“Parable of the Sower is a science fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler, the first in a two-book series. It was published in 1993.
Set in the 2020s where society has largely collapsed due to climate change, growing wealth inequality, and corporate greed,
Parable of the Sower centers on a young woman named Lauren Oya Olamina who possesses what Butler dubbed hyperempathy or “sharing” – the ability to feel pain and other sensations she witnesses.
As a teenager growing up in the remnants of a gated community near Los Angeles, she begins to develop a new belief system, which she comes to call Earthseed. (…)
Lauren believes that humankind’s destiny is to travel beyond Earth and live on other planets, forcing humankind into its adulthood, and that Earthseed is preparation for this destiny.
She gathers followers along her journey north and founds the first Earthseed community, Acorn, in Northern California.”
“The Parable of the Sower (sometimes called the Parable of the Soils) is a parable of Jesus found in the three Synoptic Gospels in Matthew 13:1-23, Mark 4:1-20, and Luke 8:4-15.
In the story, a sower sows seed and does so indiscriminately.
Some seed falls on the path (wayside) with no soil, some on rocky ground with little soil, and some on soil which contained thorns.
In these cases the seed is taken away or fails to produce a crop, but when it falls on good soil it grows, yielding thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold.
Jesus then (only in the presence of his disciples) explains that the seed represents the Gospel (the sower being anyone who proclaims it),
and the various soils represent people’s responses to it (the first three representing rejection while the last represents acceptance).”
