that everything can fall away. In some ways this can be quite toxic and seems to say that humanity is always ready to doom itself but is there isa greater theme in this idea to explore? It wasn’t immediately what I expected Parable of the Sower by Octavia E Butler to explore but I found this often a devastating read that still managed to offer a glimpse of hope but also has a more a powerful examination of our more dangerous natures.

In 2024 thirteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives in a small town outside of LA with her family in an America facing economic collapse, climate change and extreme poverty as well as social disorder. Her family and neighbours in their community know they cannot reply on the police even if they can afford the fees for investigation. Food and water are increasingly expensive; jobs are poorly paid and getting increasingly scarcer. Despite all of this there is a desire for this local neighbourhood to pull together; they grow and trade food, guard each other’s houses and teach the young infants. But as the years pass violence nears closer; gangs fuelled on new drugs are spreading and attacking homes and families with little mercy. Lauren has a sense that an escape is needed but she is also filled with the idea that humanity needs to believe in something and she starts to build a concept that just may help change the world.

The first book in this duology is one of the most powerful and rawest dystopias I have read. This is not for the vast majority of the story a tale of hope. It’s a very downbeat start with a cast of characters Butler lets you glimpse; start to know and then they may be quickly despatched in a page. This is a world where people can just disappear and never be seen again; corpses are used to send messages to the locals or just dumped in the nearby countryside; dogs are dangerous animals in packs and behind closed doors there are some people at the mercies of their husbands. There is a theme of the US now being on a downward curve. As the novel progresses the wolves get nearer the the door of Lauren’s family and the cost is huge. Butler excels at moments of warmth and community and then quite starkly pulls the trapdoor beneath the characters’ feet. All that uncertainty makes this one of the sombre of stories bringing to mind the casual cruelty we saw on display in Kindred but this time in the 21st century. As one character themselves remarks the country has gone back over 120 years; which Ii think is Butler’s warning – our world is more fragile than we think.

It's tempting to say Parable of the Sower is just another glossy american dystopia with a world of guns but it is fascinating to see in Butler’s hands what can be shaped from this format. First of all its worth remembering that while for the US these events feel remote (and of course in 2023 so far not our immediate present) but that there are plenty of examples in the thirty years of this novel where  we will see communities collapsed from the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq and most recently the Ukraine where a country can slip into war, strife and collapse. While there is a long list of horrific events thrown at the reader, they’re all examples that do happen somewhere in the world. Butler also explores more than just evil gangs. The social backdrop of the story is disturbing – companies start to own towns (again a point Butler notes that has happened in the past) and by definition own the populace. A new form of economic slavery and control starts to emerge in the background. In these dangerous times a populist president with disturbing undertones of repression is elected saying reforms now need to be cut back. This is a story suggesting social disorder comes not just from people being greedy and cruel but powerful interests of the economy and politics will seek to rather than help people use events to push their own agendas. Hardly something that we can say by 2023 we have not seen as a trend in the last few years.

With all this bleakness is there any hope in the novel? Yes, in the fascinating figure of Lauren. Here Butler raises a powerful question as to what the cure to the collapse of the world may be – empathy. Lauren has an unusual psychic condition following her mother’s addiction to a certain drug. She feels people’s emotions be it extreme pleasure but also pain. If she hits someone she will feel every blow. This makes her growing up challenging but she also becomes an observer; fascinated with how humans work and our beliefs pull us through. As she grows older she creates her own version of religion she calls Earthseed. Which itself carries the idea that only if we know what others feel would we want to stop hurting others.

Now an SF novel creating its own religion can feels a little strange but the concept Butler explores is fascinating – that God or the Universe is about Change and rather than expecting someone else to clear up the mess you have to take ownership of your life and to pull a community together. The story is really a battle of two ideas – the idea of people fragmenting and destroying themselves or the idea that people can unite; show compassion and work towards common goals. For the majority of this story the powers of destruction are in the ascendancy but as Lauren leaves her family home and seeks safety; we get her meeting and joining an ever-growing group of assorted people who start to see the possibility of a better life. Butler makes none of this easy; in fact after a long hike into the dangerous country of the US even the final scenes still carry loss and a feeling that everything can still be destroyed but there is always a slight sense of light and hope. Something I also think the last few years shows – when communities fall there are always people willing to rebuild an equally important part of being human.

A couple of final observations. Again, this novel explores communities and human natures balance between destruction and creation. This easily fits into the body of work from Butler that we have seen so far. Unusually Lauren though hasn’t an opposing opposite or control figure this time – she stands alone and starts to become her group’s leader with hardly no opposition. Butler is this time happy to let Lauren find her own voice and instead its just the word itself Lauren must face down an interesting new direction I’m keen to see where the story goes next on this score.

On its own Parable of the Sower is a strong but often disquieting read. A sense that everything is going to go wrong and life is cheap can be demoralising but the exploration of empathy and the idea that we can move on and rebuild is also a powerful part of the book; albeit by the end not yet shown to its future potential – that awaits us in Parable of the Talents but one I’m looking forward to discovering soon. A powerful book that I think the reader will find much to think about – always the best form of science fiction.