![]() ![]() Butler tells her story with unusual warmth, sensitivity, honesty and grace though science fiction readers will recognize this future Earth, Lauren Olamina and her vision make this novel stand out like a tree amid saplings. ![]() Lauren notes: She believed in a literal acceptance of everything in the Bible. Sims, a devoutly Christian member of Lauren’s neighborhood who kills herself despite believing that people who commit suicide will go to hell. ![]() ![]() But she dreams of a better world, and with her philosophy/religion, Earthseed, she hopes to found an enclave which will weather the tough times and which may one day help carry humans to the stars. This is tragically illustrated in the case of Mrs. Lauren suffers from `hyperempathy,'' a genetic condition that causes her to experience the pain of others as viscerally as her own-a heavy liability in this future world of cruelty and hunger. Lauren Olamina, a young black woman, flees when the paints overrun her community, heading north with thousands of other refugees seeking a better life. Diseases like measles ravage the population, people fight and die over water, and new drugs take over the survivors. In the Los Angeles area, small beleaguered communities of the still-employed hide behind makeshift walls from hordes of desperate homeless scavengers and violent pyromaniac addicts known as ``paints'' who, with water and work growing scarcer, have become increasingly aggressive. Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler takes you to the year 2024 environmental degradation and economic collapse have all destroyed American society. Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Butler's first novel since 1989's Imago offers an uncommonly sensitive rendering of a very common SF scenario: by 2025, global warming, pollution, racial and ethnic tensions and other ills have precipitated a worldwide decline. ![]()
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