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. When the community's security is compromised, her home is destroyed and her family is murdered, and she travels north with other survivors. Society outside the community walls has reverted to chaos due to resource scarcity and poverty, and mixed race relationships are stigmatized amid attacks against religious and ethnic minorities. 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.
Proposed third ''Parable'' novel
Butler had planned to write a third Parable novel, tentatively titled Parable of the Trickster, which would have focused on the community's struggle to survive on a new planet. She began this novel after finishing Parable of the Talents, and mentioned her work on it in a number of interviews, but at some point encountered writer's block. She eventually shifted her creative attention, resulting in Fledgling, her final novel. The various false starts for the novel can now be found among Butler's papers at the Huntington Library, as described in an article at the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Parable of the Sower was referred to in hip-hop artist Talib Kweli's song "Ms. Hill" off his mixtape . In the song, which is about Lauryn Hill, Kweli references how Lauryn Hill used to come into Nkiru and liked to buy Octavia Butler books, namely Parable of the Sower. "We used to chill at Nkiru / her moms was a customer / she used to love to buy the books by Octavia Butler / Parable of the Sower, the main character's name was Lauren". In Lauren Beukes' 2013 novel The Shining Girls, the body of one of the victims, Jin-Sook Au, a social worker, is found with a copy of Parable of the Sower. Part of the central verse of Earthseed, "All that you touch you change, all that you change changes you", is included in track 2 and 6 of Sugar Candy Mountain's album 666. The work of hip hop/R&B duo THEESatisfaction was influenced by Octavia Butler. The third track from their 2012 album awE NaturalE, "Earthseed", contains themes from the Parable series: "Change there are few words / That you can say / We all watch things morphing everyday." In season two of the Netflix series The OA, Parable of the Sower is recommended by a book seller. In season three of the HBO series High Maintenance, the character Cori is seen reading Parable of the Sower in a bar. In the bonus track for rapper George Watsky’s album X Infinity, Chinaka Hodge raps: The Parable series has been highly influential in science fiction, particularly for people of color. In 2015, adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha co-edited Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, a collection of 20 short stories and essays about social justice inspired by Butler. In 2020, adrienne maree brown and Toshi Reagon began collaborating on a podcast called Octavia's Parables.
