This book could fit into several of Bingo categories, and sadly has been banned in some places (usual suspects).
Written in 1993 and set in 2025, The Parable of the Sower is a frighteningly plausible story about a world impacted by climate change, political breakdown and economic and social inequity. The protagonist, Lauren Olamina, is a black teenager who has grown up outside of Los Angeles. Cars are a thing of the past, electricity is scarce and becoming scarcer. There is little rain to grow food and clean water must be
purchased. She lives in a walled community, though not a wealthy gated one. The families within the wall protect one another as best they can from outside thieves and drug fueled arsonists. Her father, a church minister, has taught her how to use a gun. She also has a condition of hyperempathy that makes her feel other peoples’ and beings’ pain. Depending on the injury the pain can be debilitating.
Without much detail it is clear that the national government has become symbolic rather than functioning. Police cannot be relied on for protection and are assumed to be corrupt. States have turned against one another, shoring their borders from neighboring state immigration.
Lauren feels that her father’s religion is not adequate for the world they face. Throughout the story, her version of a god is evolving to the conclusion that change is inevitable, change is god. She calls her new religion Earthseed, with the idea of creating a new Earth, somewhere. Lauren sees that the community will not be able to protect itself indefinitely and thus prepares a backpack of money and provisions to leave.
The time to leave comes fairly rapidly, her father disappears, presumably killed. Months later their community is attacked and nearly everyone is killed that night. She escapes with a white neighbor boy, Harry and Zahra, the youngest black wife of the community polygamist. They head north, hoping to eventually get to Oregon, Washington or even Canada. The highways are full of travelers, some benign, many dangerous, no one can be trusted. Everyone is a target for murder and theft. Money, clothing, weapons are stripped from the dead.
Along the way, their group gets bigger, as they are able to find individuals they can trust. Lauren shares her religious ideas with them. They aren’t enthused, but they tolerate the ideas, primarily the effort to start something new, somewhere new. I won’t spoil the ending, even though the ending is the least of this book. At the end of the edition I read was a conversation with Butler (she passed away over 20 years ago) She states; “the idea . . . is to consider a possible future unaffected by parapsychological abilities such as telepathy or telekinesis, unaffected by alien intervention, unaffected by magic. It is to look at where ware now , what we are doing now, and to consider where some of our current behaviors and unattended problems might take us.” This is the most powerful element of the book, and why it is so disturbing thirty years later. The longer we don’t attend to our current problems, the more probable this future seems.