The newly elected radical, authoritarian President Donner loosens labor protections, creating a rise in company towns owned by foreign businesses. However, Lauren is increasingly certain that despite all efforts, society will continue to deteriorate and the community will no longer be safe Lauren secretly prepares to travel north, as many do in search of rare paid jobs. Lauren's father, a Baptist pastor, holds the community together through Baptist religion, mutual aid, and careful use of resources, such as making bread from acorns. Public services such as police or firefighters are untrustworthy, exploiting their positions for profit and making little effort to help. Outside of the community are numerous homeless and mutilated individuals who resent the community members for their relative affluence. Lauren grows up in the remnants of a gated community in Robledo, California, twenty miles from Los Angeles, where she and her neighbors struggle but are separate from the abject poverty of the world outside. Her mother abused drugs during her pregnancy and left Lauren with ' hyper-empathy' or 'sharing': the uncontrollable ability to feel the sensations she witnesses in others, particularly the abundant pain in her world. Plot īeginning in 2024, when society in the United States has grown unstable due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed, Parable of the Sower takes the form of a journal kept by Lauren Oya Olamina, an African American teenager. Parable of the Sower is the first in an unfinished series of novels, followed by Parable of the Talents in 1998. In 2021, it was picked by readers of the New York Times as the top science fiction nomination for the best book of the last 125 years.

Parable of the Sower has influenced music and essays on social justice as well as climate change. Parable of the Sower was the winner of multiple awards, including the 1994 New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and has been adapted into an opera and a graphic novel. Earthseed also teaches that it is humanity's destiny to inhabit other planets and spread the 'seeds' of the Earth. The main tenets of Earthseed are that 'God is Change' and believers can 'shape God' through conscious effort to influence the changes around them. Several characters from various walks of life join her on her journey north and learn of a religion she has discovered and titled Earthseed. The novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young woman who can feel the pain of others and becomes displaced from her home. It is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth heavily affected by climate change and social inequality. Parable of the Sower is a 1993 speculative fiction novel by American writer Octavia E.

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