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Oryx and Crake

(MaddAddam #1)

Margaret Atwood (Goodreads Author),

Campbell Scott (Narrator)

4.01 · Rating details · 209,361 ratings · 12,709 reviews

Listening Length: 10 hours and 29 minutes

The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the ...more

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Audible Audio, Unabridged, 11 pages

Published May 9th 2003 by Random House Audio (first published April 22nd 2003)

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Jul 22, 2010 Michael rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2000s, fiction-that-speculates, most-popular-reviews

So, you go to Wal-Mart to buy your groceries because it's so damn cheap, but then you realize Wal-Mart is hiring very few full-time employees and not offering reasonable health care to its employees and it's walking employees through the process of how to get Medicare, not to mention they're closing down small businesses by exploiting foreign economies to get the lowest possible fucking cost; so, Wal-Mart's making YOU pay medical benefits for ITS employees, and replacing good jobs with shitty ...more

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Dec 07, 2009 Tatiana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Tatiana by: Gypsy Ryan, Misty

Shelves: contemporary, 2010, favorites, dystopias-post-apocalyptic, booker

I wonder if all Margaret Atwoods books are like this one? Having read "Oryx and Crake" and "The Handmaid's Tale," I am curious now how many other ways of horrifying me she has up her sleeve.

"Oryx and Crake" is a dystopian (or as Atwood calls it herself, a speculative fiction) novel set in a future where genetic engineering rules the world. The story is told from the POV of Snowman, a seemingly last Homo sapiens sapiens on Earth. He is surrounded by the new breed of humans - passive, docile I wonder if all Margaret Atwoods books are like this one? Having read "Oryx and Crake" and "The Handmaid's Tale," I am curious now how many other ways of horrifying me she has up her sleeve.

"Oryx and Crake" is a dystopian (or as Atwood calls it herself, a speculative fiction) novel set in a future where genetic engineering rules the world. The story is told from the POV of Snowman, a seemingly last Homo sapiens sapiens on Earth. He is surrounded by the new breed of humans - passive, docile Children of Crake who are physically flawless, void of envy and jealousy, do not understand violence or sexual drive, unable to be artistic or comprehend technology. As the story progresses, through Snowman's recollections, we gradually learn the sequence of events leading to the fall of humanity as he knew it and Snowman's own contribution to it.

The structure of the book is very similar to that of "The Handmaid's Tale." So if you liked the writing style of that book, with constant shift of tenses, past and present mingled together, you'll enjoy "Oryx and Crake" too. Once again, Atwood takes a current trend (this time it's bio/genetic engineering) and extrapolates it to an insane extent, creating a horrifying world of social disparity, violence, genetic hybrids, raging man-made viruses... The author's imagination is limitless, her command of English language is mind-blowing. This book is so much more than a science fiction novel that it so often labeled. It is a deeply philosophical book that raises numerous questions: is it wise to artificially alter something created and perfected by Nature over millions of years? does a man have a right to engineer a "perfect human" and decide who lives and who dies? or is there such a thing as a "perfect human"?

Just like "The Handmaid's Tale," the ending is uncertain. The fate of Snowman and humanity is questionable. Will the humanity survive? Will Crakers overtake? Are Crakers really what Crake intended them to be - the perfect beings? There are no answers, and I am happy there aren't. This book is not intended to tell us what is right and what is wrong, rather it makes us think about what might be...

Reading challenge: #13, 3 of 5 ...more

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Oct 01, 2008 Lindsay rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Recommends it for: diehard Atwood fans

Shelves: science-fiction, dystopia, margaret-atwood, read-in-college, read-for-fun, postapocalyptic, genetic-engineering

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This is the second dystopia Atwood has written, and I think it's less successful than The Handmaid's Tale. Her vision here is of a not-too-distant future in which the US is divided into corporate-owned gated communities where the (biotech) companies' owners and highly-paid skilled workforce live and the lawless, sprawling urban wasteland where everyone else lives.

Unlike virtually every other Atwood book I know of, the two main characters are male. The narrator, Jimmy, and his childhood friend This is the second dystopia Atwood has written, and I think it's less successful than The Handmaid's Tale. Her vision here is of a not-too-distant future in which the US is divided into corporate-owned gated communities where the (biotech) companies' owners and highly-paid skilled workforce live and the lawless, sprawling urban wasteland where everyone else lives.

Unlike virtually every other Atwood book I know of, the two main characters are male. The narrator, Jimmy, and his childhood friend Crake grow up inside one of the gated communities, bonding over Internet pornography and shared cynicism. As Crake grows up, it becomes evident that he is a genius, so he gets accepted to an elite science-and-technology school and drafted into a biotech firm while he's still a student. While he works there, he cooks up an apocalyptic plot to release a superbug disguised as a libido-enhancing pill once he's perfected his own synthetic race of humanoids, which he designed as an answer to everything he's identified as "wrong" with human nature. For example, the "Crakers" have photosynthetic pigment in their skins, which means they do not have to kill to eat. Crake also designed them to be cheerfully promiscuous and have obvious signals of sexual receptivity, thus eliminating conflict over sex. Crake's a real humanitarian, except for the whole "kill off Mankind 1.0" part of his plan.

Structurally, the novel suffers from being too long and taking too long for the story to move forward. Indeed, the whole thing is told in flashbacks, with Jimmy reminiscing as the Crakers pester him for stories of their creator. Atwood erred on the side of too much description in Handmaid's Tale as well, but that was a shorter novel (maybe 100 less pages than Oryx and Crake) and the society she was revealing to us was better realized.

Also, a lot of touches that were clearly meant to be satirical fall flat. One of Crake and Jimmy's favorite pastimes in youth is playing computer games, and the games Atwood comes up with are transparent attempts to shock us with the nihilism of her young antiheroes. Also, every other object in the novel is given some cutesy brand name. This is clearly an attempt to mock the corporatization of global culture, but the effect is just irritating.

None of the characters particularly register, either. Two of Atwood's trademark Elusive Women figure in this novel --- Jimmy's mother runs off while Jimmy is a preteen, for reasons we never learn, and when Jimmy meets up with Crake again when they are adults, and Crake is designing his new species, Crake has a mistress named Oryx, who never allows either man to get to know her, though she sleeps with both. The difference between these and other Elusive Women (say, Grace Marks in Alias Grace, Zenia in The Robber Bride, Joan in Lady Oracle or Marian in The Edible Woman) is that the others either revealed themselves to the reader if not to the men in their lives, or (like Zenia and Grace) gave us enough interesting possibilities that we cared to speculate as to their true natures. These women elude not only Jimmy and Crake, but also the reader.

The men, though given (many) more pages of character development, are nearly as flat. Crake is a clear instance of metaphor abuse: he is indicated to be "mildly autistic," as the college he attends is nicknamed Asperger's U. and he disparages his old high school as containing "wall-to-wall neurotypicals." As his autism never appears in his behavior or becomes relevant to the story (indeed, it is never mentioned except in the chapter titled "Asperger's U."), I suspect it was only brought up to underscore the single salient point of his character, which is his detachment from the rest of the human species. The sole salient point of Jimmy's character seems to be that he is not Crake. ...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Emily May rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia-utopia, sci-fi, 2013

Sometimes I'm torn between wishing I could get a glimpse inside Atwood's mind and thinking that might be absolutely terrifying.

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Jan 02, 2019 Sean Barrs the Bookdragon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, 5-star-reads

Oryx and Crake is an exceptionally weird novel that left me baffled, stunned and even disgusted; however, as time went on, it developed into one of the cleverest pieces of fiction I have ever read.

Behind the child pornography, ritualistic killings and animal abuse two young teens relished watching in their spare time on the internet, resided a dormant drive to understanding the excesses of human behaviour in order to dominate it. One of the boys (Crake) is phased by nothing; he is cold, ...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Annet rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: wilderness-books-can-usa, apocalyptic, favorites, dark, weird, creepy, fantasy, beautiful-poetic, booker-pulitzer-nobel-material, favorite-author

How can someone make up such a fascinating and terrifying story? Wow.... I absolutely loved it. It took me some time to take this book from my book shelves, it was there already some time, it seemed a bit weird, but after having read the Handmaid's Tale, I took up the challenge and it was well, well worthed. An apocalyptic story about a guy who seems to have remained as the sole human alive after an epidemic catastrophy leading to mankind going down. Together with the weird Crake's children he ...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Rebecca rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommended to Rebecca by: Stephanie

I am calling complete, and total, bullshit.

There are so many things wrong with this book that it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, the idea of having a couple of different timelines going at once, and shift tenses according--present tense for the present, regular past tenses for the past--causes some serious grammatical problems, and is an utter BS plot device. I'm not a huge fan of telling a story through flashbacks, but it can be done reasonably while retaining proper grammar. It's I am calling complete, and total, bullshit.

There are so many things wrong with this book that it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, the idea of having a couple of different timelines going at once, and shift tenses according--present tense for the present, regular past tenses for the past--causes some serious grammatical problems, and is an utter BS plot device. I'm not a huge fan of telling a story through flashbacks, but it can be done reasonably while retaining proper grammar. It's not brain surgery.

I admit that I went into this book predisposed not to like it, for a variety of reasons. I didn't like The Blind Assassin (yes, I might be the only person IN THE WORLD who can say that), but I thought that I should be fair and give an author another chance before I make up my mind. I also generally dislike dystopic literature, because it's so rarely done right. Her basic idea was kind of interesting (if done better in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, and even that had its problems), but the execution was fatally flawed. I don't know much about science, but I do know that some of the research was wrong and the timelines don't add up. She seemed like she researched just enough to be able to throw words around, but not enough to use them correctly--a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The biggest problem was the characters, though: three such utterly unsympathetic main characters do not make it easy to like anything about the story. Crake was a rabid dog that needed to be put down a lot sooner than he was, Oryx was probably insane and too cold to make you care, and Snowman was just too damn stupid. Also, characters that you meet while they're watching child porn to me means that they should be first in line for the electric chair, not that I should care about their personal problems.

The biggest problem I have with Atwood, though, is a problem that seems to be systemic in her works: she's so bloody arrogant. When you open one of her books, you're immediately hit in the face by a thought bubble: She is writing World Changing Literature, and you should grovel before her genius. You have to dig through layers of ego just to get to the plot. She has talent, no doubt, but she is so full of herself and her ability to be a Literary Writer that you miss the book forest for the literary trees.

Also-also, she probably thought that ending was clever, but it was, in fact, a cop out. She was bored with the book, she wanted to end it, so she did. It must be convenient to not have to actually tie up her loose ends.

In summary, I am clearly too much of a plebeian to appreciate the full extent of her genius, and I should crawl back to the benighted hole from whence I came. ...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Fabian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

What a fantastic dystopia awaits! Our post-apocalyptic fate will surely be a wonder to behold. Atwood BUILDS UP when any other 'sensible' writer writing today about the doomed future would simply TEAR DOWN. In this compulsively-readable novel, the fabulous formula borrows some ingredients from such classic books as "The Island of Dr. Moreau"& "Jurassic Park"; "The Road" and "Never Let Me Go*" derive from the same line of thought as it! It's basically SUPERIOR to all of those books (save, ...more

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Apr 26, 2018 BlackOxford rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian

One Generation Away

I often find it difficult to tell whether Atwood’s dystopian fantasies are meant as constructive social criticism or as sarcastic prophecy. Recent headlines suggest that her prophetic skills dominate, and with them her anticipatory sarcasm.

In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the MeToo movement, for example, the British actress Joanna Lumley is reported to be fervently hoping that “not all men are bad” [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainm...]. As Spencer Tracey ...more

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Oct 19, 2009 karen rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dysto-teque, the-end, upstairs-neighbors

eh.

bore-x and crake. this is a very all right book. i was just unwowed by it. initially, i liked the pacing of the book, and the way the story was spooling out between the present and past, doling its secrets out in dribs and drabs. but the characters just seemed so flimsy, and i was ultimately left with more questions than explanations. and the cutesy futuristic products and consumer culture bits are best left in the hands of a george saunders, not the queen of the long pen. however - and this ...more

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Feb 25, 2010 Will Byrnes rated it liked it · review of another edition

I had read Year of the Flood not realizing that it was a sequel to Oryx and Crake. Thus a desire to see what else was in store in this post-apocalyptic vision. Atwood portrays a world in which short-sightedness causes a major, global collapse in civilization. We travel with a few characters through the transition from bad to unimaginable and see what might happen if we continue along some of the paths we now trod. Genetic engineering is at the core here, and along with it flows a a consideration ...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: People who like dystopias

Recommended to Manny by: Jordan

Shelves: science-fiction, well-i-think-its-funny, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, parody-homage, blame-jordan-if-you-like, if-research-were-romance

Snowman has spent a terrible night, full of confused, whiskey-sodden dreams, and when the Children of Crake call to him from the bottom of his tree he is still mostly asleep.

"You don't exist!" he shouts. "You're not even characters in a Margaret Atwood novel! You're just part of a review. And Manny won't write it until Jordan's finished the book as well."

None of this makes sense to Snowman, and it makes even less sense to the Children of Crake.

"What is a novel?" asks Eleanor Roosevelt.

"And who ...more

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Jul 20, 2018 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-books, you-ll-need-an-antidepressant, apocalypse-now

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it

It's the end of the world as we know it

and Jimmy feels fine.

Jimmy feels fine.

Actually, wait. That's not true. It's the end of the world, and Jimmy's the last human standing and he feels. . . he feels. . . well, Jimmy feels like shit.

He's wrapped in a bed sheet, he's filthy, he's hungry, and he's alone, with nothing but his worries, his regrets and some strange non-humans, known as Crakers, to keep him company.

And why ...more

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Oct 20, 2009 Kemper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi, apocalypse-now, modern-lit, playing-god

Geez. That was the most depressing apocalypse ever.

A guy called Snowman is playing caretaker and prophet to a strange new race of people he calls the Crakers in the ruins of civilization. As Snowman forages for supplies, his recollections make up the story of what caused a massive biological and ecological disaster that has apparently wiped all the old humans out except for him.

Snowman’s past takes place in our near future where he was once known as Jimmy in a society where genetic engineering ...more

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Jun 22, 2010 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: maple-flavoured

I'm coming back to the authors who marked my literary 'coming of age': Vonnegut, Atwood. These two, for me, are the grand-daddy and grand-mammy of my bookish adolescence. They were life rafts held out by a couple of high school teachers. I grabbed them and held on. I simply cannot review either properly, so wrapped in nostalgia is my own point of view; so personal my reaction. I'm reading them now to see how they hold up and what they have to say to me 30 years later; and in Atwood's case, to ...more

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Nov 16, 2016 Joe Valdez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: sci-fi-apocalyptic

My introduction to Margaret Atwood is Oryx and Crake, her 2003 science fiction novel that leaps from the post-apocalypse back to the months leading up to it. This is a future that owes its legacy to Philip K. Dick, where ecological disaster and civil unrest are kept outside the compound walls of the biotech industry, whose engineers toil on some troubling new creations. The novel is lesiurely paced and droll but kept me engrossed via the sharpness of its wit and a creeping dread that builds ...more

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Dec 25, 2017 J.L. Sutton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Even though Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake was absolutely amazing, it took me a few readings before I was ready to review it. Like many of her other novels, Atwood presents events leading up to her dystopian future with a cold logic. How the characters participate in these events as well as the world of the 'crakers' (which comes after humanity) makes this story truly memorable. It can be a little difficult following events in the beginning; however, it is well worth the effort. Atwood's ...more

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Dec 27, 2016 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, science, literature, canadian, 20th-century, apocalyptic

Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake is a novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and "adventure romance" rather than science fiction because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do" and goes beyond the realism she associates with the novel form. The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character with the name of Snowman, living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers. Flashbacks Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake is a novel by the Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and "adventure romance" rather than science fiction because it does not deal with things "we can't yet do or begin to do" and goes beyond the realism she associates with the novel form. The novel focuses on a post-apocalyptic character with the name of Snowman, living near a group of primitive human-like creatures whom he calls Crakers. Flashbacks reveal that Snowman was once a boy named Jimmy who grew up in a world dominated by multinational corporations and privileged compounds for the families of their employees. Near starvation, Snowman decides to return to the ruins of a compound named RejoovenEsence to search for supplies even though it is overrun by dangerous genetically engineered hybrid animals. He concocts an explanation for the Crakers, who regard him as a teacher, and begins his foraging expedition.
Main characters: Snowman, Crake, Oryx, Sharon, Jimmy's father, and Ramona.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و هفتم ماه دسامبر سال 2006 میلادی
عنوان: اوریکس و کریک؛ نویسنده: مارگارت اتوود؛ مترجم: سهیل سمی؛ تهران، ققنوس، 1383؛ در 511 ص؛ شابک: 9643115119؛ داستانهای نویسندگان کانادایی - سده 20 م
اوریکس: نوعی آهوی آفریقایی ست، و «کرِیک» پرنده‌ ای ست، که در فارسی به ترتیب به آن‌ها : «تیزشاخ» و «یلوه ی حنایی» گفته می‌شود. «اوریکس» و «کریک» لقب دو نفر از شخصیت‌های اصلی کتاب است، که از نام همین دو حیوان، که در زمان رخداد داستان، منقرض شده‌ اند انتخاب شده است. رمان در زمانی آغاز میشود، که نسل انسان بر اثر شیوع بیماری، از بین رفته؛ و تنها یک نفر از بازماندگان آنها، در کنار نسل جدیدی از انسانهای تولید شده در آزمایشگاه، به زندگی ادامه میدهد. با فلش بک، و یادآوری خاطرات، توسط همین «جیمی»، خوانشگر کتاب، از چگونگی ماجرا آگاهی پیدا میکند. ا. شربیانی ...more

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Jan 28, 2015 Glenn Sumi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: canadian

Talk about timing.

Just as the weather goes nuts – sunscreen and shorts one day, parkas the next – and mysterious diseases warrant masks, along comes Margaret Atwood's Oryx And Crake, a novel that explains these and other global warning signs.

This is Atwood's second successful work of speculative fiction. But where The Handmaid's Tale focused on gender and reproduction in a totalitarian regime, Oryx And Crake examines genetic splicing and disease.

We begin in a post-apocalyptic world, barren and ...more

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Jun 24, 2014 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, margaret-atwood

"Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?"

I read a book on the future (a nonfiction on the future, that is a bit of an oxymoron, I know!) about the fourth industrial revolution last week, and going through the list of paradigm shifts that are taking place at this very moment in time, I felt increasingly uncomfortable. "I know this already", I thought. "And I know where it is going to lead."

Almost by instinct, I took "Why is it he feels some line has been crossed, some boundary transgressed? How much is too much, how far is too far?"

I read a book on the future (a nonfiction on the future, that is a bit of an oxymoron, I know!) about the fourth industrial revolution last week, and going through the list of paradigm shifts that are taking place at this very moment in time, I felt increasingly uncomfortable. "I know this already", I thought. "And I know where it is going to lead."

Almost by instinct, I took Oryx and Crake from the bookshelf, and opened it in the middle. "Just checking a little," I thought. And then I went back to the beginning of the novel, which is in fact ... the end ... of the fourth industrial revolution, if all that can go wrong goes wrong. And please tell me if I missed the moment when Murphy's law stopped applying?

Rakunks and Pigoons may make up for all the extinct species, but where is Snowman to find a comfortable cave with a view and air condition for his lonely and hopeless Robinsonade in a post-Anthropocene world with a few Crakers for only company?

As I am a diehard Atwood fan, I know she will deliver the myths for the post-human phase as well, but it still breaks my heart when former Jimmy realises that as he loses the concept of certain words, they die with him, for there is nobody out there to share them with him. All this striving for perfect power, only for humanity to destroy itself out of ambition.

Please, Margaret Atwwod, stop being such a prophet of doom. It is scary reading over Halloween. Even if it is the second time. Especially as it is the second time, and we are deeper into the paradigm shift now than ten years ago, with no insight in sight. Sorry for the pun. They will die out too, if stupidity has its way. And it always does, doesn't it?

So, as long as we are a literate species, why not try Oryx and Crake? It is a sign of occasional intelligence occurring in our species. Let's celebrate that:

"When any civilization is dust and ashes," he said, "art is all that's left over. Images, words, music. Imaginative structures. Meaning—human meaning, that is—is defined by them. You have to admit that." ...more

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Jun 16, 2014 Brian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I wanted to give myself three months to reflect on this book before writing anything about it. I have a tendency, upon finishing a novel that I really, really love, to annoy the shit out of friends and loved ones by first trying to impress upon them the need to read this book now, NOW - and failing that, to wax hyperbolic and ecstatic over its charms. To them I am the litboy who cried wolf.

And yes, it has only been two months, not three, but I've read the other two books in the MaddAddam series ...more

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Sep 17, 2019 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, dystopian, novels, series, canadian-21st-c

Wow, if you thought the world of Handmaid’s Tale was a stark utopia, it is an almost happy ending compared to Snowman’s world in Oryx and Crake.

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May 31, 2012 Rowena rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: dystopia, canada, atwood, bookclub-reads

The blurb says Oryx and Crake is a love story. I must be missing something!There's nothing really romantic about this story, it's a novel that questions society's ethics and morals. Dystopian novels always make me feel a bit paranoid, this one more so because we actually have the technologies Atwood described in the book, and genetic experimentation is always a hotly-debated topic. How far are we willing to go, and what will the repercussions be?

This book was very entertaining, and a quick read. ...more

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Jun 03, 2018 Timothy Urges rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Margaret Atwood deserves all the admiration and praise that she receives, and then some. Such a clever and erudite woman can only make the world a better place. And she does this by showing the horrors of what could easily become our reality.

Oryx and Crake is a post-apocalyptic novel about Snowman, a lone survivor of a nightmare future. Snowman represents all the dirtiness of the human-collective. He is us. He carries shame and regret and a willingness to cling to hope.

The revelations are ...more

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Dec 28, 2007 Ratiocination rated it did not like it · review of another edition

A mainstream author writing science fiction badly. Basically, tries to have it both ways: referencing real-world, present-day biotechnology without bothering to be accurate about it. I didn't enjoy reading it, and I don't like the implication-- that writing SF just involves throwing terminology around. One wouldn't have much patience for a legal thriller that ignored basic courtroom procedure; one wouldn't have much patience for a medical drama that got human anatomy wrong. I don't have much ...more

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May 24, 2011 Aloha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-sci-fi, a-own, b-apocalyptic-post-apocalyptic, a-audios, a-reviewed, b-dystopian, 1-favorites, a-ebooks, z-atwood-margaret

I started this book knowing that this is a post-apocalyptic novel. I knew that Snowman had survived some sort of mass destruction of mankind because of an experiment gone awry and is fighting for survival. The story started with Snowman sleeping in a tree, waking up in a survival mode, with the last of his provisions. He then observes the children at a distance, obviously not surprised or afraid of them. They knew him as they approached him and chanted his name, “Snowman, oh Snowman.” Who are I started this book knowing that this is a post-apocalyptic novel. I knew that Snowman had survived some sort of mass destruction of mankind because of an experiment gone awry and is fighting for survival. The story started with Snowman sleeping in a tree, waking up in a survival mode, with the last of his provisions. He then observes the children at a distance, obviously not surprised or afraid of them. They knew him as they approached him and chanted his name, “Snowman, oh Snowman.” Who are these children? They questioned him about found items that most of us would know, a hubcap, a computer mouse, his beard that they call “moss”, etc. I wondered about the children and why they're so innocent of things we take for granted in this world. I’m thinking that the children must have been babies when the apocalypse happened. But wait, I read that it's only been 2-3 mos. since the apocalypse. Then peculiar descriptions of the children began, such as skin resistant to ultra-violet light, each perfect, each a different skin color, but all with green eyes. And then there’s this Crake that Snowman kept on referring back to as the maker of rules, as the one he has to go to for answers. Snowman makes a pretend gesture with his broken watch as if receiving signals from Crake for answers, to satisfy the children’s questions. Then Oryx comes into the picture. Snowman talks to her, a pretend entity. The tale alternates between Snowman, a name from when Jimmy jokingly references himself as The Abominable Snowman to the Crakers, as he survives his post-apocalyptic world and his past.

The story flashes to Snowman’s memory of his childhood. His name was Jimmy then. He was raised in a dystopian society in which genetic engineering was encouraged for economic success and supersedes over any moral qualms. This was because mankind has depleted their natural resources and ruined the environment. His father worked at OrganInc Farms, a genographer who was one of the chief architects of the Pigoon project. The pigoons were meant to be hosts to organs that could be easily transplanted to humans to avoid rejection, a reference to our current experimentations such as the Vacanti mouse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacanti_... - which has a human ear grown on its back and meant to avoid rejection upon transplantation. In this dystopian world, the architects of genetic engineering were the top dogs as they were encouraged to do whatever needs to be done to make life better for the humans. His family lives in luxury within the Compounds, built by biotech companies for their employees. They live among the high IQ genetic engineering elites and their children. The Compounds are protected by CorpSeCorps, keeping out the pleeblands, the less intelligent and talented humans who are left to live in the ruins of mankind’s waste, the desperate consumer of products created by the elites. In this world, the biotech companies rule because they provide what mankind desperately wants, genetically engineered food to replace naturally-created food that is no longer viable, feel-good drugs as relief from an increasing nightmarish world of depleting resources and crime, and products that enhances looks and sexual desire.

Jimmy befriends Glenn, who later becomes known as Crake. Glenn’s nickname is from his codename Crake on an online game called Extinctathon, a trivia game in which they name the extinct species of animals and plant life. The genius Crake is the ultimate rational overcoming any human empathy he may have, the premier reflection of their society’s treasuring of the mental elite and devaluing of arts and the humanities. Jimmy and Crake spent many teenage bonding hours together traversing the internet and playing games that reflect their world of cheap life and instant gratification of violence and sex. They played violent games like Three-Dimensional Waco, Barbarian Stomp, and Kwiktime Osama. Crake is an expert at side maneuvers, where you not only have to see where you’re going, but you have to see where your opponent is going. They visited voyeur websites such as nitee-nite.com, for viewing people committing assisted suicide, and various porn sites. It is at one of these sites, HottTotts, that they first encountered Oryx, an approximately 8 year old child from a southeast Asian country who was sold into child sex slavery and forced to perform porn acts. Her haunted eyes seemed to stare at Jimmy, the guilty voyeur, the distant participant to her slavery. He kept a print out of her because she touched his humanity, the part that made him feel guilty for the first time at the things he was doing.

Crake later became an elite researcher and saved Jimmy from a life of working in a monotonous low-level job. When Jimmy came to work for Crake as the marketing man, Crake revealed to him that he was working with human embryos, to create a race of humans with what he considers harmful qualities removed. They are all of different shades of multi-colored skin to avoid racism. They are placid and has no need for hierarchy or territoriality. They have cyclical and plural sexuality, and mating rituals to promote reproduction-only in order to avoid sexual frustrations, rape and jealousy. They are meant to be a religion-free, placid race. It was also while working for Crake that he encountered the adult Oryx, who was working to help the Crakers adapt to the world and who was also Crake’s whore, purely to satisfy his sexual frustration. Then there came a triangle of Jimmy’s friendship with Crake and Jimmy’s deep love for Oryx. Ultimately, Crake, an expert at side maneuvers in online games, pulled a side maneuver on the society he detested, to leave Jimmy alone in the world to be guardian over his genetically engineered children.

The three main characters have symbolic meanings. Crake, with his hierarchy, logic, and anti-art, represents the masculine or yang quality. Oryx, with her forgiveness and adaptability, represents the female or yin quality. Finally, Jimmy represents the balance of the male and female, the aggression and the bending, the yin and the yang. Crake’s blaming of sexual frustration on the ills of society reflects the historical masculine point of view that women, considered the instigator of sexual feelings from men, are the root of evil. This results in traditions that have caused evils to be done to women because they were blamed for inciting men’s lust. Oryx was the all-suffering yet forgiving female. She was the total placid female made to cater to the male sexual desire. Through all this, she sees good in all and adjusts amazingly to her situations. She, therefore, can see any situation from a forgiving, loving and kind perspective. Snowman (Jimmy), the blending of the yin and yang, the flawed humanity, was selected to lead the new “perfect” race to safety. Jimmy’s humanity lies in his imperfect yet resilient qualities. Snowman is a terrific every man character. We can relate to him because he is realistic in his discomfort and ruminations, yet there is a hidden strength which enables him to survive. He is vulnerable and yet strong at the same time. We've all had times where we feel we can't go on, but we do, anyway. For all his flaws, it is Jimmy that Crake chose to lead and protect the children of Crake. Jimmy, being whimsical, ironically turned Crake into a godlike being. He also became somewhat like a shaman, using the whimsical term "feathers" to describe his hairy chest instead of the scientific name. He often lets his imagination runs away with him as he tells stories of Oryx and Crake, and explains things to the Crakers.

In the end, the elitist, hierarchical, “masculine” society that was destined for destruction was saved by their product, humans who inhabit mostly “female” qualities of placidity and non-hierarchal tribal community, and who, in the end, became religious. ...more

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May 30, 2008 Cecily rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: scifi-future-speculative-fict, dystopian, canada-and-usa

Futuristic, bad new world in the wake of an unspecified environmental/ genetic engineering disaster, told from the viewpoint of a nostalgic but detached survivor. It is as much about personal relationships, sexual exploitation, sexual freedom, religion, creation and original sin as it is cyber-punk sci-fi. The central, though unoriginal, irony is that this dystopia was created from a failed Utopian plan.

Trilogy

O&C is parallel with the equally excellent "The Year of the Flood" (reviewed ...more

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Dec 21, 2015 Stuart rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: globalization, literature, favorites, dystopian, post-apocalyptic, near-future, humanistic-sf

A scathing condemnation of the world we are creating
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Oryx and Crake hit me a lot harder than I expected. It’s Margaret Atwood, so you can expect the deft characterizations, innovative narrative structure, effortless writing, and social criticism. What I wasn’t prepared for was the powerful emotional impact it had, and the thoughts it generated. In essence, Atwood asks a simple question: “What type of world are we creating, and does it deserve to exist? A scathing condemnation of the world we are creating
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Oryx and Crake hit me a lot harder than I expected. It’s Margaret Atwood, so you can expect the deft characterizations, innovative narrative structure, effortless writing, and social criticism. What I wasn’t prepared for was the powerful emotional impact it had, and the thoughts it generated. In essence, Atwood asks a simple question: “What type of world are we creating, and does it deserve to exist? Moreover, do we deserve to exist if we stay on the path we are heedlessly pursuing?” This is not a new question. Plenty of dystopian and post-apocalyptic novels have asked it in a variety of forms. But for my money, Oryx and Crake is one of the most eloquent and harsh condemnations of the world we have created, whether intentionally or not, that I’ve read in the last few years.

It has elements of Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos and Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, and I imagine some overlap with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl (which I plan to read soon), but it is a distinctive work with an unmistakable message. The story is about Snowman, the last human survival of a global biotech-induced plague that has wiped out humanity, the Crakers, a group of genetically modified herbivorous childlike-humans that have been designed to survive in this new world, Crake, the brilliant geneticist who has passed judgment on humanity and found it unworthy, and Oryx, a young Asian former child-prostitute who is involved with both Snowman and Crake.

It is about a near future dominated by corporations that maintain carefully-guarded communities for their sheltered employees, and the rest of the population that live in pleeblands. Governments, armies, universities, security – everything has been privatized, as so many free-market proponents tell us would benefit us all. I wonder how many of those intellectuals, economists, professors, and social innovators live as the have-nots of the world do, on the fringes of our global economy. My guess – none at all. I myself work for a giant securities company that is built on the premise that the efficient use of capital leads to greater economic benefits for all members of society, and the fewer government restrictions, the better. So the irony of this message invariably coming from the privileged class is not lost on me, I can assure you.

The story is also about the online world we have created for ourselves, and with just the slightest bit of exaggerations, shows us the childhood of Snowman and Crake, growing up on a steady diet of online public executions, 24/7 webcams, Noodie News, assisted suicide, frog squashing, snuff videos, hard-core porn, and child pornography. It’s all just standard stuff for kids in the future. Looking all the content that the Internet offers without any restrictions to anyone with a smartphone, including kids of all ages, I think any parent out there can share my discomfort and fears about what this unrestricted flow of information can do to young minds not prepared to draw distinctions between what we still attempt to categorize as “good” and “bad”, “moral” and “immoral”, “healthy” and “harmful”. Who is it that decides? Well, nobody unfortunately.

Nobody wants the censored internet of China, but what price do we pay, particularly children, for the unfettered freedom of the Kardashians, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. I certainly have found much good in social media and endless information at my fingertips, but that’s because I grew up in the pre-Internet age when I first developed interests and ideas without the ubiquitous influence of social media. How would I and my peers have fared with non-stop free entertainment on the web? Would I have ever bothered to delve into lengthy novels for hours on end, or would I go for the instant gratification of Tweets, YouTube, Google, and the like? It’s such a slippery slope, and the same question applies: “Do guns kill people, or people kill people? Does the internet kill meaningful thought and reflection, or does it depend on the user?” It’s just a tool, after all, say proponents of the Internet. But when I see people’s fingers twitching on their mobile phones the instant they have a free moment, and the sea of bowed heads staring at their little private digital worlds (and my head among them), I have to wonder, is this the world we want for ourselves? It’s not as if going back to a simple agrarian existence is even a remote possibility in our massively-interlinked global society. 99.9% of us would be dead within a week without the global economic infrastructure, and if we did survive it would be about as pleasant the The Walking Dead.

So when the brilliant scientist Crake engineers a supervirus to wipe out humanity for its sins, his judgment is cold and harsh. To paraphrase, his view is “The world we have created is evil, and we cannot expect to solve our own problems. Therefore, I will annihilate humanity and create a new, simpler, and more innocent species to carry on in the post-human world.” That’s much the same idea as Vonnegut’s Galapagos, thought that book has a much whimsical tone to mask the harsh message beneath. And so every reader of Oryx and Crake has to ask themselves that question. Atwood doesn’t let us squirm away. Oftentimes post-apocalyptic tales are cautionary in nature, and warn us to step away from the path we are going down in terms of environmental destruction, overpopulation, religious intolerance, overreliance on technology, tinkering with genetics, etc. And certainly Oryx and Crake is about that. Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven is a gentle and elegant hymn to the good and beautiful aspects of our world that we take for granted, and that is a valid view as well.

But Oryx and Crake is no gentle fable. The future world it depicts has basically nothing worthy of redemption at all. The privileged corporate workers in their guarded compounds live a cynical and willfully ignorant existence, knowing their activities are built upon exploiting the plebes outside. The plebes for their part live a brutish existence lacking in appeal. Snowman is closer to the reader’s perspective as he observes with horror what Crake has planned for humanity. And Oryx is an oddball – a young girl subjected to the worst that developing world poverty can dish out, and yet having a beutific and serene outlook on life that chooses to focus on the good and ignore the ugliness. But ignoring it doesn’t make it go away. Instead, Crake takes it into his own hands to pass judgment and ruthlessly exterminate humanity. He takes action, but what a cruel and final sentence. We, humanity, are not given any chance for redemption or even rebuttal. I hardly think Atwood is suggesting that his act is justified or right, but she also doesn’t shy away from putting our world on trial and letting us think about our own answers. It’s a very intense experience and I can’t imagine any reader who doesn’t finish the book without stopping for a long time, maybe even days later, to think about the implications. Amazing, wonderful, and terrifying all at once. I’m tempted to read it again right now, but I need to move on. I’ll definitely revisit it again someday.

I’m fully aware that Oryx and Crake is the first part of the MADDADDAM TRILOGY, but I’m reluctant to proceed to The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam. That’s because I’ve read dozens of reviews of both, many from friends whose judgment I trust. And what I’ve gathered is this: The Year of the Flood explores much of the same territory of Oryx and Crake and fills in many details of the world and relationships there. And while some people say this book is just as good as the first one, many said they prefer Oryx and Crake where all the ideas and characters are new, and said the second book is well written but lacks the impact of the original. The reviews of MaddAddam are even more mixed, with a lot of people seriously disappointed in comparison to the first and second books. Because I was so impressed by Oryx and Crake, I don’t want to ruin that feeling, so if anything I’d rather re-read it instead. Or I may read The Year of the Flood someday to learn more, and skip the final book. We’ll see. ...more

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Mar 01, 2018 Barry Pierce rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 21st-century, read-in-2018

I've somewhat skipped ahead in my reading of Maggie Atwood. I was going in order from the beginning but then I saw this in a charity shop for like a euro and obviously couldn't leave it behind.

I've never been a fan of non-realist works of fiction. Hence science fiction doesn't brandish my shelves and you'd actually have to pay me to read fantasy. So I was apprehensive about Oryx and Crake, the first book in Maggie's trilogy of post-apocalyptic speculative works.

The novel begins with Snowman I've somewhat skipped ahead in my reading of Maggie Atwood. I was going in order from the beginning but then I saw this in a charity shop for like a euro and obviously couldn't leave it behind.

I've never been a fan of non-realist works of fiction. Hence science fiction doesn't brandish my shelves and you'd actually have to pay me to read fantasy. So I was apprehensive about Oryx and Crake, the first book in Maggie's trilogy of post-apocalyptic speculative works.

The novel begins with Snowman waking up, outdoors. He seems to be the only human being left after some unknown world-ending event. His name isn't actually Snowman, he's Jimmy. Throughout the book we discover who Jimmy is and what part he played in ending the world.

The novel flips between Snowman surviving in the new world and flashbacks to his life as Jimmy. When he isn't scavenging, he's musing on life. Slowly we discover who our title characters are, Oryx and Crake, and why the little mutant children who inhabit the former planet Earth with Snowman seem to treat Oryx and Crake as the great creators.

I found the novel to be wonderfully balanced. There's two plots happening at once, interspersing between each other, and Maggie handles this beautifully. Oftentimes in books with concurrent plot lines you get somewhat bored with one of them and sigh and moan whenever the novel switches to that plot. That does not happen with Oryx and Crake. Maggie has essentially written two great books and mashed them together.

I also greatly appreciate that even though this novel is full of futuristic made-up jargon and somewhat complicated conversations about the nature of genetics, Maggie never makes this a difficult read. I had known what the basic plot was about before reading this novel and honestly, that really put me off. Mutant pigs and rabbits and magic pills and a land segregated by communes. But these things are treated, and written about, as if they were just the status quo. At times I forgot I was reading a dystopia, I was thinking god those awful pigoons, as if they were a real and present danger to my well-being. Usually I would be so cynical about the fantasy of it all, but I wasn't.

I really loved Oryx and Crake. Although I'm a bit meh about book series and trilogies, I will definitely be continuing on. The novel gives you a lot to think about. Even Maggie herself said that the novel is essentially a warning against what might eventually happen. And since we seem to be nose-diving deeper into a world akin to Gilead, I'm terrified that even with a novel as strange and terrifying as Oryx and Crake, Maggie might once again be right. ...more

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Nov 01, 2017 Hugh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-lit, booker-shortlist, read-2017

This book has been chosen for a discussion in the 21st Century Literature group that starts next week. I am not normally interested in dystopian fantasy novels but the last two Atwood books I read (The Blind Assassin and Alias Grace) were so good that I thought I should give it a chance.

For me this is a very difficult book to judge, as throughout the book my reactions were oscillating between picking holes in the science (and it is always dangerous reading any predictions once a few years have ...more

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About Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

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Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.

Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, ...more