Oryx and Crake

The most effective visionary, futuristic novels are placed not too far beyond the present. Circumstances and situations with which we are familiar are extrapolated to reveal their potentially catastrophic consequences. In this amazing novel, with her ineffable imagination and creativity, Atwood foretells the horrific outcomes of genetic modifications, corporate hegemony and unabated climate change.

After a pandemic has obliterated the human species, Snowman believes he is the only human left on earth. The world is rife with animals that are gene-spliced mutations developed for various commercial purposes, now feral and threatening to him. "Pigoons" are pigs that were modified to grow organs suitable for human transplantations, but to show more Jimmy are highly intelligent and deadly stalkers. Of all the genetic creations from the corporate labs, the most disturbing are the "Children of Crake", humanoid-like naifs who have been genetically engineered to eliminate the complex and destructive human characteristics so prominent in humans.

Snowman -- Jimmy before the apocalypse -- is living in the crudest conditions imaginable (he sleeps in trees). Through his memories he tells us how this collapse came about. He grew up in a high security corporate compound of scientists and engineers who are engaged in radical gene splicing to create marketable products of new organisms. Society has become largely bifurcated , the have-nots live in"pleeblands", desolate urban centers. The elite are segregated in secure and exclusive corporate compounds. At his private corporate school Jimmy meets Crake whose intellectual superiority over his peers is quite plain. They amuse themselves by playing video games and looking at porn sites, including one where they encounter Oryx, a child of striking appearance who has been sold into sex trafficking. Jimmy becomes obsessed with the image of Oryx who he will encounter later. Jimmy's mother grows disillusioned with the corporate world and abandons the family. Jimmy eventually finds out that she has joined an underground group of dissenters who are fighting against the corporate giants. These protesters are relentlessly pursued by corporate security.

After high school, Crake graduates to an elite science university while Jimmy goes to a third-rate institution focused on the arts. After holding a mediocre copy writing job writing advertisements for various genetically modified products, Jimmy is recruited by Crake to handle similar work for his compound. There, Jimmy learns of the magnitude of the experimentation on genetic modifications including the creation of the human-like creatures known as the children of Crake. Oryx has been brought in by Crake for a job involving selling the firm's products across the world. Oryx is Crake's girlfriend, but she starts a sexual relationship with Jimmy. One product Oryx is selling is a pill that enhances sexual libido but which has a time-release element that will decrease human fecundity thereby solving the overpopulation problem facing the world. Unknown to Crake, however, there is a component in the pill that creates a massive disease pandemic that spreads death throughout the world with astonishing speed, killing everyone. Crake, realizing what he has done kills Oryx before Jimmy shoots him. Because Jimmy has been living in a bio-isolated section of the compound he escapes the infection and makes his way to the sea shore near a colony of the children of Crake who have not been susceptible to the disease. Jimmy journeys back to the compound to get supplies and narrowly escapes the perils of attack by the vicious animals all around the area.

The book's conclusion won't be revealed here, but it clearly leads to the second book of the MaddAddam trilogy that you'll be compelled to read.

In "The Handmaid's Tale", Atwood takes political and cultural fringe elements that we are familiar with to their dystopian zenith. In this novel, she projects the horrific possible outcomes of science experimentation and technological application that is guided by corporate greed unfettered by ethical constraints. There is no consideration of "should we do this?", only "if we do this we can make money." The corporate world is Icarus-like in utterly failing to realize the consequences of flying too close to the sun. The familiar meme of the "mad scientist" alone in his laboratory engaged in malevolent experimentation is now the "mad corporation" doing likewise. In the seventeen years since its publication, the novel's worrisome themes seem more evident than ever. The nascent technology of genetic modification has advanced but its limitations, legally or ethically, are not settled issues. Corporations show ever greater inclination for short-term money-making over the long-term health of people and the planet. Wealth and power are more inequitably distributed now than in 2003. Something nowhere seen in the novel is the presence of countervailing political power that checks corporate behavior. In our time, is not corporate control over the political sphere, that is purported to represent the voice and will of the people, stronger than ever? And, sadly, we know in 2020 that a pandemic that spreads rapidly through the world population is not a fantasy. show less

Addictive and winding, this is one of those books which will suck you in within pages, leaving you unable to stop and still wondering why. Atwood's winding structure is a labyrinth of grief, discovery, and the dangers of technology and so-called progress, and while her characters may be difficult to fully engage with or relate to, they are as believable as they are realistic to the world she creates. All together, this novel is a stunning journey into a future which seems all too possible, humorous and heartbreaking as it may be.

One warning: as the first book in a trilogy, this novel doesn't hold as much closure as many readers (including myself) would hope for. The writing and the story are enough to pull me in for the second work in show more the series, but I'm not thrilled that the story here didn't end on a clearer note or hold a more insular narrative. It may be worth noting that, were the second book not already in stores, I'm not sure how long the story would stick with me and pull me back in after a wait for publication. show less

Many things irritated me about this dismal, leaden, simple-minded satire of biotech and corporatocracy. I'm unkindly disposed to stories told in flashback, for a start, and also to present-tense narration, and this book alternates between the two. My tolerance for evil genius characters is low, and lower still when they sneakily plot the demise of all mankind. And if there's one type of character I like even less than that, it's young male slobs, and these two guys take up 95% of the bloated page-count without ever approaching multidimensionality. There's one other character, an ex-child sex slave cum-exotic Oriental mystery woman-cum new Eve whose dialogue, though minimal, is indescribably exasperating. There are some pointless and show more mildly offensive references to Asperger's and neurotypicality. The corporations, products, websites etc. all have idiotic 50's-style wacky phonetically spelled names like ReJoovenEsence, Noodie News, AnooYoo, and NiteeNite.com (a site where you watch people off themselves, duh). Atwood succumbed to a serious case of sci-fi neologism-itis here. It's a boring book; very little happens and the non-ending would be infuriating if it didn't come as such a relief.

The gene-splicing at the heart of the plot is laughable. Hey, what do you get when you cross a raccoon with a skunk? A "rakunk"! What's that, a spider-goat hybrid called a spoat? A snake-rat (you guessed it, "snat") which is apparently... drumroll... a snake... with the head of a rat... FML.

But what irked me most about Atwood's craptastic connect-the-dots dystopia was the lack of imaginative effort. Other than the Doctor Moreau-style menagerie of mutant freaks, her "near-future" doesn't seem to have moved on at all from 2003. There's internet (used exclusively for snuff porn and live news feeds — strangely e-commerce isn't a thing in this world of all-powerful consumer-facing corporations) but no smartphones; CD-ROMs and DVDs are cutting edge tech; emails go back and forth but she apparently wasn't familiar with instant messaging; résumés are still sent out by mail. There are glaring inconsistencies like New York having been relocated due to sea-level rise but Seattle and Fiji apparently being just fine. All of this isn't bad in itself, but it demonstrates laziness, a lack of interest in the future, and by extension a lack of interest in the present she's trying to criticize. Atwood rejected the tag "science fiction", possibly in an attempt to absolve herself of the responsibility for putting some thought into her future or maybe because she's a snob, but I don't see how her preferred term, the quibbling "speculative fiction", gets her off the hook. When we read a historical novel we expect a basic effort from the author to make the setting convincing; surely novels set in the future should meet the same standard. The whole thing comes off as condescending, arrogant, the product of a laurel-ensconced doyenne who can do no wrong.

And on top of it all she asks us to believe in a North-American high-speed rail network! show less

Mixed feelings about this one.

On the one hand, Atwood was a pioneer when it comes to cli-fi, and this book is a marvelous exploration of all themes related to the ongoing climate crisis. Genetic modification of foods and life, technological hubris, climate injustice: it's all here already. And described with great wit and grim humor. It is quite amazing how timely the book still feels, how Atwood already avoided the 'lost wilderness' trope and anticipated the cultural and technological dimensions of climate change.

On the other hand, I feel like the book could have achieved what it does in less pages. It fails to truly develop its main characters, although it incessantly keeps on building its world. Particularly disappointing was the show more description of Oryx, the protagonist's True Love, whose identity is only revealed at the very end of the novel. The problem is that this happens quite abruptly, without exhibiting her character traits at all. Whereas the entire book seems to build towards this revelation, the character of Oryx ultimately remains shockingly flat.

All in all, I think that the book is strongest as a critique of society and weakest as a plot-drive narrative. show less

Reading this made me realize that dystopias are so time-specific and reading one written today that addressed so much of how we live right now felt much more exciting and thought-provoking than the dystopias written in a different era. I'd never thought about it before but as great as the classics are, they always felt a bit dated and read more for school than for me. Oryx and Crake's take on our obsession with physical preservation, magic pills, and self-help culture was dead on and a reminder of how uncomfortable it can be to think about where some of these paths may lead.

The man formerly known as Jimmy tries to survive in a post-apocalyptic world while remembering his adolescent friendship with the man who destroyed everything. They began their life sheltered in a corporate compound, grew up to be the smartest of the smart while the outside world suffered, and then decided they could do better than Mother Nature. Now there is only Jimmy, the last real human, and the results of their hubris.

When I selected this book in November 2019 to be read in November 2020 I had no idea it would become so relevant! This was was at least my 3rd time reading it, if not 4th or 5th. This time I thought constantly about the people in the plebelands, outside the compounds. What was their life really like, aside from show more Jimmy's limited narration? I doubt it was really so bad that destruction would be better. Crake claimed to see through corporate hypocrisy and greed, but he still couldn't see the humanity of the poor, or actually care about anyone.

I always say each read of this book will be my last, but it probably won't be. show less

The Short of It:

You know when they say that books should make you feel things? Yeah. Oryx and Crake will definitely leave you feeling things.

The Rest of It:

*No Spoilers*

I purchased this book at least a decade ago. I started it a few times and couldn’t get into it, but then a group of us online picked it as a book club pick, and so I looked for my copy, found it (amazing given the pile of books I have) and dove in.

I’ll be careful not to give much away because most of what you feel while reading it, is shock and dismay that such things can exist, and actually do today.

Atwood describes a bleak world. There is the before, and then there is the after. As a reader, you get a glimpse of how we got here but there is much left to the show more imagination as to what prompted it all. Dystopian worlds are bleak and lifeless but with Oryx and Crake, the story is teeming with life but in the most disturbing way.

Animals are hybrids. For example, Raccoons and Skunks become their own breed. Pigs? Something else entirely. People, aka humanoids, run around without clothing as there is no need for it. Food is scarce. But just like now, there are the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS. The Haves are pulling the strings and everything in this story is Biblical in nature.

Think Adam and Eve and the serpent.

Oryx and Crake is part of a trilogy which includes The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam. This book was a tough read. It was hard on my soul. Not just because of the times we are living in, but because the subject matter is delicate and that is why I will include a trigger warning here for sexual content because Atwood does not handle it in a delicate way. It’s front and center, in your face. I had to put the book down a few times but since it was a group read, I kept going.

Atwood called this story a “romance” and that just blows my mind.

Will I read the others in the trilogy? Probably, yes. Because as numb as we can all be to the nonsense of this world, you have to feel things now and then to know that you are still here. show less