Octavia E. Butler - Parable Of The Sower (Headline Publishing, 1993) ***

It's an older book that I was advised to read in the context of the current situation in the United States. With "Parable Of The Sower", Octavia Butler wrote a dark dystopian novel, about the US West Coast in some distant future, namely the period between 2024 and 2027. The world has collapsed as the consequence of climate change, corporate greed and social inequality. The main character, Lauren Olamina lives with other people in a fortifide compound, protecting themselves from gangs who own the streets. The people have no revenue, no income, no future. Life is bleak. Events make Lauren leave her place in the hope of finding something better elsewhere, but at the risk of being killed in the process, yet staying where she lives does not offer better perspectives: 

"I like Curtis Talcott a lot. Maybe I love him. Sometimes I think I do. He says he loves me. But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I'd kill myself." (p. 82)

 Lauren is also hypersensitive, and hyperemphatetic: she feels the pain of others as strong as the person she sees having pain. This makes her predicament even worse in the context of the horrors they encounter on their journey. 

"He messed up our family, broke it into something less than a family. Still, I would never have wished him dead. I would never wish anyone dead in that horrible way. I think he was killed by monsters much worse than himself. It's beyond me how one human being could do that to another. If hyperempathy syndrome were a more common complaint, people couldn't do such things. They could kill if they had to, and bear the pain of it or be destroyed by it. But if everyone could feel everyone else's pain, -who would torture? Who would cause anyone unnecessary pain? I've never thought of my problem as something that might do some good before, but the way things are, I think it would help. I wish I could give it to people. Fail­ing that, I wish I could find other people who have it, and live among them. A biological conscience is better than no conscience at all." (p. 108)

Because of her capacity to feel, she is also generous towards other people, but always in a context of suspicion caution. She joins forces with some other young people of her compound, they encounter other lone travellers on the way, or groups they have to avoid or team up with or fight with. It's a long journey north, into the unknown. Other people are the biggest danger, but also a necessity to become stronger as a group. 

"They deserve to know that I'm a sharer. For their own safety, they should know. But I've never told anyone. Sharing is a weak­ness, a shameful secret. A person who knows what I am can hurt me, betray me, disable me with little effort. 

I can't tell. Not yet. I'll have to tell soon, I know, but not yet. We're together, the three of us, but we're not a unit yet. Harry and I don't know Zahra very well, nor she us. And none of us know what will happen when we're challenged. A racist challenge might force us apart. I want to trust these people. I like them, and ... they're all I have left. But I need more time to decide. It's no small thing to commit yourself to other people." (p. 167)

She is fundamentally alone, and she concocts a kind of religion in the process, trying to have other individuals join her belief system that "god is change", "that everything is change" and even that adherents can "shape god". She calls this system Earthseed. Maybe this concept is one of the weakest points of the story, with little elaboration and just some semi poetic hymns to introduce each chapter. It's an empty shell that she proposes. 

The novel is of interest because of its predictive power and the dark atmosphere.