18 - Oryx and Crake

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Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

Oryx and Crake (by Margaret Atwood) was my weekend reading.

It's SF, the main character, Snowman, lives in a wasteland area, littered with computers and ruins - the earth at one time - on a tree, covered with an old bedsheet and mourns the loss of his friends, the scientist Crake, and Oryx, a former child prostitute with whom he had lived in a love triangle. The area is populated by strange animals like wolvogs and pigoons. Only the green-eyed children of Crake - cloned human-like creatures visit and worship him. He tries to piece together what happened and so the story unravels.

Snowman grew up as Jimmy in the 21 century, in a world where global warming destroyed cities, rose sea levels, the great majority of the people lived in slums and filth, the privileged ones in secure communities, owned and run by biotech-companies. Everything and everybody was genetically engineered, any animal could be created, via the internet constant pornography and violence was delivered. Eventually Crake's experiments lead to the destruction of humanity.

The scenario is, of course, horrible - but as everything with Atwood, brilliantly written and very provocative, pointing in the direction of what might happen if greed and the obsession with producing and growing life forms will get ahead of ethics.

Here's an excerpt