Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Started: 18 December 2021
Finished: 28 December 2021
This book.
Seriously, I picked it up on a whim, because I haven’t read Octavia E. Butler before, and I know she was one of the most powerful voices in SFF along with Ursula K. Leguin and Margaret Atwood. Parable of the Sower floored me. It certainly feels eerie to read now, in 2021, as we approach the year the fictional science fiction tale starts in. 2024 isn’t far off, and though we aren’t in as dire straits as Sower paints yet, those times don’t feel like science fiction.
Reading N.K. Jemisin’s foreword, I can see how, in 1993, this book did feel like pure science fiction. Far-fetched as necromancer lesbians in space. But in 2021? Parable of the Sower reads like a harbinger.
The prose is lyrical and rich. Deep but still approachable in the epistolary format of Lauren Oya Olamina’s journal entries, who is fifteen when the book starts. It paints a picture of the U.S. wracked with climate change and economic crises, where water is scarce and crime is rampant. Burned out by the current state of the world as I’ve been, I was worried this book wouldn’t hook me.
I was dead wrong.
Maybe it was the grimly realistic and pragmatic but persistently hopeful voice of Lauren, maybe it was the Butler’s artful prose, but this story held on to me and will stick with me for some time. For anyone looking for a prescient piece of science fiction, for anyone who, like me, hadn’t read any Octavia E. Butler yet, read this book. It’s essential reading for our time.
All that you touch
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.
2021 Reads:
- This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
- Shuri by Nic Stone
- Scythe by Neal Shusterman
- Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin
- Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
- The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart
- Empire of Sand by Tasha Suri
- Realm of Ash by Tasha Suri
- Magic’s Pawn by Mercedes Lackey
- Magic’s Promise by Mercedes Lackey
- Magic’s Price by Mercedes Lackey
- Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
- The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan, Book 1 of The Wheel of Time
- Flamefall by Rosaria Munda
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler