Book: Oryx and Crake
Mar. 4th, 2010 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor:Margaret Atwood
Details: (c) 2003 OW Toad Ltd; Pub Virago 2004; ISBN 1-84408-0285
Verdict: Oryx and Crake is a second-rate apocalypse novel.
Reasons for reading it: I keep telling myself I ought to like Atwood, but by now I have read enough of her stuff that I'm pretty convinced I don't. When browsing I tend to plump for books I've heard of, and I think I forgot that the reason I've heard a lot about O&C consists of Atwood whining about how much she hates SF and people responding by saying that O&C is in fact SF.
How it came into my hands: In the library, right there in the SF section with a rocket on the spine and everything.
So much of Oryx and Crake feels like the ravings of someone who has a massive chip on her shoulder about the fact that people who are good at numerate sciences have higher earning potential that people who are good at arts subjects and writing. It's a long, rambling account of how the nerds destroy humanity with their meddling, interfering with nature ways. The protagonist, Jimmy / Snowman, has a strong voice and that was juat about enough to draw me into the story, but he's also incredibly whiny. He doesn't whine about the fact that he is the last human left alive after a worldwide plague, which would be somewhat understandable, he whines about stupid things like his mother not being sufficiently devoted to him or his best friend making more money than him or the woman he was in love with not acting in exactly the way that he wants an idealized woman to act.
The world-building and the description of the end of humanity do include some memorable imagery, though they lack originality and don't feel very plausible. A lot of the tech in the book is genetic engineering (I'm not sure if Atwood believes that nobody has ever written SF where the science is biology before!), but it isn't very good, it's just the standard luddite rhetoric about how tampering with genes creates monsters. The Craker race of altered humans is utterly implausible. And big corporations are Eeebul, especially medical ones. (By the way, misogynist porn is bad too.) I also predicted the "twist" ending because the set-up with a completely universal plague is just too implausible.
It may well be that this book appeals to people who think that SF is for nerdy teenage boys, and therefore haven't read very much of it, so Atwood's tired ideas would seem fresh to them. But I think people like that would find O&C too science-fictional to be enjoyable; it does after all posit near future technological developments and their social context, so if you want all your literature to be completely realistic and reflect this world, you would get impatient. As SF, well, it's infodump heavy and unoriginal, but there are worse sins than that. I think the main reason it wouldn't fly with an SF audience is that at its core it is anti-science. So actually I think it fits best in the genre of things like Jurassic park, where things go horribly wrong because of scientific arrogance, and you can enjoy the safe horror of an imaginary disaster. (The ways that O&C are anti-science are bordering on offensive, actually; the fact that it portrays scientists as obsessive, unsociable nerds is annoying, but it's a valid form of characterization. The way it uses ableist language to convey this stereotype, terms like "autistic", "socially spastic" and "brain-damaged", is really not acceptable.) She does at least tone down the irritating wordplays and clever-clever in jokes that characterize a lot of her more literary writing, so that's a plus, I suppose.
So overall O&C has some strengths and some weaknesses, but just doesn't stand out at all.
Details: (c) 2003 OW Toad Ltd; Pub Virago 2004; ISBN 1-84408-0285
Verdict: Oryx and Crake is a second-rate apocalypse novel.
Reasons for reading it: I keep telling myself I ought to like Atwood, but by now I have read enough of her stuff that I'm pretty convinced I don't. When browsing I tend to plump for books I've heard of, and I think I forgot that the reason I've heard a lot about O&C consists of Atwood whining about how much she hates SF and people responding by saying that O&C is in fact SF.
How it came into my hands: In the library, right there in the SF section with a rocket on the spine and everything.
So much of Oryx and Crake feels like the ravings of someone who has a massive chip on her shoulder about the fact that people who are good at numerate sciences have higher earning potential that people who are good at arts subjects and writing. It's a long, rambling account of how the nerds destroy humanity with their meddling, interfering with nature ways. The protagonist, Jimmy / Snowman, has a strong voice and that was juat about enough to draw me into the story, but he's also incredibly whiny. He doesn't whine about the fact that he is the last human left alive after a worldwide plague, which would be somewhat understandable, he whines about stupid things like his mother not being sufficiently devoted to him or his best friend making more money than him or the woman he was in love with not acting in exactly the way that he wants an idealized woman to act.
The world-building and the description of the end of humanity do include some memorable imagery, though they lack originality and don't feel very plausible. A lot of the tech in the book is genetic engineering (I'm not sure if Atwood believes that nobody has ever written SF where the science is biology before!), but it isn't very good, it's just the standard luddite rhetoric about how tampering with genes creates monsters. The Craker race of altered humans is utterly implausible. And big corporations are Eeebul, especially medical ones. (By the way, misogynist porn is bad too.) I also predicted the "twist" ending because the set-up with a completely universal plague is just too implausible.
It may well be that this book appeals to people who think that SF is for nerdy teenage boys, and therefore haven't read very much of it, so Atwood's tired ideas would seem fresh to them. But I think people like that would find O&C too science-fictional to be enjoyable; it does after all posit near future technological developments and their social context, so if you want all your literature to be completely realistic and reflect this world, you would get impatient. As SF, well, it's infodump heavy and unoriginal, but there are worse sins than that. I think the main reason it wouldn't fly with an SF audience is that at its core it is anti-science. So actually I think it fits best in the genre of things like Jurassic park, where things go horribly wrong because of scientific arrogance, and you can enjoy the safe horror of an imaginary disaster. (The ways that O&C are anti-science are bordering on offensive, actually; the fact that it portrays scientists as obsessive, unsociable nerds is annoying, but it's a valid form of characterization. The way it uses ableist language to convey this stereotype, terms like "autistic", "socially spastic" and "brain-damaged", is really not acceptable.) She does at least tone down the irritating wordplays and clever-clever in jokes that characterize a lot of her more literary writing, so that's a plus, I suppose.
So overall O&C has some strengths and some weaknesses, but just doesn't stand out at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-08 12:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-03-13 12:56 pm (UTC)The unmemorable ending is ur qvfpbiref gurer ner bgure uhzna fheivibef nsgre nyy. But to be honest it's more that the book doesn't really have a clear plot, and she'd run out of things to describe about the post-apocalypse future. Weak endings are definitely a problem I've had with Atwood before now.