Oryx and Crake

Rating:
Summary: an apocalyptic dystopia that is entirely believable
Review: This is a frightening story of biotech run amok, first in the hands of corporations that form quasi-states in protected enclaves and then under the control mysterious bio-fanatics.

The protagonist, Snowman, is venturing out of his hiding place in search of food and supplies. He is a kind of spiritual mentor to a new species of humans, perhaps the only survivors - besides his mysterious presence - of some plague or war that completely wiped out modern civilisation. Along the way, he is harassed by genetically engineered beasts with frighteningly enhanced characteristics as well as his memories of a hard life with little love.

This sense of mystery, and the revelations that eventually build a fairly complete picture of what might have happened, make this a rivetting and fascinating read. The novel pulses with life and despair, very realistic psychologically in my opinion, which is what the best science fiction can do (such as the incomparable Octavia Butler). Though some reviewers have criticized her avoidance of explaining more completely the characters of Oryx and Crake, I think that she leaves just enough unsaid to stimulate the imagination; I liked what she left out. I simply could not put the book down and read it late into the night, aided by jet lag insomnia.

In terms of the science in the book, Atwood makes a very good and consistent interpretation of trends that are visible now. While I am more skeptical about how soon (if ever) genetic material will be decifered in a truly engineerable way - the public is largely unaware of how crude most biotech experiments really are - her vision is most definitely worth noting: it is thoughtful and alarmingly human, if hyperbolic to the point of satire.

This is the first book I read by Atwood. I must admit that I find her writing style uneven: clear and vivid, by somehow lacking fluidity and elegance. But she is a very powerful novelist and visionary and I will definitely read more.

Warmly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Well, maybe.....
Review: The problem with apocalyptic or "prescient" novels, in general, is that they walk a fine line between prescience and absurdity. Ms. Atwood certainly shows, in what was for me a compelling narrative, that she still has the stuff of which great writers are made, and the book manages to be thought-provoking as well. But a good many of the thoughts provoked tend to be a bit barmy upon further reflection: The possibility of a future filled with rather goofily named genetically engineered animals, for instance. The other reviewers have pretty much covered the literary ancestry of such novels. Orwell's greatly overrated 1984, for instance. It's 2004. Do we live in such a society that Orwell warned against or was predicting? Huxley's Brave New World is a much better comparison (and book) to Oryx And Crake. But still...Do we live in such a world? We are still reading books and even writing reviews of them in our spare time. It is well to remember that Huxley took his title from a line in one of Shakespeare's most fantastical plays, The Tempest. So, in the end, I would read the book for its fine writing and compelling story. Clearly, from the afterword, Writing Oryx And Crake, affixed to the end of my copy, Atwood was shooting a bit "higher" than this level. Perhaps it is a disease of established literary figures to feel the need to explain some grand design pertaining to the future of humanity in their works. But all this "slippery slope" business is a slippery slope in itself. Just read and enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: Worthy successor to Frankenstein
Review: Margaret Atwood's prophetic Oryx and Crake is terrifying, a nightmare that could become morning's reality. People are comparing Atwood here to George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, and Oryx and Crake to The Time Machine, Brave New World, and 1984. While it does hold kinship with these works, Oryx and Crake is more of a noble descendant of Mary Shelley's gothic classic, Frankenstein, the romantic thriller published in 1818. For instance, consider the following line from a Frankenstein review: "...it is a subversive and morbid story warning against the dehumanization of art and the corrupting influence of science. Packed with allusions and literary references, it is also one of the best thrillers ever written." That same line easily applies to Oryx and Crake. (The real horror here is that Vernon God Little won the Booker Prize the same year that Oryx and Crake was a short-listed runner-up.)

Like Dr. Victor Frankenstein, the supergenius known as Crake wants to develop a superior human being. But whereas Frankenstein was limited to using electricity, and developed a man who looked like, and was treated like, a monster, Crake has the biotech world of our not so distant tomorrow, so he genetically engineers not just one but a whole tribe of superior beings in his Paradice Project. (Only one example of the many cleverly misspelled terms used in this dark, often humorous novel). Called Crakers, this green-eyed new species of man, which comes in assorted skin colors, is capable of warding off diseases, and incapable of human frailties, such as jealousy and violence. Crake is not the scientist's real name, only one borrowed from a computer game in which the players use names of extinct species, such as Oryx, the name of the woman loved by both Crake and Snowman, our narrator.

As the story opens, Snowman, possibly the last human alive, sleeps in trees at night and forages through the ruins of humanity during the day. He tries to survive not only for himself, but also for the Crakers, for whom he is now the caretaker. Snowman was known as Jimmy, and we get to know Jimmy, as well as Crake and Oryx, through Snowman's flashbacks to their youthful past. Their past is our near future, one in which brilliant scientists live and work in sterile Compounds, while the rest of humanity lives in the disease-ridden Pleeblands (where the suburbs and malls are). In the business-oriented Compounds they know how to cure diseases, but to stay in business, they need to create new illnesses; there is no profit in good health. In other words, you need to create a virus so that you can sell your next anti-virus product (much like some software firms have been accused of doing in today's world). At the same time, some companies are creating superior watchdogs, called Wolvogs, and there are also the Pigoons, very large hogs that supply human body parts. So we have many Frankensteins in the future, giving us monsters of all kinds, for, when released, the Wolvogs and Pigoons find humans to be tasty morsels. Poetic justice, perhaps?

My favorite line is on page 205 when Jimmy finds out about the Wolvogs: "What if they get out? Go on the rampage? Start breeding, then the population goes out of control - like those big green rabbits?" Then on the next page he asks himself: "How much is too much, how far is too far?" And therein is the heart of the book.

In structuring the novel, the author was clever in giving Snowman/Jimmy two names; Snowman is in the present, Jimmy in the past. When the reader sees the name Jimmy, you know you are in a flashback, and vice versa. Of course, Atwood is one of the best at segueing into different places and time periods, as she did in the Booker Prize winning The Blind Assassin (2000). As you read, you see Jimmy age from child to adult, while, as Snowman, he tries to survive a world of multiplying terrors. The first half of the book is interesting and suspenseful, as Atwood unfolds the back-story and provides the necessary technicalities. Then when she has Snowman revisit the scene of the crime (the greatest murder in human history), the book turns into an edge-of-your-seat thriller, with the razor-sharp tusks of a pack of Pigoons literally snapping at the hero's heels. As a former farm boy who used to have nightmares about our large hogs ripping me apart, these scenes had me sweating a bit.

Not all mysteries are solved, only the major ones, leaving us to ponder the whys of Crake's insane actions, and the fate of the new beings. And not until the end do we find out why Jimmy, a non-numbers person, has survived. "My name is Snowman..." he tells the Crakers. "...I come from the place of Oryx and Crake." It is a place I will never forget, partly because Atwood has made it so real, but also because I know it is all quite possible. Our Frankensteins are already hard at work in their labs.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking, funny, disturbing
Review: This is my first Atwood book and based on just the first half of the book alone, I'm now going to find and read all her other works.

Magaret Atwood shows off her keen mind, an analytical mind of a William Gibson or a Neal Stephenson, but unlike those guys she mixes in a strong dose of criticism of today's corporate driven society in this dystopian vision of the near future.

The human race today, in 2004, is perhaps personified in the book by the genetic architect of the new homo sapiens, Crake, a man who apparently has terrifying nightmares, persued in his dreams by the logical outcome of his own genetic creations, but who claims no memory of such dreams and sees nothing but upside in his genetic fiddling. Atwood shows us what genetic engineering driven purely by corporate profiteering could be capable of doing to our world.

One of her ideas struck me particularly: Atwood postulated that society, hardly a decade or two from now, became too complex, too knife edge balanced, too fragile. Having consumed all easily available resources, only advanced science sustained the increasingly isolated lucky few (the "Compound" dwellers). A single devestating blow, and it lost all opportunity to recover .. forced back to a perpetual dark age. With no metals or minerals within easy reach of lo-tech survivors, and a harsh environment, humans are stuck, leaving nothing to show for centuries of development but raped environment, poisoned lands, climate change, and crumbling edifices that are no longer real, explainable, or re-attainable.

If you think a vision of "compounds" protected by private armies and based around corporations, dotted in a sea of dangerous and dirty "pleeblands", is unlikely, then think again: corporations are only gaining power each year (and are pushing courts to affirm constitutional rights previously only accorded to individuals). Every year uber rich individuals (inevitably, tied to those self-same corporations) increase the already obscene wealth gap, and work to isolate themselves further from taxes, laws that limit their influence, unfriendly governments, and the unwashed suburban worker masses, while pressing for patriot-act like legislation that can easily be deployed against anyone who threatens their serenity, grasp of money, or power.

Luckily, apart from all these gloomy ideas that make me want to get tear gassed at the next WTO meeting, the book is, in places, extremely (darkly) funny. It has paragraphs you just have to read aloud to the person sitting next to you.

Rating:
Summary: Atwood has written better books than this
Review: Sorry, but this is just not, in my opinion, anything clsoe to Atwood's best work. Clever, it certainly is, with wolvogs, other mutants, and the nightmares of a post-genetic-apocalypse. It's a skillful take on "Honey-we-blew-up-the-nukes" and "it's-not-nice-to-fool-with-Mother-Nature."

I was impressed with Atwood's ability to write raw prose about nasty subjects in an almost lyrical yet reporterly fashion. But this novel just didn't grab me. I found my self skimming ahead, not to see how it all turned out, but just to get through it. You might like it better than me, but I was underwhelmed compared to "Handmaid's Tale."

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, thought-provoking, and humorous, but SCARY!
Review: This is the first Atwood book I have read. The comparisons to Orwell's 1984 by literary experts and the puzzling mixture of "love it" and "hate it" customer reviews on this site definitely pushed me to give this book a try.

First, the comparisons to Orwell's 1984 are justified. From the very beginning, the reader is faced with a post-modern apocalytic earth and the central question: WHY? What happened? As the reader follows the main character, Jimmy (aka Snowman), as he journeys to secure additional food and supplies, one slowly learns about the why and, with little conjecture, can relate the book's fictional depiction of world tragedy to the growing potential for similar non-fictional tragedy in the future.

Second, despite the depiction of a future that many would not want to envision, the author finds it easy to intersperse humor and sarcasm in an entertaining manner. The reader learns of Pigoons, BlyssPluss, Rakunks, Wolvogs, and other concepts that stir both fear and laughter.

Finally, while many reviewers express disbelief in the apathetic depiction of Jimmy, I believe that Ms. Atwood actually chooses a character that is not especially disturbing given the way that the masses in our culture ridicule and demean anyone who challenges the status quo. Jimmy has learned to respond to culture with a mixture of cynicism, sarcasm, humor, and depression.

Bottom line: if you read to simply be entertained, you probably should skip this book. For those seeking entertainment only, this book deserves 2-3 stars. BUT, for those readers who prefer to be challenged intellectually and don't necessarily demand that everything make sense or turn out great in the end, then this book is deserves 5 stars. I suspect that the readers who didn't like 1984 or Animal Farm would also not like this book.

Rating:
Summary: Stayed with me.
Review: I didn't realize how much this book affected me until I started having dreams about blue people. That's the species bioengineered to replace us. The slowly unfolding explanations in the book make it creepier and creepier, and, as other reviewers have noted, not that far from possible. It was a great read, I couldn't put it down, and afterward, couldn't get it out of my mind, from the despair of the one surviving human, Snowman, to the horror of the predatory pigoons, a bioengineered animal, which stalk Snowman at one point. Read this book. If you like futuristic stuff, I also recommend Updike's Toward the End of Time, although Oryx and Crake is much better.

Rating:
Summary: Frightening wake-up call
Review: I confess that this book sent me into a state of depression. This is because Margaret Atwood has successfully extrapolated several existing global scenarios to their inevitable conclusions. The turning point for me was when I read about the spider-goats and realized that this part wasn't fiction. The future is here. Genetic manipulation of animals is occurring, and we all know what's happening with the corporate-controlled genetic engineering of our food supply (or at least we ought to). To my mind, Snowman ends up questioning how it all came to pass, finally realizing that, on all the occasions when (despite de-sensitizing and conditioning by the corporations in control and by the Internet/media) he questioned the morality of proceedings, he could have done something to prevent their outcome. My fear is that many of us will one day find ourselves in the same position.

Rating:
Summary: Clever
Review: A very fast and clever novel. One must be on somewhat of another planet (metaphorically speaking) to create situations like these. Taking place in the future but dealing with society much like today's, Oryx and Crake explores the world much differently than other futuristic novels. There is a unique language about it which is smooth and almost poetic. There are also so many 'made up' terms included. It reminded me a little of Lord of the Rings in the sense that you read not only a story, but also learn details about a whole new place (ie: new kinds of people, new kinds of places that don't exist in our world today). The novel is pretty creepy at times, and is somewhat similar to the ideas of the Matrix, but it is still entertaining nonetheless and is really fun to discuss with your friends who have read it as well. It is one of those books that people are going to really get into or just not like at all. Some other great books of the year that I read are Three Junes, Lucky Monkeys In The Sky, Life Of Pi, and Aloft

Rating:
Summary: Definitely Atwood's best
Review: The past two books I have read by Atwood ("Alias Grace" and "The Blind Assassin") did not impress me all that much. Really, except for "The Handmaid's Tale" and "The Robber Bride" I hadn't found much to like in Atwood's fiction. "Oryx and Crake" has redeemed her completely. It is without a doubt her best book, better even than "The Handmaid's Tale."

There is very little that can be said about the plot since the whole book is like a detective story. The whole point of reading it is to figure out who and where Snowman is. But here are the basics. The book opens with Snowman, who lives in some future time, in a world empty of all normal humans. All that exists to his knowledge is himself and strange people he calls Crakers. The book then flashes back to Snowman's earlier life, when he was known as Jimmy and was best friends with a boy named Crake. Jimmy and Crake lived in a time not too dissimiliar from our own, but it is obviously still sometime in the future. The rest of the book alternates between the two time frames, explaining in the process how Jimmy became Snowman and how the rest of the world has become extinct. In the course of the novel, we also meet Oryx, who is an amalgam of women Jimmy obsesses over.

Atwood bases her vision of the future on sound science, mainly genetic manipulation. The world she creates runs wild with rakunks (racoon skunk mix) and the spoat/gider, a genetic splice between a spider and a goat that actually does exist in Canada for the purpose of creating a super-silk used in bullet-proof vests. This is a picture of a society so obsessed with security and scientific advancement that it has sacrificed freedom and individual desire. But as in all dystopic novels, Atwood takes these scenarios to their extreme conclusions and apocolyptic implications.

This book is one of the finest dystopic novels I have ever read. It is more readable and less preachy than "A Brave New World" and less political than "1984." "Oryx and Crake" has a little bit of everything. I didn't expect it to be as funny as it is. The Crakers that Snowman cohabits with are naive and know nothing of the world or the humans who used to inhabit it. As such, Snowman creates a mythology for them, which leads to some laugh-out-loud scenes. Jimmy/Snowman as a whole is a likeable and hilarious narrator. The story is engrossing and I could not put it down. The fact that it reads like a detective story makes it all the more compelling. Overall, this is a nearly perfect read...interesting, smart, funny, and thought-provoking. Highly recommended