In the year 2024, a year of despair and sorrow, a girl with "super empathy" feels the pain of others.
A strong voice that believes in the power of change

America in 2024, devastated by extreme climate change and a series of economic crises.
In a world rife with gunfire, drugs, arson, and murder, people struggle to survive.
Fifteen-year-old Lauren lives in a walled village with her pastor father, family, and neighbors.
Lauren believes the world needs change.
Lauren writes down what she believes and gives voice to the townspeople who live within the walls.
Lauren has a secret.
Suffering from 'hyper-empathy syndrome', which allows one to feel the pain of others.
Although survival in the outside world will be even more difficult because of this, Lauren decides to go outside the wall in the hope of a slightly better future.

“The world is still changing.
The adults in our neighborhood, thanks to the epidemic that didn't completely disappear, still cling to the past and wait for the good old days to return.
But the world has already changed quite a bit and will change even more in the future.
The world is always changing.
“Right now, it’s not a change that’s easy, taking small steps at a time, but a change that’s taking big leaps forward.”
_Page 99 of the text

1984, The Handmaid's Tale, and The Parable of the Sower
The most realistic dystopia that has spanned 30 years

"The Sower's Parable" is a science fiction novel that yearns for the vast universe, a coming-of-age story about the young protagonist Lauren as she searches for a new world, and a dystopian novel that depicts a world on the verge of collapse with a sharp eye.
A great dystopian novel can sometimes feel like a prophetic book, foreseeing its time.
This is natural if we consider the characteristic of literature that describes social problems by zooming in as if looking at them through a microscope.
The future depicted in the work is so vivid that it seems as if Butler traveled from 1993 to 2024 and saw and wrote about the era firsthand.
Unlike previous works that featured surreal elements such as supernatural powers (Wild Seed), time slips (Keene), and aliens (Bloodchild), the world of Fable of the Sower is quite realistic.
The landscape of 2024—nations collapsing due to climate change and economic crisis, giant corporations exploiting workers, people erecting walls to keep out strangers, and discrimination and hatred running rampant—is familiar to us today.
Butler has stated that he wanted to write a realistic future story, not a novel where problems are solved by superpowers or magic.
This work is the result of Butler's realistic portrayal of the future.
Butler's strength in weaving multi-layered narratives shines through in this novel as well.
Although it deals with a large and weighty story, the narrative tension is maintained until the very end, making it a book that you will read in one sitting the moment you open it.

Female figures who create a new world
The power of empathy and change to overcome discrimination and hatred

The novel's protagonist, Lauren Oya Olamina, is a young black woman and a minority with a type of disability called hyper-empathy syndrome.
Lauren's appearance, with its overlapping minority characteristics, is a characteristic of the protagonist that Butler presents in each of her works, and is also a characteristic of Butler herself, who pioneered a path as a black female writer in an era when science fiction literature was considered the exclusive domain of white men.
The women in The Parable of the Sower face existential threats.
Rape is commonplace for women outside the walls, and women inside the walls are bought and sold as property to wealthy men.
For Lauren, survival is even more difficult because she is young, black, and has physical limitations.
But Lauren isn't discouraged.
Lauren leaves her father's Baptist pastor religion and becomes the founder of Earthseed, a group that believes in "change" as their god.
Write down your beliefs, stand in solidarity with minorities, and create new communities.
Lauren epitomizes the image of a woman who, having been driven from the position of a victim to the position of a weakling, has regained her place as a subject creating a new world.
Lauren's hyper-empathy syndrome is Butler's suggestion to readers living in a time of suffering.
The author says that the feeling of empathy, the ability to suffer with the sick, is essential for those living in the end times.
Furthermore, Butler promotes change as a force to counter disaster.
The science fiction master's message that believing in the power of change and taking action for a better world is the only way to overcome disaster resonates deeply.

"If everyone shared in the pain of everyone else, (omitted) who would inflict needless suffering on others? I never once thought my illness could have any positive effect, but looking at the way the world is going now, it seems my problem might be helpful.
“I would like to share my hyper-empathy syndrome with others.”
_Main text, pages 200-201

A rich perspective encompassing religion and mythology
The Odyssey, a "fable" that leads to "The Parable of the Blessed One"

The Parable of the Sower is permeated with Butler's legacy of thought across all fields.
As the title, 'The Parable of the Sower' suggests, Butler has placed biblical quotations and metaphors in appropriate places throughout the work.
The Earthlings' ideology, which values ​​change, has some similarities to Buddhism, and the poem written by Lauren in the work borrows the form of the Tao Te Ching.
The protagonist Lauren's middle name, 'Oya', comes from the indigenous religion of the Yoruba people of West Africa.
Oya is a clever yet menacing female deity of the Niger River, and Butler explains that she has incorporated this deity's characteristics into Lauren.
Rich in metaphors, this work could easily become a modern-day fable.
Butler's 'Fables' series consists of two volumes.
The next volume, Parable of the Talents, depicts the 2030s, a time when a far-right president has emerged and the oppression of minorities has intensified.
The slogan put forward by the president in the novel is somehow frighteningly familiar: "Make America great again."
In a world that has become worse than hoped, it's worth looking forward to seeing how Lauren's will will continue.

There's much debate about which dystopia best predicted its time, but none surpasses Butler's Fables series.
- New Yorker

An excellent novel that stands alongside 《1984》 and 《The Handmaid's Tale》.
- John Green (author)

Butler's dystopia is eerily twisted yet palpably familiar.
We empathize with the protagonist's longing for a better world, and we realize that we have a responsibility to make that longing a reality.
- San Jose Mercury News

Here and now, I capture real women in my work.
That's why Butler's female characters are bound to be some of the most compelling in the history of science fiction.
- Village Voice

An odyssey filled with prophecy.
- Essence

Is there any other story of hope and faith as powerful as this?
- Denver Post

A dystopian novel from the past that shows a terrifying present rather than a dystopian novel depicting a harsh future.
This is why this novel, written in 1993, is even more special today.
- Gloria Steinem (feminist activist, journalist)