Have you ever picked up a book written thirty years ago and felt like the author time-traveled to right now and started taking notes? That’s this mind-blowing Parable series for me—especially this year. Octavia Butler dropped *Parable of the Sower* in 1993 and the mind-blowing *Parable of the Talents* in 1998, and she set the first one smack in 2024-2027… which means we’re literally living inside her opening chapters. Fires, droughts, skyrocketing prices, walled neighborhoods, company towns, cops you can’t trust, and politicians screaming “Make America Great Again” while everything burns? Yeah. She saw us coming.
Butler called these “cautionary tales,” not prophecies, but… the girl was prophetic.
The Quick Rundown (No Major Spoilers—Just Enough to Hook You)
The hero is Lauren Olamina, a teenage Black girl growing up in a crumbling suburb outside L.A. She’s got this condition called “hyperempathy” (she literally feels other people’s pain), which is both a superpower and a massive liability in a world gone feral. When her little walled community finally falls apart, Lauren hits the road north, gathering survivors and secretly writing verses for a new belief system she calls **Earthseed**.
The core of Earthseed?
“God is Change.”
That’s it. No bearded guy in the sky—just the unstoppable truth that everything shifts, and the only sane response is to learn how to shape the change instead of getting crushed by it. And the big destiny? “The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.” Humanity has to get off this dying planet or we’re done.
The first book, *Sower*, is Lauren’s coming-of-age survival story—brutal, beautiful, and full of people trying to hold on to their humanity while the world forgets what that word even means.
The second book, *Talents*, jumps ahead a few years. We get multiple narrators (including Lauren’s daughter, who is… not exactly a fan), and things get darker. A far-right Christian nationalist president rises on the slogan “Make America Great Again,” promising to put “real” Christians in charge and “re-educate” everyone else. Earthseed gets labeled a cult. Things get ugly fast.
Why These Books Wreck Me (and Probably Will Wreck You Too)
1. **It’s happening right now.**
Climate collapse, water wars, homeless encampments, private security replacing police, debt slavery, politicians weaponizing churches—Butler didn’t miss a beat. Reading *Sower* in 2025 feels like reading tomorrow’s headlines today.
2. **Earthseed is the religion I didn’t know I needed.**
Every chapter starts with a verse from “Earthseed: The Books of the Living.” Stuff like:
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change.
God
Is Change.”
It’s practical, unsentimental, and weirdly hopeful. In a world of doom-scrolling, it’s like a spiritual life raft.
3. **Lauren is complicated.**
She’s brilliant, driven, ruthless when she has to be, and deeply empathetic (literally). But she’s not always likable. She’ll choose the long-term survival of the species over individual comfort every time—including her own family’s. The second book really digs into the cost of being a founder, a prophet, a mother to a movement instead of to one kid.
4. It’s unfinished, and that hurts in the best way.
Butler planned at least four more books (Parable of the Trickster, Parable of the Teacher, Parable of Chaos, Parable of Clay). Trickster was supposed to follow Earthseed colonists to a new planet and watch them almost destroy themselves all over again. She hit writer’s block hard—said the future felt too depressing—and never finished. We end *Talents* with the first shuttle launching to the stars… and that’s it. Bittersweet as hell.
Where to Start & What Order
Just read them in order:
1. Parable of the Sower (1993) – the one that’ll make you text your friends “yo we need to talk about this book” at 2 a.m.
2. Parable of the Talents (1998) – darker, angrier, and won the Nebula Award for a reason.
There’s a gorgeous graphic novel adaptation of *Sower* by John Jennings and Damian Duffy if you want visuals. And Toshi Reagon turned it into an opera that apparently slays live.
Final Thought (Because I Can’t Shut Up About This)
These aren’t just dystopias—they’re survival manuals wrapped in stories. Butler doesn’t give us a neat happy ending because real life doesn’t do neat. But she does give us Lauren, and Earthseed, and this stubborn refusal to believe humanity is doomed even when everything says we are.
In 2025, when the news feels like the evening update from Robledo, California… I keep coming back to one Earthseed verse:
“Kindness eases Change.
Love quiets fear.”
If you’re feeling the weight of the world right now, read these books. Cry if you need to. Then maybe plant something—literal seeds, metaphorical seeds, whatever.
Because Change is the only god we’ve got, and we still get to decide what we do with it.
Which one are you starting with—Sower or jumping straight into the deep end with Talents? Drop your thoughts below; I live for Parable conversations.
