Oryx and Crake (2003)
By Margaret Atwood
Adaptation; Dystopia; Extinction; Gender; Genetic engineering; Organ harvesting; Posthuman; Transgenics
After Jimmy’s friend Crake unleashes a manufactured supervirus, Jimmy must protect the sole survivors from dangerous transgenic creatures and bioengineered diseases.
Once, long before a man-made virus eradicated most of humanity, Snowman was known as Jimmy. Now, his only companions are the Crakers, a society of genetically modified humans created by Jimmy’s genius friend Crake. As he tries to stave off hunger and the carnivorous wolvogs and pigoons looking to devour him, Snowman remembers growing up in various Compounds, where scientists competed to develop genetically engineered and commercially viable products. Jimmy’s mother abandoned him to join organizations opposing genetic engineering, while his father created pigoons with human organs for transplants. Jimmy befriends Crake, a charismatic genius obsessed with the images of violence and perverse sexuality that dominate the media. Crake is recruited to top scientific organizations after graduation, while Jimmy creates advertising campaigns for corporations hawking genetic modifications for desperate consumers. Their friendship perseveres in spite of distance, and Crake recruits Jimmy for a confidential project at RejoovenEsense. Ostensibly, Jimmy has been hired to advertise BlyssPluss, a pill which enhances sexual desire while secretly sterilizing those who ingest it, but Crake is more interested in securing Jimmy’s support for the Paradice Project. This project represents the incorporation into human DNA of numerous genetic modifications based on animal adaptations. Jimmy also rediscovers Oryx, a beautiful girl with a horrifying past who is now Crake’s assistant and soon becomes Jimmy’s lover. Once Crake and Oryx die, and Crake’s endgame is revealed – BlyssPluss is actually a carrier of the manufactured supervirus – Jimmy must ensure the survival of the Crakers, the new face of humanity.
Atwood seems more concerned about the often deplorable motivations behind genetic engineering than the process itself, maintaining suspense through episodes alternating between Snowman’s present attempts at survival in a hostile environment and flashbacks to Jimmy’s perceptions of humanity’s self-destruction. The lurid media culture, combined with ever-increasing drives for physical perfection, create a picture of a species succumbing to an inevitable fate. While Crake’s destruction of humans appears radical, this seems the sole solution to a rapidly devolving species. Humans have become obsessed with immortality and wealth, yet the majority of the population lives in squalor in the pleebland, enslaved to the idea of perfection they cannot attain. Excessive experimentation endangers the population; pigoons, created to prolong life, later prove dangerous because the incorporation of human cortical tissue allows them tactical advantage in hunting human prey. Chickens are engineered without beaks or bodies, but with several breasts to produce meat for consumption. Suicides, execution, and child pornography dominate the entertainment culture. Because humans have devalued life, is Crake justified with removing it altogether in favor of the Paradice Project? The Crakers are perfectly adapted to their environment, as Crake made modifications which allow them to function more efficiently in physical, emotional and sexual situations. Oryx trains them to respect their environment as their predecessors have not by instructing them to follow the dictates of the twin deities Oryx and Crake, a motif reminiscent of the law laid down to the transgenic beings in H. G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.
Evaluation: Atwood’s tale is poweful because she engages the cultural attitudes and productions that might naturally lead to abuse of genetic technologies, forcing us to contemplate the potential dangers of practical applications of genetic engineering.
– Natalie Champ