Can this seed fall on good ground and bear fruit?

Now that I've read Octavia Butler's biography it was time to read one of her books and I chose Parable of the Sower.

I've been aware of Butler's name for years, which is why I read her biography. I have not been a science fiction fan since my twenties, however, which is why I'd never read one of her novels. The science fiction I once read tended to feature space and science: The Man Who Sold the Moon, The Martian Chronicles, The Andromeda Strain. Butler, based on this title, is up to something else.

The first person narrator, 15-year old Lauren Olamina, begins telling her story on July 20, 2024. (The book was published in 1993 and the entries are dated.) She lives in a walled community north of Los Angeles with her father, who is a minister and the community's leader, her step-mother, and brothers. Lauren is hyperempathetic; if someone nearby is injured she literally feels the pain.

Civil society is collapsing. A new drug has blighted the country. People who take it, "burners," shave their hair, paint themselves garish colors, and start fires. Fire for these addicts is better than sex. The police are indifferent or corrupt or, like the firemen, want to be paid before they'll help. Rival gangs war one each other and anyone foolish enough to cross them. Stores and businesses that can afford armed security guards survive; those that can't don't. America is becoming a country of all against all.

Halfway through the book as Lauren's life becomes grimmer and grimmer the compound's walls are breached and burners pour through burning and slaughtering indiscriminately followed by scavengers who steal whatever they can. Lauren and two neighbors escape. The second half of the novel is the story of their perilous trek north.

A number of things struck me about the book. Butler is black and Lauren is black; she has to be careful traveling with a white companion and in fact passes as a man. Butler wrote when crack cocaine was plaguing the country. Lauren does not like or trust the police (with good reason). Although society is collapsing, radio stations still broadcast and ammunition for weapons is still available (and a good thing).

Also, a major thread in the book is Lauren's thoughts about God and development of a religion. "God is Change, and in the end, God prevails. But there's hope in understanding the nature of God—not punishing or jealous, but infinitely malleable. There's comfort in realizing that everyone and everything yields to God, There's power in knowing that God can be focused, diverted, shaped by anyone at all. But there's no power in having strength and brains, and yet waiting for God to fix things for yo or take revenge for you."

I don't know what I expected when I opened the book. I was impressed by Butler's imagination and inventiveness and I'm delighted I finally read it.