Parable of the Sower (1993)
By Octavia Butler
This story opens in southern California in 2024, in other words, just a few years from now. Lauren Olamina, who narrates her story in diary passages, is the 15-year-old daughter of her town's pastor. Her state is suffering from a heat wave and 6-year drought, and there is an epidemic. Jobs are scarce, education is uneven and police are unreliable, even if they are bribed. People are forced to take the law into their own hands - nearly everyone owns a gun - as burglary and theft have become a way to survive.
Lauren enjoys some measure of security as her family lives in a walled community. But she sees the desperation around her, and decides to escape at some point. She studies farming, takes target practice, and prepares a bag of supplies. A few years later, her brother escapes beyond the wall - but he is killed by drug dealers. Then her father disappears. Eventually the wall is breached, the community is attacked and people are shot, buildings are burned, and Lauren is the only survivor in her family. She grabs her survival bag and gun and heads north with two other survivors, walking along a main highway. The small party grows to ten, as more desperate survivors seek safety in numbers. One of them, Bankole, owns property north of San Francisco, and the group members all commit to head north together and try to make a new community on Bankole's property. Lauren (now 18) is the natural leader and she has been working out a new religion which she calls "Earthseed"; she hopes it will be a way for her to understand God and a way to unite the community. The band suffers many calamities en route, and after arrival at Bankole's land, but the story ends on a note of hope.
2024 California is too eerily like 2020 California.
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