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Title: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler ISBN: 0-446-60197-7 Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 February, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.3 (73 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Frightening future vision
Comment: 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: 4
Summary: Is this what the future holds?
Comment: 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: 2
Summary: Sowing the Seeds of Depression
Comment: 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.
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Title: Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler ISBN: 0446675784 Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 January, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Lilith's Brood by Octavia E. Butler ISBN: 0446676101 Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Mind of My Mind by Octavia E. Butler ISBN: 0446361887 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler ISBN: 0446606723 Publisher: Aspect Pub. Date: 01 February, 1999 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Kindred by Octavia Butler ISBN: 0807083054 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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