The Cautionary Tale of Crake

I recently read Margaret Atwood's new book Oryx and Crake and found it to be an excellent read in spite of the lukewarm reviews it seems to be getting from the critics. I collect post-apocalyptic fiction and have since I found a liking for it when I was 8 or so. Perhaps I have always had a dark view of humanity and Oryx and Crake touches a very particular potential future for humankind should the unbridled hubris of scientific 'progress' continue.

Margaret Atwood did her research for the subject matter of this book very diligently as it is not simply one event that brings about the dystopic future and it lends the story a realistic texture and dimension. So many post-apocalyptic stories tend to focus on just one event that it makes them less credible. I cannot imagine one single event, apart from the Sun going supernova, that would effectively eradicate all human life.

The story opens with Snowman in the aftermath who tells the story in the frame of flashbacks. His name was Jimmy in his former life where he grew up in a series of corporate compounds, enclaves erected to protect biotech researchers from the pleblands outside the walls. All of the coastal cities have been submerged by this time and the weather in February is like summer in the Sahara. It's an astute observation for her to make that global warming will come but it will merely force adaptation rather than extinction. The real story begins when he meets the precocious Crake who foreshadows the shape of things to come.

In a time of near obsession with technology and biotechnology I think Oryx and Crake should be essential reading because it could be our future not very long from now. I have worked in biotech laboratories and I wouldn't bank my future on the validity of the results from most research conducted today. Many academic labs are giving way to corporate research funding which also tends to have an effect on the direction and tenor of the work.

Humans know so little about the world around them yet seemingly have the hubris enough to believe that the genome which took billions of years to evolve can be understood enough in 50 years to be manipulated without dire consequence. Margaret Atwood understands the precipice upon which we now stand and the dizzying fear at the thought of the intentional misuse of what powerful little we know. Many of the physicists at Los Alamos regretted the consequences that followed the creation of the nuclear fission bomb but there are much greater risks and consequences in trusting scientists and megacorps with the one thing we all have in common; our DNA.