I just finished and I thought is was really super.
It’s certainly a departure for Atwood - she’s usually deeply in the realm of real-world stuff and this book has a distinct Sci-Fi element - much more so than Handmaid’s Tale.
So - anyone else read this yet? Anyone have any thoughts?
Not yet… though I’m glad to hear that you liked it. I recently read an excellent review of the book, so hopefully I can pick it up later this weekend.
I adored The Blind Assassin - Atwood delves a little into the sci-fi. If you’ve read Blind Assassin, how does Oryx & Crake compare in terms of style?
I have read The Blind Assassin - it does have a Sci-Fi element as you mentioned, and I forgot to. 
It’s similar - Current events interspersed with recalections. Cliffhanger ending (which I WONT give away. Interesting characters.
The story is really creepy - I love that! 
It also has loads of Atwood’s bitchy humour which I dig also.
I read it…it was pretty good, a page-turner at that. I don’t know that I’d go back and read it again, but it definitely kept my attention. Jimmy as a character rather irritated me. He just seemed so despondently neurotic, and not in a good way. Or maybe I’m just a little pissed because in a society like theirs, I would probably have gotten the same fate as him.
The Crakers were fascinating, though. They’re the kind of people who would be interesting to study, in terms of their biology and social customs, but absolute hell to co-exist with. As a race, they were rather bland company.
I couldn’t tell just how MA wanted us to feel about this new society. It wasn’t an obvious utopia or dystopia, which I prefer to books where the author is agonizing over how horrible the future is. In many ways, this world isn’t too different from ours. (Is it said when/where it takes place? I honestly don’t remember.) Except for the compounds, and the genetically engineered animals. All those scenes where the two boys, Crake and Jimmy, can go online to watch porn/death scenes, and we have the FOX network.
I’ve read MA’s other books. Nice to see that her characters aren’t as self-pitying or pathetic as in other works. Not that Jimmy is a shining beacon or anything. And other than the whole bit about how Oryx was formerly a child prostitute, there wasn’t a real feminist agenda which usually irks me, a little. In fact, I might not have been able to tell it was by her if I hadn’t known.
So, on the whole, a good book that I enjoyed.
It sounds interesting, though I think a lot of science fiction readers have been antagonised by the publicity, where Atwood denies that it’s science fiction and claims it’s unique in the issues it addresses.
“A Scientific Romance”, a literary SF novel by Ronald Wright, covered the same territory very memorably a few years ago, with rather similar motifs. In Wright’s book, an archaeologist explores a desolated Britain that has returned to uninhabited jungle following the breakdown of civilisation due to plague, global warming and genetic twiddling, while recalling a triangular relationship between his best friend and the woman they both loved). There are particularly remarkable descriptions of a ruined and overgrown London.
Whenever I pass a KFC that is advertising their “boneless chicken wings” I shout “ChickieNubs!”
My friends have gotten used to it.
Actually the “Chicken Nubbin” buisness was pretty nasty - particularly since I know what a “nubbin” is. Ick.
I didn’t really think the book was science fiction in the true spirit of the genre. Ultimately I thought it was a book about human relationships - just as all of Atwood’s books are - and the relationships happen to take place in a fantastical near future world.
To me, Sci Fi has always been about the stuff - the technology and whatnot - as opposed to the humanity. However, I will point out that this book reminded me of Brave New World, so there you go.
That was the aspect that bothered science fiction readers - MA’s stereotyping of science fiction as (in her words) “rockets, chemicals … intergalactic space travel, teleportation, Martians” when it’s a far broader church, with a deal of classic SF intensely concerned with human relationships. However, I guess it all comes down to differing views about where genre boundaries lie. I’ll certainly be reading it.
I’m going to bump this because I just finished reading it. Well, listening to it. I bought it when it first came out and couldn’t get too far, so I bought it on tape and listened to it in the car on the way to work.
So disturbing.
So, does anyone have a theory on Oryx. Why Atwood gave her such a disturbing history and yet made her so accepting of it?
Why do you think Crake picked on Jimmy to be the survivor? Punishment for Oryx? Because he knew he could trust him to keep his promise about the Crakers? Did Crake recruit Jimmy in specifically to fulfill his fate?
Does Crake respect or admire anyone at all? Jimmy? Jimmy’s mother? Oryx? His own father? Or is Crake convinced humanity is rotten to the core - himself included.
What do you think will become of the Crakers? Will they go on to invent art, religion, science, war, violence? Will their pacifism make them victims of the few remaining humans and the wildlife?
The book has typical MA closure (do any of her books ever actually end!) - this one seems even more open ended than most. What do you think happens?