Which world would you choose?

“All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.”

We meet Snowman as he wakes up in a strange dystopian future. He sleeps in a tree, but he is not designed to live in this environment. The Crakers are. The crakers with their green eyes and their naked skin run up to Snowman and they ask him to tell story. We listen as Snowman spins the mythology of this new world, somewhat easily, but carefully. The children were created by Oryx and Crake,  who turn out to be Snowman’s lover and friend, respectively, back when Snowman was Jimmy and the world and weather behaved very differently.

The Crakers, however, are designed for this world. To find out why we are here we are taken all the way back into Jimmy’s childhood to when he first met Crake and how their friendship was formed.  Jimmy and Crake grow up in a scientific compound, separate from the rest of the world, that clones organs and grows them in pigs. Jimmy is a mildly unsympathetic character. He takes very little responsibility and does very little to engage with his world. Crake is hyper intelligent and it is never quite understood the basis of this friendship; the watch porn together, smoke weed and play weird games on the internet. The world is a not-too-distant-future where the internet contains child pornography, “NoodieNews” and suicide shows. The world described feels cramped and dark and boring.

But little by little we learn what really happened to take us there – always with the contrasts of Jimmy’s world being small and closed and the Cracker’s world being open and free, but dangerous. There is certainly a theme concerning the battle between man and nature; where society is safety, but might be meaningless. Nature on the other hand may offer freedom and purpose – but in reality the interactions with nature are just as constructed as the safety between walls and security guards. Crake made a decision and Snowman faces the consequences leaving the reader to wonder which world would you choose?