Another Grim Dystopic Future by Atwood

Another of Atwood’s famous dystopic novels, this one the first in a trilogy based on an apocalyptic future after the genetic manipulators and profit-mongers have prompted a sort-of “Noah’s Flood”  in the form of an engineered plague to wipe the slate clean. Crake, the genius who created the plague, is gone but his “children” live on as a handful of bioengineered innocents intended to repopulate the world under new—Crake’s– guidelines.  Crake’s appointed “shepherd” for this flock is Jimmy, now known as the Snowman, who managed to survive the plague and fears he is the last human on earth…or is he?

What we see at the start of the novel is a wretch of a human being who is rapidly starving to death even as he struggles to preserve some sort of tenuous relationship with the fodder-eating Crake’s Children. The world is overpopulated, it seems, with bioengineered creatures named wolfogs and pigoons and land crabs, all large, fierce and carnivorous and a threat to our Snowman, who is forced to travel to “The Compound” where the genetic manipulators did their black magic–and where both the plague and Crake’s Children were born–in order to scavenge for food, and perhaps weapons for protection. While there, he becomes infected with something and appears to be slowing dying as the book winds to a painful non-ending, where other humans appears to be introduced into the story.

There is another layer to the story, based on Oryx, who caught the eye of both Jimmy and Crake on a video of enslaved Asian child prostitutes. Eventually freed from the last man who owned her, Oryx enters the lives of the two friends, ensnaring both their hearts while remaining an enigma both to Jimmy and to Atwood’s readers. Even after her death along with Crake, her demand that Snowman protect the Children keeps him loyal to a job which he would otherwise have abandoned long ago.

Clearly, Atwood has much to say about the current state of the world, its capitalist ethic, its scientific tinkering with life forms, and about her fears for the future. She is a compelling author, and I suspect I’ll be reading the rest of the trilogy to find out what happens to Snowman and the Children, despite the grim and depressing theme.