Oryx and Crake

Atwood's latest and strangest novel is truly unlike anything she has previously written, and readers of Atwood's other novels may find themselves flipping to the front, checking to see if her name is really on the title page. Like "The Handmaid's Tale," which was also set in the future, "Oryx and Crake" describes a dystopic tomorrow-land--but there the similarity ends. Featuring an uncharacteristically sparse prose and an abundance of scientific content, Atwood's bitingly satirical and hauntingly apocalyptic novel seems heavily influenced by science fiction novels of the last three decades, even while it recalls such classics as "Frankenstein," "Brave New World" and especially "Robinson Crusoe.""Oryx and Crake" is technically a single-character novel; "Snowman" (or Jimmy) is the surviving human after a cataclysmic global disaster. He serves as a mentor of sorts to the strange yet harmless "Crakers," who have been so genetically altered that they resemble humans only in their basic appearance. Their blandness is so thorough that neither Snowman nor the reader can tell them apart. Through a series of flashbacks, Snowman describes his closest friends Crake and Oryx and their role in bringing the world to its present state; and he mockingly details his attempts at elevating them to the status of gods for the new species. Atwood doesn't really develop these two characters; instead she (through Snowman's eyes) presents only the basic, painful "truth" behind a new Genesis mythology.The novel, one could argue, depicts a second character: the scientific community. Through extrapolation (one might say exaggeration--but I'm not so optimistic about industrial self-control), Atwood projects into the future the topics of today's headlines: anthrax, genetically modified foods, cloning, gene splicing, weapons of mass destruction, the overuse and abuse of psychiatric drugs, Internet porn, SARS, ecoterrorism, globalization. On a lighter level, she also skewers the moronic corporate brand names flooding the market these days: anyone who thinks her inventions are far-fetched should consider such mind-numbingly lame (and inexplicably popular) trademarks as Verizon, ImClone, MyoZap, Swole, Biocidin, and Rejuven-8."Oryx and Crake" may well fall short of some readers' expectations for "a Margaret Atwood novel." But judged as an entry in the genre of science fiction, it's a powerful and visionary masterpiece.

Certain scenarios have become standard fare, almost cliches, within the science fiction world. The end of civilization, indeed the death of man himself, due to his constant meddling with the environment, other life forms, and his own germ plasm have been envisaged many times before. This book remains a cut above most earlier attempts, as it adds a very believable human face to the disaster, ties it to both man's dreams and his nightmares, and wraps it inside a potent love triangle.From the beginning of this book, where we meet Snowman, possibly the last true human, living in a tree and dependent on the half-human Children of Crake, till the very end of this book, where the full horror of the situation is clearly exposed, there is a sense of inevitability to events, a clear line to its envisioned world from the headlines of today. As Snowman tells his tale via flashbacks to his own past, a picture is developed of technology both fighting and aiding the deleterious effects of prior technologies. From the global warming induced drowning of the coasts and the collapse of world's resources abilities to feed an ever-growing population, to terrorist and greedy corporations designs of new diseases and environmentally harmful crosses of various animal species, each element piles on to background structure. In the foreground we follow Jimmy (Snowman's original name) and his childhood friend Glenn (Crake) as they go through school and find jobs as part of the elite, those whose mental abilities make them employable by the movers and shakers of the world, the genetic research laboratories. During their joint exploration of the internet, they run into Oryx, a child prostitute, who will eventually figure prominently in their lives.Crake is a very interesting character, a super-genius who keeps his own emotions hidden, sometimes even from himself, as he first conceives of and then implements the idea of designing a better human. A human who is not subject to wild emotional swings of love, who will not have the need to defend property as he will live on grass and sunshine, who will be carefully isolated from any contact with violence-causing ideas such as 'God' and 'mine'. But Crake is not immune to being human himself, and is in fact dependent on others, primarily Oryx and Jimmy, which is really his flaw. Jimmy is the perennial follower, but when forced to take charge, his actions become the final lynch-pin in the ultimate disaster and his tales the beginning of a new mythology. Oryx is the ultimate woman, fully caring and giving, perhaps too much so, without the ability to turn others to a line of action of her choosing - but perhaps she never wished to. These characters grew on me as I learned more about them, as each had characteristics I could see in myself, different parts of a mirror.The power of this book lies in the dynamic between the dream and the practical, between the intent and the result, between the giving and receiving of love. There are several layers of meaning and symbol buried within its fairly conventional story, layers that built an emotionally powerful edifice in my mind, an edifice completed with the last scene of this book. Sad and depressing, with little room for hope, a well depicted portrait of man as he is, unvarnished.--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

The only other book I read by the author was "Handmaid's Tale" and it was a great story. The fact that I agreed with the message of the book made it better. This novel, the latest by the author, is also a great story, and remains so even though I completely disagree with the author's message. The author's view of biotechnology is extreme and outlandish, and deeply cynical, but the story is captivating and one can find oneself totally engaged in it from the very first page. The story revolves around someone called "Snowman", an apparent loner in a world completely disrupted by biotechnology via the techniques of genetic engineering. It is a world containing many new transgenic creatures: the pigoons, rakunks, wolvogs, cane toads, snats, and flourescent rabbits. It is a world brought about by biotech industries going by the name of OrganInc Farms, HelthWyzer, and Nanotech Biochem. These industries used to exist on "Compounds", which were distinct from the "pleeblands", and "Compound" people did not go the pleeblands, the later being inhabited by addicts, muggers, identity-stealers, paupers, and crazies. The "human soul" has been discarded in this world, with this leading to a deeply apathetic populace desensitized to killing and torture. Transgenic animal creation was brought about by "biolab hotshots" who liked to fool around with the creation of animals: it made them "feel like God." And religion and God have been exposed as resulting from a "cluster of neurons", a "G-spot" in the brain, the elimination of which by genetic engineering was tricky but accomplished, giving people who were neither zombies nor psychopaths. Ironically, the author has more confidence in the efficacy of genetic engineering than those who even now are practicing it. Biotech managers and investors would wish that things were as easy as they are in the story. But they are not, and patience and millions of dollars in investment are needed to bring about a successful product. The biotech industry is very volatile at the time of publication of this book, definitely not the powerful behemoth able to bring about products and techniques as efficiently as they do in the story. The many transgenic animals that populate the planet in this future world are actually intriguing if viewed from another vantage point. The rapidity in which they come about as distinct species should not dissuade us from caring for them as we would any other lifeform. If biotechnology is efficacious enough to increase the diversity of life on this planet, this is indeed a virtue, not a vice. Will the story frighten many into an anti-biotech stance? It might, but this should not cause those who support biotechnology any concern. To attempt to refute a fantasy is a missappropriation of time; to attempt to create products that enrich life on Earth is time definitely worth spent, and a goal definitely worth striving for. The future holds much promise, and will be unlike anything the author envisages: yes, a world populated by thousands of new species of plants and animals, but also a world populated by billions of thinking machines, both human and non-human. If human history is the guide, it having been one of brilliant technological and scientific innovation, and, as statistics shows, an overwhelming repugnance to violence and war, then there is indeed much to look forward to. The author is a great story-teller, and this book (and others of hers) is ample proof of this, but she is a bad statistician. For humans are not the anxious, maladjusted, violent creatures of her books. Quite the contrary, as a mere counting will indicate, they have proved able to distinguish between good and bad, between what is worthy and what is not, and how to bring about change working for them, not against. In the words of the (jealous) deity in the most popular book in Western literature, humans definitely know good from evil, and with this ability, along with their wisdom and remarkable intelligence, have become as gods...

Book number one of a three book apocalyptic science fiction series. I read the well printed and well bound trade paperback published by Doubleday in 2004. I have ordered both of the other books in the series and am reading the second book now.Jimmy Snowman watches over the Children of Oryx and Crake on a seashore of North America. Crake was Jimmy's best friend growing up in the 2100s. Jimmy was an adman before the virus that killed 99.9% of the humans in the world, but Jimmy and Children were not affected since Crake gave them the vaccine. The Children of Crake are very different from present day humans, eating grass for their nutrition and engineered to be docile.The 2100s are very different from present USA. The first gene spliced spider / goat creature was presented to the public in 2100. Other creatures such as green rabbits, pigoons (pigs with human DNA able to grow a dozen human hearts or kidneys), wolvogs (crossed wolf / dog, very vicious), etc, etc, etc. Many treatments are gene spliced together and sold to the public as instant fixes for ailments.And there are the eco-terrorists. They created a microbe to eat the tar out of asphalt roads, leaving only the gravel. And many other reprehensible creatures and acts.

One day, something is going to be the end of the world as we know it. Superbacteria and/or a global plague. Nuclear war. Heck, maybe the zombie apocalypse. But why not climate change? In Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, it's climate that creates the void into which increasingly powerful corporations pour themselves. Soon, the divide between the haves and the have-nots becomes even more literal, with the highly-educated few retreating into city-esque complexes created and owned by business interests, while the masses are walled off into their own zones. Jimmy is born into privilege, to a mother and father who are good worker bees, and it is in the compound school that he meets Glenn, who becomes his best friend...and who ends up changing the world beyond what anyone could have imagined.As an adult, Jimmy has renamed himself Snowman (after The Abominable), and as far as he knows, he's the last "real" human left alive. There's a group of genetically engineered people, the Children of Crake, but they're not the same. He's left alone, in a devastated world, with only his memories and his guilt over the role he played in it all. These memories make up the bulk of the book, with very little actually happening in an actual plot sense. Jimmy does venture back to the last place he lived in search of food and sunscreen and medicine, which forces him to confront what happened with Glenn, who became Crake, and the beautiful, reserved Oryx, who was involved with them both. How they died, and how the virus that wreaked havoc on the rest of the world was released.It's a character study as much as a work of speculative fiction, and that's really Atwood's strength anyways. She loves to dig into the ways our little flaws can set in motion events that spiral out of control, to take the tensions underlying society and drag them up into the open. I find it really interesting that this book was written in 2003, the year I graduated high school, because so much of it seems to apply to the kinds of debates that continue to be relevant even now: just because we have the technology or knowledge to do something, does that mean we should? How do we weigh morality? Whose morality gets weighed? The writing date of the book does mean there are some things that come off anachronistic (she posits a world focused on disc-based storage, in which email is a primary communication method), a lot of it is startlingly prescient.Clearly I liked it, but it was not without failings. The biggest, for me, was its lack of developed female characters. Jimmy's mother is intriguing, but we see relatively little of her and through mostly his eyes, reflecting on the way her choices impacted him. Oryx remains to the reader just as mystifying as she largely is to Jimmy, and while I could see Atwood intending this as a statement of how men tend to project their own stories only the women they claim to love (Jimmy is convinced he knows parts of Oryx's past, which she herself denies), I wish we'd gotten more of her perspective. And as much as I enjoy character-driven novels, I wish it had been structured differently, so that it was taking place in the present rather than largely in the past. These are relatively minor issues, though. On the whole, this book is fascinating and thought-provoking and one I'd recommend widely (though maybe not younger/less sophisticated teenagers).