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Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Edit: The group read time period for this read is over but the threads will stay open forever and additional readers are encouraged to discuss here (and past readers are encouraged to continue discussing as well).

I remember reading (though, I don't remember where--I suppose I could find it if anyone is really interested in the source) that Ms. Butler was very much opposed to her work being turned into films. Apparently, she had a list of reasons she didn't want such an adaptation, most of which had to do with not trusting the people who would attach her name to something that was really no longer entirely her work.

Now, that seems a perfectly reasonable stance, but it also seems too bad because those books by her that I've gone through seem particularly cinematic. She has a visual style, and--though one can never be sure about the skills/character of the people involved in an adaptation--that is the kind of thing that translates best.

Thoughts on a movie?

I haven't read the book but I can understand her reluctance. Hollywood has screwed up more novels than not in the past. However, having read some of her other stuff I'd like to have her direct it. That would be cool.

Long ago I read all of Butler's novels. I remember I became more and more dismayed with them because, as I recall, her attitude to the environment was so bad. When something really bothers me ethically I tend to start disliking the books. Since it is part of a group read, I am wondering how people are feeling about her portrayals of the natural world?

The library just informed me that this book came in today (someone else had it checked out). I'll be reading it soon.

It's next on my list. I went and got myself distracted by Gilgamesh... but Butler is at the top of the pile when I come back from 2,500BC.

Gary wrote: "It's next on my list. I went and got myself distracted by Gilgamesh... but Butler is at the top of the pile when I come back from 2,500BC."

I have 6 books (The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant, The Song of Troy, Sheepfarmer's Daughter, "Daite.", The Burning Land, Special Forces - Mercenaries Part II) to finish before starting on that one so I'll be starting it in about a week. :P

OK, I started this one yesterday and got sucked in pretty quickly.

Butler is such an interesting beast. You think, "Oh, I know where this is going..." BAM! Hyper-empathy! Nice. I now am unsure about the entire direction of this book. Curious.

She also sticks her philosophical/narrative voice into her prose in a way that I think contrasts nicely and favorably with Le Guin's in The Lathe of Heaven which got a little "extrapolate-y" to me. That is, the characters would break into long, fairly detailed explanations of the dynamics she wanted to present in dialogue that struck me as the author's voice coming out of the characters rather than realistic conversation. Butler stays in 1st person and in the mind of her protagonist during those kinds of expositions, making them more naturalistic/readable--at least for me.

Her prose is forthright. She doesn't dive into the more flowery language that I have grown accustomed to in my recent reading (I blame the ancient Sumerians and Nabokov) to the point that it now reads in my head almost like journalism.

There are plenty of little nods towards the politics of the day (the 1990s, that is, but we've moved on little from the nonsense of that decade) and her commentary in that regard is sharp and witty. I can't help but think she'd have gone even further had she written this book in the era of Dubya or Bam-bam.

I did get a bit taken out of the book by the conflict that arises early on when Lauren tries to warn her bestie that the end of society is looming. Sure, preppers are loons, but their ideas aren't so out of the mainstream that people would panic and object to them out of hand, particularly in a world where society had already slid an awful lot. From within a small, walled community the idea of having to "bug out" is not at all implausible or something that would come as a surprise to any particular resident, even the teen girls. Besides, the specifics of the Y2K panic might not have been looming in 1993, but there was a growing millennial angst, so I don't think the subtlety she went for there really adds up.

That did illustrate a few interpersonal issues, and wasn't the worst concept ever, but I did find it questionable.

The religious ideas are quite interesting. "Shaping" God is conceptually quite interesting. Secular Deism? Me-essianism? DemoCatholic? What moniker would you put on that kind of faith?

EDIT: OK, one would call it "Earthseed" hence the title of the series. Got to that part the next day. Nevermind.

I am officially shocked that this thing hasn't been adapted into a film on the big screen or a TV movie/series. I mean, I have a few criticisms, but the thing reads like a screenplay treatment. It's laid out in three acts, has set piece dialogue, big action sequences, characters that even a really talented casting agent couldn't totally screw up, and an easily recognizable travel story plot. It screams "adapt me!" louder than any book I've read in the past five, maybe ten years.

Hell, I could see a video game, for that matter. (She goes through a whole sequence where the baddies "drop" equipment after each combat sequence like something straight out of WoW....) There could be a comic book adaptation and/or a spin-off TV series (instead we got that amazingly half-assed Revolution.) It seems like a really obvious choice. For the life of me, I can't figure out how this hasn't happened yet.

Yeah, there's financing, but that's always the case, and there ought to be folks lined up for these books. How does Spielberg make The Color Purple and The War of the Worlds but not any of Butler's stuff? It's a mystery.

I started reading and am only through the first chapter, I'm looking forward to more since so far this talk of "God" is pissing me off. Normally I don't think it would but being surrounded by Catholics who call my girlfriend a "friend" and give me those I-love-you-and-will-pray-for-you-so-you-don't-end-up-in-hell looks. I have a really low religious tolerance right now. So, Gary, I am hoping it becomes all action-y and less God.

It does get very action-y, but there's still a lot of the "Earthseed" religion/philosophy stuff. The God=Change thing does smack of a lot of religious dynamics, but it's really a very secular kind of thing, so hopefully it'll grate on your sensibilities less as it progresses.

Personally, I'm more of a heathen than an atheist, and I find religious writings fascinating in a general way. The Earthseed component didn't really bug me, but I can see how that might be something of an irritant....

Gary wrote: "It does get very action-y, but there's still a lot of the "Earthseed" religion/philosophy stuff. The God=Change thing does smack of a lot of religious dynamics, but it's really a very secular kind..."

I think it would be different if I was back home, here its religion all the time. Grandma plays it in the background on the radio 24/7, my niece, the reason for my being here, is getting her first communion so I get the privilege of helping out, and I get to stand with one foot in the closet again, calling my gf a "friend" from America outside the close family circle who still chooses to really ignore what she is. But we'll see...

I'm an atheist who walks around with a Thor's Hammer necklace and tells others if afterlife exists, I'd love it to be Valhalla (endless drink, sword fights, and screwing women sounds like heaven to me). :P

I finished the book yesterday.
Well, the religious talk irritated me at first but I think the MC's ideas are very interesting since they're not 'blindly believe and don't ask question' but 'do something so things can be better and question everything'.
(I'm no fan of most religious ideas either. The majority of people in my country are catholic. 'Religion' was even a subject at the schools I went to. Unfortunately those lessons were only for catholics. Everyone else had to take their 'religion' class after school. Urgh. I quit them as soon as I was old enough to.)
This book? I didn't know where the story was going and certainly didn't expect how it turned out. o_o Wow, that was quite the ride. I definitely want to read the second book as well.

Sparrowlicious wrote: "I finished the book yesterday.
Well, the religious talk irritated me at first but I think the MC's ideas are very interesting since they're not 'blindly believe and don't ask question' but 'do some..."

I get that. I lived in Poland when I was young and we're a majority Catholic country as well, and we have it in schools here too. I think being here in Poland makes the religious talk more irritating than it would have been had I read the book in the US. Despite the evangelicals there, most of the population is actually reasonable (at least in my geographical location).

I'm almost a 100 pages in and still not much action, I'm hoping it'll start soon.

I was a little disappointed with this book. I think Octavia Butler bit off a little more than she can chew. (I have the same criticism for her Xenogenesis series-in both cases the writing is phenomenal but she meanders so far from the story and the pace gets a little sluggish for my tastes.) My reaction to religion ranges from apathetic to antipathetic so I found the proselytizing scenes to be a little hard to get through. FWIW, Earthseed doesn't seem like an awful religion in comparison to other belief systems and it does set it apart from other dystopian books.

I am planning on checking out the second book because I enjoyed her characters and want to see if they ever make it to the stars.

I wouldn't describe my own family experience as religious, but we were weekly churchgoers. I lost interest in it fairly young (12-14 at a guess) and stopped attending as soon as I could get away with it, which took a couple of years. These days, I have my own ideas about such matters.

With that in mind, I usually look at religious writings much the way I look at any other type of SF/F fiction: it can be entertaining or not, well thought out or not, imaginative or not. In and of itself, I don't attach a whole lot of real world significance to it, any more than I do to teleportation devices, dragons, FTL space ships the size of a Corvair, or chainmail bikinis.

In the case of Parable of the Sower, however, I will note that there is something of a different dynamic from the SF/F religions in most SF/F novels in that the main character is the patron saint/prophet/Buddha of that religion. We get it from what would be a very Biblical or Koranic perspective rather than as a general component. So, it's not presented in the same way that The Force is (mostly) in the Star Wars products, or the way the Zensunni religion is described in the Dune books. It's more directly in the readers' faces in the book and, therefore, maybe a bit more difficult to swallow for some folks.

Does Olivar remind anyone of the corporate city-states-countries in Snow Crash? That one was published in '92 so it may have been the "it" idea of the time.

Gary, I think there is a huge difference in something like the Force in Star Wars where it reminds us more maybe of ancient mythologies mixed in with a fantasy than something like here, something more real because of the places where we currently live.

As fat as Earthseed, I don't get why she even calls it a religion (not yet at least). It seems she has some philosophical ideas but I guess I don't understand why she calls (view spoiler)[change (hide spoiler)] god. Why invoke a vague supernatural power where it could be just an earthly philosophy. Maybe I just don't get religion at all, any kind of religion that is more involved than the antics of super-powered human-like beings told in stories (whether Zeus or Thor, or Superman or Spiderman).

Here's a theory: All religions start out as an admonishment to live a moral life... and then go off the rails to one extent or another as people get further and further away from first principles and the ideas begin to be used to justify authority, hierarchy and the status quo.

The Earthseed stuff does have a lot in common with Buddhism, which Butler points out herself in certain places. Some folks don't like to call Buddhism a religion either, though I suspect that's more of a quibble. I'm guessing in the second book it goes more "mainstream" than the rather loose stuff in this installment.

I read this a few years ago. I finished it on a bus from New York to Maryland, and I remember thinking how happy I was that we had a working social contract that allowed a bunch of strangers to trust each other enough to travel down the highway in an enclosed space together.

I don't get the hyperempathy, why its there. Maybe someone can explain it to me but so far all it does is give Lauren a weakness.

I loved Kindred, it will always occupy a small piece of my brain waiting to be engaged neurologically. But I can't help to be disappointed in this one. I think it may end up a 3 for me unless she does something to catch my attention toward the end.

Alicja wrote: "I don't get the hyperempathy, why its there. Maybe someone can explain it to me but so far all it does is give Lauren a weakness."

It is a little odd. Her "condition" doesn't really wind up being a particularly major aspect of the plot or story. She still manages to do what needs to get done, like shoot people or otherwise inflict pain even when it is debilitating to her.

I suspect she was trying to say something about the role of empathy itself. The definition of a psychopath is someone who (amongst other things) has a diminished ability to feel empathy, and there are plenty of psychopaths running around in the dystopia she created. The "pyro" drug users appear to be driven into a sort of manic, murderous pyromania. Lauren's hyperempathy was the result of some sort of pre-natal drug use IIRC. So, Butler is presenting it as a counterpoint to that.

Also, Lauren is also the prophetess of her own religion. Her "defect" might very well be something of a miracle. Technically, something like hyperempathy is a form of telepathy, and that makes it "magic" in a strictly scientific sense. I've read arguments by some folks that things like psychic powers are really more magical than science fiction, and don't really belong in a "hard science fiction" novel. In this case, it isn't meant to be supernatural, but it does have that element to it.

One of my pet literary theories is that ANY supernatural content argues for the existence of God. Even the least thing that is unexplainable by science pushes a story off the slippery slope that ultimately leads to the conclusion: God exists. If there are vampires then there is a God. If there is telekinesis (that isn't explained in a way that supports conservation of energy) then there is a God. In this case, Lauren somehow really feels what other people feel, and I don't think that can be explained scientifically. So: God. Of course, she has her own take on what God is... but her status as a supernatural creature means we should take that more seriously than if she were someone who had no "super power."

There is some discussion in the book about how slave owners prefer those who have hyperempathy under the theory that it makes them more docile. I wonder if she's making a commentary about the nature of the downtrodden in that respect?

I never thought of it that way, that her ability is supernatural and therefore God.

Maybe my view of religion as a general concept is so far removed from the framework that she's coming from that I have a hard time relating to it. To me something supernatural is natural that we don't have an explanation for yet. Even in fiction, when something supernatural happens and isn't explained by the author as natural, my brain just modifies the fantasy world physics to allow for the supernatural to become natural (we just don't get an explanation for it). As far a Lauren's ability, I think its psychological, not biological, and she's making it happen on an unconscious level to compensate for something or make herself feel better.

I hated her explanation when what's-his-name questioned her why she needs a God. She basically said that there isn't a God there, not a God other than change, but that the people are more likely to turn to God so she has to make this philosophy God. Its disingenuous, manipulative (even if she feels she's doing it for their own good), and in the end can only get twisted and perverted by fundamentalists (as all religions do). Giving people another kind of God is just placing a different kind of Band-Aid on a festering wound. Instead, the wound should be drained of all its God and replaced with reason and education, give the ability to the people to think for themselves instead of clinging to lies and delusions of a God.

It seems to me that hyperempathy also references stigmata, and has a religious connection there.

Early in the book, Lauren mentions one of her brothers pretending to be injured to make her bleed. That seems to me to indicate a couple of things:

First, it's not really telepathy. If her brother can put ketchup on his arm and show it to her so she'll "feel it" then there's something going on in her brain, not her brain pulling in something from outside. So, it is "psychological" in that sense.

Second, she probably can't go to the movies. If seeing her brother with a fake wound made her bleed, then a more realistic one would probably be even more effective. She says she doesn't physically manifest wounds that way anymore... but she also probably hasn't seen Saving Private Ryan. In a religious sense, again, the stigmata thing crops up. I would think from the explanation that she could probably look at a statue of the Crucifixion and be OK, but could she watch The Passion of the Christ and be unaffected?

If she concentrated and tried to bring up the feelings of an injury (by memory or imagination) could she spontaneously injure herself? Could she make a "miracle" happen that way?

But with her brother she thought is was real, even if it wasn't. Same as the kids, when she told them it didn't feel as bad as it looked, the kids didn't feel it either.

So then watching a movie she would know none of it is real and should be fine. Unless its a documentary. She probably shouldn't watch those. The Passion of the Christ may be different, it may blur the reality/fantasy line (although there is no evidence outside the Bible of Jesus' existence and I maintain he's a fictional character but I'm not sure if Lauren would feel that way).

I still consider Lauren's religious ideas about God and her "miracles" as bs. We don't need to make up gods to have a philosophy.

Alicja wrote: "But with her brother she thought is was real, even if it wasn't. Same as the kids, when she told them it didn't feel as bad as it looked, the kids didn't feel it either."

Geez, my memory is already going. You mean late in the book when the other folks with hyperempathy join them? I'm not recalling that scene.

Anyway, I'm inflicted with hyperskepticism so I would agree about the need for gods in philosophy.

I don't think Lauren believes that, though. I wonder if Butler did? I don't know enough about her personally to say. I think she was trying to suggest a kind of secular, humanist kind of thing. The word "God" is hard to divorce from what I call "the theological Dungeons & Dragons" that goes with it, but I think that was the idea. She's very much expressing a non-divine kind of concept, but I can see how the vocabulary might rankle.

If Lauren were to watch a movie, I'm thinking it would depend on how realistic it was. She could probably not watch a well done film. If she "believed it" then she'd feel it.

Yeah, late in the book when (view spoiler)[Lauren gets shot and then they have to run from the fire. She tells the kids that it looks worse than it feels when they take a food break so that they could run and not be debilitated by pain (hide spoiler)].

*snorts* I'm always inficted with hyperskepticism when it comes to any religious thought. I like that word, will be using it from now on. :P

I get that there are different definitions of God. You have the classical gods, the traditional (modern) god, the Deists' god, then you have the new age-y gods, and the universe is god shit, among others. At some point "god" gets so diluted that it isn't god anymore but a secular concept disguised as god. That's what she did. And when that happens the entire concept of god becomes useless except for controlling the masses (which she plainly admits she wants, not a dictator kind of control but one where the people would mindlessly turn to it because it is god; Lauren plainly says that when asked the question why god at all). I think that in itself makes her a naïve person, that and remaining in denial that, like all religions, it would get twisted and perverted down the line. Versus a philosophy, separate from a "god", which can be tackled, changed, and altered by any rational mind. Since humanity seems to have this psychological need, obsession with god, it is easier to manipulate than with a secular ideology (because in the former you are fighting god, in the latter you are just fighting people).

I don't know if I made myself clear. It just seems she is trying to create something honest but instead she will be creating just another weapon to be used by those in power in some future time.

Alicja wrote: "It just seems she is trying to create something honest but instead she will be creating just another weapon to be used by those in power in some future time. "

Corruption appears to be a fairly inevitable process, so I'm sure there would be any number of sects, heresies and the equivalent of "Satan worshipers" should there be something like an Earthseed religion that had any sort of size. I just read the blurb for the sequel, and it doesn't seem she went that direction with it, but it would be interesting to see how she'd have handled it if there were something like the Arthur Clarke set of books. Where Earthseed 1 & 2 might be 2001 and 2010, there could be 2061 (Earthseed: The Next Generation) and 3001 (Earthseed: Interstellar Crusade....)

Hell, I can see a whole series:

Earthseed 2201: Messiah
Earthseed 2401: Schism
Earthseed 2701: Empire of Change

Regarding the whole hyperempathy thing, it also occurs to me that watching porn would likely be a very different experience for her too.

She mentions bleeding when seeing someone cut when she was younger. I wonder if she saw someone burn themselves if she might blister? Or if she could sympathetically bruise? She doesn't seem to be affected by the 'ro drug users, but what if someone had a really bad case of hyperempathy? Could they get a proximity buzz/high from seeing someone drunk or stoned? If it's a condition that has a range, it could be totally debilitating.

Haha! Gary, I wish you would write the series, I would definitely read it!

That's a good question... I didn't even think of a hyper-high she may get. Hmm... I guess Bulter didn't have us to overthink her concept. :P

Okay. I just finished this (almost 2 months later) but it was really hard for me to get into it. It felt like a chore at times. I kept getting bored, it drove me into a reading slump that I thought I had fixed with Fortune's Pawn two days ago but after finishing this book today I think it put me back on the same reading slump :)

I enjoyed the story as a whole. I can see the religious aspect of the novel being a problem for some, I did feel a little weird at the start of every chapter with her "God is Change" and blah blah. For some reason I kept thinking of the meme picture of the guy from Office Space (Milton with the stapler) with the text below "I was told it was sci-fi".

Since we're all sharing our religious background I also come from a Catholic country, which some days feels like the church is our actual government :P

I went to Catholic school for 12 years, and although I don't have any problem with anyone having religious beliefs and I can respect that I'm not particularly interested in reading about religion in the context of this book, so Parable of the Sower was a little tough to get into. I consider myself an agnostic (or at least a recovering catholic?) which is almost as close to saying I worship the devil in my country. The mention of God at the start of each chapter made me a little uncomfortable.

And speaking of uncomfortable, there's also the setting. The post-apocalyptic world she presents felt too possible and too real to me and I didn't like that. Most of the apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic stuff I've read usually paints a future so implausible that if really feels like "sci-fi". This book's setting felt like something we could actually experience by the 2020s which was kind of scary to me. I compared the book to Cormac McCarthy's The Road movie (I haven't read the book). The journey, the hope that "everything will be ok after we get to our destination", the criminals, etc, it seemed familiar.

I won't be reading the next one in the series, but will read some of her other novels eventually. But now I need something fun to enjoy reading again :)

I felt similarly about the religion. I guess it seems like a turn off in this novel for us who have been trapped in heavily religious environments and have found out way out (I still don't understand why her ideas had to be religion instead of a philosophy).

I agree with you that the dystopian elements seemed very realistic but that is what I actually liked about this book. it is a cautionary tale of what could happen, a warning.

I finally finished my review for this book if anyone is interested: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

It's actually in Parable of the Talents not Parable of the Sower, which we read, but it's still interesting to note that

In Butler’s grim future, a hardcore patriarchal religious leader named Andrew Steele Jarret is running for president as the head of the Christian Americans party. And, as a couple people have pointed out, his fictional campaign uses the same slogan as real-life presidential candidate Donald Trump: Make America Great Again.

Full article: https://bitchmedia.org/article/dystop...