Wild Seed is a science fiction novel by American writer Octavia E. Butler. Although published in 1980 as the fourth book of the Patternist series, it is the earliest book in the chronology of the Patternist world. The other books in the series are, in order within the Patternist chronology: Mind of My Mind (1977), Clay's Ark (1984), Survivor (1978), and Patternmaster (1976).

Wild Seed is the story of two immortal Africans named Doro and Anyanwu. Doro is a spirit who can inhabit other people's bodies, killing anyone and anything in his path, while Anyanwu is a woman with healing powers who can transform herself into any human or animal. When they meet, Doro senses Anyanwu's abilities and wants to add her to one of his seed villages in the New World, where he breeds super humans. Doro convinces Anyanwu to travel with him to America by telling her he will give her children she will never have to watch die. Although Doro plans to impregnate her himself, he also wants to share her with his son Isaac. Isaac has very strong telekinetic powers and is one of Doro's most successful seeds. By partnering Anyanwu and Isaac together, Doro hopes to obtain children with very special abilities.

Doro discovers that when Anyanwu transforms into an animal, he cannot sense her as he can all other super humans. Feeling threatened by her shape-shifting ability, he wonders whether he holds enough control over her. Anyanwu witnesses Doro's barbaric ways and plain disregard for his people, which frightens her. When they arrive at the seed village, Doro tells Anyanwu that she is to marry Isaac, and bear his children and the children of whomever else Doro chooses. Anyanwu eventually agrees once Isaac convinces her that she could be the only one to get through to Doro.

Fifty years later, Doro returns to the seed village. His relationship with Anyanwu has deteriorated, and one of the only things keeping him from killing her is her successful marriage to Isaac. He has come home because he senses that Anyanwu's daughter, Nweke, is fully coming into her powers. During her transition, Nweke attacks Anyanwu. Trying to protect Anyanwu, Isaac accidentally kills Nweke and suffers a heart attack. Anyanwu realizes she is too weak to heal Isaac and he dies. Afraid that Doro will kill her now that Isaac is not there to protect her, Anyanwu transforms into an animal and runs away.

After a century, Doro finally tracks Anyanwu down to a Louisiana plantation. To his surprise, Anyanwu has created her own colony, which in many ways is more successful than Doro's. She protects her people until Doro's arrival, at which point he forces his breeding program on her community. One man he brings to mate with one of Anyanwu's daughters ruins the harmony of the colony, resulting in several deaths. Anyanwu becomes tired of Doro's control, since his immortality makes him the only permanent thing in her life. She decides to commit suicide. Her decision causes Doro to have a change of heart. In desperation, he agrees to compromise as long as she continues to live. From that point on, Doro no longer kills as carelessly to remain immortal, and does not choose his kills from the people that he should be protecting. He also stops using Anyanwu to breed; from now on she helps him in his quest to try to find more promising seeds, but is more of an ally and partner than his slave.

Anyanwu is the Wild Seed's black female protagonist that is born in an Igbo (or Ibo as Doro says) village in Africa with genetic mutations that endow her with immortality and physical strength. She also possesses a preternatural ability to heal the sick and injured, including herself. Anyanwu is a "shape-shifter," someone who is capable of altering her cells to create a new identity such as a different body, sex, age, or even species− metamorphoses she calls upon when needed to assure her survival. She is viewed as a sort of mythical being living at the outskirts of a village of her people (including her many children) when Doro comes to her. She is only a few hundred years old compared to the few thousands Doro is at the time when they marry. Although she has the ability to do harm, Anyanwu is a highly moral woman with a strong sense of humanity. Important to Anyanwu are family and community, autonomy and companionship, love and freedom, all of which are threatened when she meets Doro.

Doro is the story's antagonist. He too is a mutant, born near Egypt, in Kush during the reign of the Pharaohs. As he approaches puberty, Doro learns quite accidentally that he is a "body snatcher," meaning that his life is extended by killing the nearest person to him and subsuming his/her physical body. His immortality, therefore, is fueled by cruelty, and a desire for power and control. Long ago he became singularly fixated on breeding superhumans to form a psionic society that will provide him with the human bodies he needs, as well as sexual partners. Doro's qualities are god-like, inducing members of his society to simultaneously fear and revere him. However, there is no one on earth that can satisfy his need for companionship, until he meets Anyanwu.

Isaac is Doro's favorite son. Isaac is physically human in all respects, but possesses an unmatchable telekinetic ability that Doro foremost desires for his constructed society. Doro successfully schemes to mate his son Isaac with his wife Anyanwu as the progenitors of a new lineage of superhumans. Isaac is very keen on the pairing as he likes Anyanwu a great deal and found her attractive, but she viewed the match as near-incestuous because she was at the time married to Doro, his father. The couple later formed a loving and enduring bond and raised a family together. As Doro's most trusted and respected son, Isaac developed a great rapport with the other inhabitants of Wheatley, one of Doro's seed villages, and was seen as a stand in leader while Doro was away.