#8: Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (Earthseed #1) [JRI]

[kareila]

So glad I finally got around to reading this. I had to look and see when it was first published - according to Goodreads, in the fall of 1993, which I think would make it one of the first (if not the very first) in the genre of YA dystopia. The story depicts events starting in or around the year 2026 that astonishingly and unfortunately don't seem all that farfetched, although Butler couldn't have predicted the rise of cell phones and social media; in her future, radios are the most reliable source of information, and telephone calls still cost money. But in other respects, the apocalypse it imagines seems far too believable: landscapes devastated by climate change, entire towns destroyed by rampaging drug addicts or enslaved by multinational corporations, widespread poverty and disease and illiteracy, and isolated communities forced to arm themselves in the absence of compassionate local government. The protagonist, Lauren, is a black woman who grows up in one such guarded neighborhood, unable to trust anyone who doesn't live inside its walls, learning survival skills and planning for a future she can't control or predict. She's even more vulnerable than most, due to a birth condition called hyperempathy that forces her to feel the pain of anyone suffering in her proximity. But she's also very good at reading people and situations, so she's as prepared as she can be when tragedy finally forces her to flee her home at the age of eighteen. What's so astonishing about her journey is that she's able to convince strangers on the road to join her in common cause, based on her homegrown religious beliefs that she comes to call Earthseed. I don't know if her fate is to become a prophet of the age or the leader of a failed cult, but I hope the sequel will provide more answers.