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Oryx and Crake

In her most recent novel, Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood envisions a future where extreme biotechnology merges with commerce to produce catastrophic results. Snowman, our narrator, lives out his final days recounting this catastrophe by reminiscing about his previous life when he was known as Jimmy to his best friend Crake and lover Oryx.

If forced to acknowledge it as such, then yes, I will concede that, as far as we can be guided by such labels, Atwood's novel is a work of science fiction. It is set in a dystopic future and the plot is driven by technological circumstance rather than character development. In fact, the title characters are little more than cardboard cutouts emblematic of larger themes; they are also opposites in many ways. Crake is a biotech genius with a starkly rational mind, not given to displays of emotion, seemingly all-knowing, but often naive about the world. Oryx is an enigmatic former third-world child prostitute, seemingly naive, but in reality emotionally mature and highly street-smart.

The world Snowman remembers is, like many sci-fi dystopias, a world of haves and have-nots. The have-nots are consigned to the "pleeblands" while the haves live in any of a number of "compounds." Sealed behind their guarded walls, they are free to experiment on genetic improvements, designed less for the good of the world than to cash in on a quick buck. You know the trouble is about to start soon after Crake reveals to Jimmy his intertwined pet projects, a libido-enhancing drug with socially beneficial side-effects and the development of a small colony of genetically modified humans with all of the "worst" human traits stripped away.

It was hard for me to tell what to make of this book. Partly because the results and motives are so ambiguous and partly because we are viewing events through Snowman's/Jimmy's eyes, it is difficult to pass judgment on Crake as either a savior of the human race or as the embodiment of evil. Meanwhile, there is no denying that Atwood has crafted a very compelling page-turner that I'm not likely to soon forget.

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