Rating: 
Summary: Frightening future vision
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Sowing the Seeds of Depression
Review: This book takes the reader to places where they don't want to go. It assumes that the future will be total anarchy where humans and animals are reduced to mere survival. It suggests that the future is almost completely hopeless. The goal in 2027 is to survive or die. Law enforcement, civil structure, and normal human interaction have all but ceased. No one trusts anyone in this book and the reader is led down the path of despondency and depression.
The author certainly has license to view the future in this most pessimistic fashion, but it sends a chilling message regarding a time that is only 23 years away. If you are willing to endure the very negative prediction of the near future, then you must also endure the concept strewn throughout the book that God is change and we can participate in changing God. This is nothing short of heresy. This notion suggests that somehow we are on a level playing field with the almighty. It suggests that we know more about what is good for us than God. If we don't like the cards we are dealt we change God so that he will deal us different cards. I suggest you pass on this book and its sequels.
Rating: 
Summary: Really impacted my worldview
Review: This book is set in a far too believable future -- it is much too easy to imagine that, if things continue as they are, we will find our planet, our society, and our spirits as badly polluted and damaged as those portrayed in this book. But Lauren Olamina, the wise-beyond-her-years protaganist, is a single seed of hope cast upon the violent wind of change. Will that hope survive? Will she find a place to take root? Olamina's spiritual philosophy has deeply influenced mine. "Why does God exist? To shape the universe. Why does the universe exist? To shape God," is one of the koans she writes in her Earthseed journal, and this seemingly paradoxical concept becomes her central strength as she faces dangers that will feel uncomfortably familiar to the reader. I think this book serves not only as an insightful meditation on the nature of reality and an exciting adventure novel, but as an urgent warning. We are shaping our universe and it in turn is shaping us, and the changes we are creating are not the ones we would necessarily desire. I think everyone should read this book at least twice and give it some deep thought.
Rating:
Summary: Is this what the future holds?
Review: Parable of the Sower is a look in to the future. Octavia E. Butler imagines a world of rampant crime and endless homelessness. Lauren, the narrator, lives in a walled neighborhood in southern California. When she is forced to flee northward with a couple of local aquaintances, a real struggle for survival ensues. Along the way, she encounters new people. Some are good, most are not. Parable of the Sower is a true survival tale of the future and really makes you think.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I read this book probably in 1994. I still remember now how blown away I was by this book. It's one of the greates works I've ever read. The ideas in it are very unique, the character very believeable. There's a good measure of action and thought, and I could identify with the journey the main characters had to take. I highly recommend this book to everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Future chronicle of humanity
Review: Orson Scott Card has described Octavia Butler as one of America's greatest writers, and I'm beginning to see why. Her style is eloquently simple, which at times can be penetrating. Lauren Olamina lives in a walled community in near-future California, a time plagued with environmental and societal degradation. Outside the walls are thieves, murderers, rapists, drug-addicts (especially for a new drug called "pyro" that enables the user to attain orgasmic pleasure out of watching things burn), as well as the abused, homeless, disheveled. Racism and various forms of slavery have returned. The police are as feared as the criminals, and what's left of the government is talked about in vague apprehension. Inside the community is a small, racially mixed group of families, most of whom choose to ignore what's going on outside the walls. By sixteen, Lauren has come to realize her community will not last long, and begins to prepare for the inevitable invasion or destruction. Her brother, Keith, has already jumped the wall, and made a life for himself "outside," bringing back money and gifts for his family, but not revealing how he got them. Daughter of a Christian preacher, Lauren has hyperempathy syndrome, which causes her to feel the pain and pleasure of others around her, a vulnerability she keeps hidden, especially during the second half of the book when she is traveling the countryside learning about the world she lives in and further developing a religion she "discovered" called Earthseed; the main idiom being "God is change."
The story is told by Lauren's journal entries. In another author's hands, this story could read like the typical detached-narrator of a dystopian future. Instead, Butler invests her tale with how individual people variously react, survive, and adapt to changing and chaotic conditions. Earthseed is explored through arguments and speculations. I listened to the audio version of this book read by Lynn Thigpen, and the story was exciting; well-paced, fully-developed characters, strange and familiar. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!!
Review: "Parable of the Sower" is a great book for all the science fiction lovers out there. The plot, the characters, everything gets molded by Butler into a masterpiece. This book makes me want to read "Parable of the Talents", because I don't want the adventure to stop. Lauren Olamina is the best heroine for this epic story, because with her hyperempathy syndrome, she has to overcome more than anyone. Overall, one of the best books I've ever read
Rating:
Summary: Great for OB fans
Review: This is not my favorite Octavia Butler Novel, but it is still well written and it is a good story.
Rating:
Summary: A vision
Review: In the not-very-distant future, America is disintegrating into widespread unemployment, crime, and violence. Lauren lives in an enclosed neighborhood where everyone looks out for each other, but racial divides are still factors. As a young black woman and an empath, Lauren knows her future is dim, but she has a vision of the future she calls Earthseed and is determined to make it a reality. When the trickle of thieves into their community flares into an invasion, Lauren witnesses the destruction of her world, her friends, her family, and barely escapes with her life. She encounters two other survivors and they set off to find a better part of the U.S. Butler's powerful vision of the future is starkly possible, and with compelling characters, she creates a stellar tale of believing in a better world for future generations even as we are mired in our current crises. The book is a powerful commentary on our culture and where it could be headed.
Rating: 
Summary: The fire next time
Review: Some authors claim to think up their stories by playing "what if." What if there were a drug that made people have orgasms by watching and starting fires AND the water supply in California dried up (this is the most realistic What If) AND all of California was like South Central Los Angeles. If all that, then you have the scenario for this sad book. It's frightening as heck, that's for sure, but it's implausible. It seems that Ms. Butler was possibly trying to inject some metaphysical philosophy into the book by having her protagonist, Lauren Olamina (her surname is Yoruban, so we're told), keep chanting the refrain "God is change." But as her father-figure lover, Bankole (it's Yoruban), tells her: those are only words. I guess the idea was that in a frightful society, nobody could possibly remain a Christian, much less adhere to any other "traditional" religion. Bankole asks at one point: "Would Jesus be Christ if he were here today?" Puleeez, don't let the Rapturists hear you talking like that! This book will frighten, anger, and depress, and to that extent, it certainly creates emotion, if, that is, you can finish it. Don't try to read it in one sitting. Have another book with a little lighter and happier tenor on hand to alternate from time to time. By the way, I live in South Central Los Angeles, and what Butler describes in this book is really not too far off from what we have in South Central, but without the pyromaniacs and the bad water situation, thank goodness for that. IF such a drug were invented, getting off sexually on fire-starting, then POSSIBLY Butler's scenario could become plausible. Diximus.
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