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Oryx and Crake
The novel is a mad scientist story, where humans play God for pleasure and profit. It's a last-human-left-alive story. It's a projection of a dystopic future, where all political and economic power is held by militaristic corporations.
Most of these themes have been explored before, and they're introduced in the first couple chapters of the book. But they're handled so well, I feel like I'm spoiling the reader's experience by listing them here. Never mind, read the book anyway. Maybe you've seen this stuff before, but you haven't seen it written like this.
The measure of science fiction isn't the uniqueness of its concepts--it's what the author can do using the ideas as tools. It's about how intensely a book can penetrate into the reader's imagination, and this is driven by a writer's talent (not the raw ideas).
Margaret Atwood writes stories that are deeply layered and voiced in an incisive, conversational tone. Despite its bleak themes, Oryx and Crake is far from depressing--it's mostly cheerful and upbeat, which turns out to be a fine way to write about obsession and love and revenge and the end of the world. Somewhat like Neal Stephenson, Atwood's writing doesn't take itself too seriously. It's chock full of wordplays and grimly humorous subtexts. The result is a book that works as both a dark comedy and an allegoric drama, but feels like a conversation between the author and the reader.
Some parts of Oryx and Crake approach horror--not blood & guts horror, but what someone from the 1700s might feel if a time traveler explained the basics of how nuclear weapons, school shootings and Internet porn work today. Atwood pulls very few punches when imagining the possible extensions of humanity's greed, lust, hatred, and cold-bloodedness. Her easy pace, artful characterization and humorous touch fully engages the reader's mind, and her willingness to shock takes full advantage of the open target. The result is a mental chill that takes a long time to fade.
It's not a perfect book. Even at 374 pages, some episodes of the story arc seem abbreviated. Some of Atwood's future visions seem a bit contrived, but this depends on whether she's going for humor, symbolism, shock value or sheer inventiveness on a given page. Most pages (including the following excerpt) are a well-stirred mixture:
"On day one they toured some of the wonders of Watson-Crick. Crake was interested in everything--all the projects that were going on. He kept saying "Wave of the future," which got irritating after the third time.It's too early to tell if Oryx and Crake will earn Atwood the same acclaim as The Blind Assassin and The Handmaid's Tale. Regardless, it's a powerful book--unnerving, moving and well worth reading.First they went to Decor Botanicals, where a team of five seniors were developing Smart Wallpaper that would change colour on the walls of your room to complement your mood. This wallpaper--they told Jimmy--had a modified form of Kirilian energy-sensing algae embedded in it, along with a sublayer of algae nutrients, but there were still some glitches to be fixed. The wallpaper was short-lived in humid weather because it ate up all the nutrients and then went grey; also it could not tell the difference between drooling lust and murderous rage, and was likely to turn your wallpaper an erotic pink when what you really needed was a murky, capillary-bursting greenish red.
That team was also working on a line of bathroom towels that would behave in much the same way, but they hadn't yet solved the marine-life fundamentals: when algae got wet it swelled up and began to grow, and the test subjects so far had not liked the sight of their towels from the night before puffing up like rectangular marshmallows and inching across the bathroom floor.
"Wave of the future," said Crake."
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Stand Back, I don't Know How Big This Thing Gets...
I have a plan. Using mainly spoons, we'll tunnel our way out of the city...
... was mildly entertaining, but it came across like a low-wattage The Stand. Old-school King at his best could kick just about anyone's ass, including Atwood's. Maybe it's time I read Atwood again, just to see if she, unlike SK, has improved with age...
I fist read it as "Oxy and Crack" and wondered why Slashdot was running a story on drugs.
This book was quite a bit different than the usual Margaret Atwood novels and this is primarily because this is a work of science fiction. I did not particularly enjoy her other work from the science fiction genre, "The Handmaid's Tale". However, I understand that that book was one of Atwood's most popular works probably because it was a favorite among feminists. I doubt feminists would find much to relate to in this book unless it was how men have managed to finally screw everything up completely. I have never been much of a fan of science fiction but I admit that it reads better when a writer of Atwood's skills is the author.
This book starts out a bit confusing and left me unsure if I should re-read the first 20 or so pages to try and figure out what was going on. However, I soon found myself in the groove of the novel and was able to piece things together as I went along. I believe this is how Atwood meant it to be as she shifts back and forth in time. We begin with what seems like an armageddon scenario and, by the end of the book, understand how it came to be.
The author seems to have a fixation on how genetic engineering will be the cause of the fall of mankind. Essentially, the message is passed along that, if we create a health system that preserves us all, then we'll have to find some other way to destroy ourselves. (At least that's what I got out of the book). Along the way, Atwood has her usual keen insight to how we all interact with one another as well as how our inner thoughts seem to work. I admit that I was left wondering if I had missed a bigger theme but I was content with the one I detected.
To my knowledge, Margaret Atwood has never written a bad book although I never read her poetry or essays. Sometimes the story line isn't as interesting or absorbing as others but there is always a lot to pick up on along the way. This book got better as I kept reading but then it ended rather abruptly. I believe the author left it up to us to figure out the way it should properly end.
Perhaps not. In terms of her use of language, form, depth of charaterisation etc. the 'The Blind Assassin' is technically Atwood's greatest novel so far.
But having read all her novels, I've got to say that 'Oryx and Crake' is my personal favourite. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this book, how engrossed I was with every word, and how moving, shocking and disturbing I found it. It's one of the best books I've ever read. It's one of those books that, once you've finished the last page, stays with you, and when you're not reading it you're thinking of it.
And it's one of those books that, when you finally close it, you so wish that you could've put your name to it yourself. It's an immense work of imagination. I finished it well over a week ago and still think of it. I found it extraordinary. The way Atwood evokes her distopian futuristic world in every detail and makes it come alive and breathe is quite incredible. I was hooked.
I was hoping it would be good but it far exceeded my expectations. The book's nightmarish vision of the future makes 'The Handmaid's Tale' look like a picnic, and while you're reading Atwood makes you live in that world, makes you feel what Snowman is feeling. What horror. Frighteningly, plausibly, brilliant!
I was disappointed because Oryx and Crake is uninspiring literature. Even on the level of just "story", I would opt for Jurassic Park for gripping narrative and vivid imagination. If I read Atwood, Golding, Grasse or others that I consider accomplished "literary" writers, I look for an aesthetic pleasure. Oryx and Crake just plods; there is little beyond the events and a few clever (and distracting) neologisms to carry one along. I wouldn't even take it on the plane for a good read.
Certain scenarios have become standard fare, almost cliches, within the science fiction world. The end of civilization, indeed the death of man himself, due to his constant meddling with the environment, other life forms, and his own germ plasm have been envisaged many times before. This book remains a cut above most earlier attempts, as it adds a very believable human face to the disaster, ties it to both man's dreams and his nightmares, and wraps it inside a potent love triangle.
From the beginning of this book, where we meet Snowman, possibly the last true human, living in a tree and dependent on the half-human Children of Crake, till the very end of this book, where the full horror of the situation is clearly exposed, there is a sense of inevitability to events, a clear line to its envisioned world from the headlines of today. As Snowman tells his tale via flashbacks to his own past, a picture is developed of technology both fighting and aiding the deleterious effects of prior technologies. From the global warming induced drowning of the coasts and the collapse of world's resources abilities to feed an ever-growing population, to terrorist and greedy corporations designs of new diseases and environmentally harmful crosses of various animal species, each element piles on to background structure. In the foreground we follow Jimmy (Snowman's original name) and his childhood friend Glenn (Crake) as they go through school and find jobs as part of the elite, those whose mental abilities make them employable by the movers and shakers of the world, the genetic research laboratories. During their joint exploration of the internet, they run into Oryx, a child prostitute, who will eventually figure prominently in their lives.
Crake is a very interesting character, a super-genius who keeps his own emotions hidden, sometimes even from himself, as he first conceives of and then implements the idea of designing a better human. A human who is not subject to wild emotional swings of love, who will not have the need to defend property as he will live on grass and sunshine, who will be carefully isolated from any contact with violence-causing ideas such as 'God' and 'mine'. But Crake is not immune to being human himself, and is in fact dependent on others, primarily Oryx and Jimmy, which is really his flaw. Jimmy is the perennial follower, but when forced to take charge, his actions become the final lynch-pin in the ultimate disaster and his tales the beginning of a new mythology. Oryx is the ultimate woman, fully caring and giving, perhaps too much so, without the ability to turn others to a line of action of her choosing - but perhaps she never wished to. These characters grew on me as I learned more about them, as each had characteristics I could see in myself, different parts of a mirror.
The power of this book lies in the dynamic between the dream and the practical, between the intent and the result, between the giving and receiving of love. There are several layers of meaning and symbol buried within its fairly conventional story, layers that built an emotionally powerful edifice in my mind, an edifice completed with the last scene of this book. Sad and depressing, with little room for hope, a well depicted portrait of man as he is, unvarnished.
more reviews here
Any text is alive only at the moment of its creation - then it's frozen and dies only to be admired by the people who can only admire dead things.
This is arguably one of the darkest dystopias I've read in a very long time. Atwood's genius lies in the fact she can take concepts in the present-day and extrapolate them to the furthest fictional limits without detaching from reality. If you think O & C is a brilliant book, go check out her earlier dystopia - The Handmaid's Tale. Oddly enough, her predictions in that book about America's future are starting to come true...
Though Atwood has said that she does not write science fiction, I believe that this book proves that statement to be misleading. To me this book is an excellent example of well-written soft science fiction. The story's somewhat disjointed narrative works well to evoke the narrator's jumbled memories of the events leading to the decimation of the human population. The character of Oryx doesn't seem very well fleshed out, and there is the sense that she just functions as a narrative jumping off point for the changing relationship between Snowman and Crake, but as a whole, the characters were still believable to me. Atwood doesn't describe the science used in much depth, and what she does explain is a bit questionable in places, but I found the story to be very effective and literate nonetheless. And the pigoons freaked me out.
Um... if it's about the world ending, wouldn't that be closer to "Genesis" in reverse -- or just "Exodus"?
Just wondering what exactly Adam and Eve have to do with the world beginning. They're just the biblical story of the "fall from grace" of mankind, unrelated to the creation of the earth.
stuff |
I only finished the book because there has been a lot of discussion of it. I found it badly written, pretentious, technically unknowledgeable, ..., and pandering to the sexuality of 14 year old boys (lots of discussion of penises and the only female character is a child prostitute).
This is a repost from the amazon review of the book.
I suggest "Memoirs of a Survivor" by Doris Lessing. When I read Oryx and Crane I really noticed the project that Lessing set out on in that book being 'tried on' by Atwood. Everyone focuses on 'Handmaiden' with Atwood (esp. knownothings), but her later stuff really is great. O&C might not rate though. It just felt like a riff on Lessing to me.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Umm, you don't think its Science Fiction /because/ it has similarities to Fahrenheit 451?
Hmm...
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I've had an audible subscription for three months now, but *THIS* book was one of the best I've heard so far. Shit, I picked up my iPod two years back solely to use for Books on CD and things like that, but it was too damn annoying to use until Apple licensed the Audible content and decided to allow you to pause the chapter and listen to music and then come back to the same pause in that file.
I picked up Ender's Game on Audible as well, and it was cool (I actually got more out of Speaker of the Dead in dead tree format) but it just didn't do it as well as this one did.
Great oration and it enhances the story instead of detracting from it (I've picked up serveral tha I got part of the way into the dead tree versions and had to stop because of workloads...and thought I'd finish them up on an airflight -- I can't read while in the air for some reason -- or one one of my many drives to Nashville lately...7 hours of mundate pushings of the gas pedal).
If you were ever interested in checking out these kinds of services, check it out...the only problem I had was there wasn't a real resolution to the book...it feels like a halfway end...it finishes the story of Crake and Oryx (characters in the book), while never finishing the story of the 'Snowman' -- the lead narrator telling the story of C&O, but far more interesting than it seems eiher of them ever were. Oryx is too one dimensional to care about as anything but a prop, and Crake is just...well, he too is one dimensional, but that is mainly from the narriation as opposed to his actual being. I just couldn't bring myself to caring whatever happened to Oryx, and Crake just projected himself too far into the future (especially since this is a latter retelling of the tale...hindsight is always 20/20) that his end of the story was told far before ya ever got the intimate details...no, the REAL story is about Snowman, and it was left unfinished.
Lets hope this is a big enough seller that Atwood feels like revisiting it soon and gives it a proper ending...
That I have lost track of who has it now. Atwood created a well defined near future. She made a mistake or two when it came to potential technologies, but her humans behave the way they should. If we could vote on the ranking of this book i would give it a 9/10.
I didn't hate the book and found it a quick and reasonably compelling read, but it didn't really leave any lasting impression or make me feel like I had learned anything. I've generally liked Atwaters writing and in particular the Handmaid's Tale, so this particular opinion may be best judged by that taste. The book just seemed pretty slight to me, despite the end-of-the-world type premise. I'd say if you're an Atwater fan it's worth a read but if you dig on hard-science speculative fiction you'll probably be dissapointed.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Apparently you need to read Genesis again cause you're way out to lunch on that reverse thing.
start here: Genesis 1
What does this have to do with Linux or SCO? Please stay on topic for Slashdot.
I doubt feminists would find much to relate to in this book unless it was how men have managed to finally screw everything up completely. I have never been much of a fan of science fiction but I admit that it reads better when a writer of Atwood's skills is the author.
I found this book fascinating because it seemed clear to me that Atwood was not writing the book for her usual audience. The writing itself was much simpler than her previous books and the strictly male narration is unique to this book. (I could be missing something but I've read all of her books along with most of her poetry and short stories.) My conclusion was that she wants this book read by the science fiction crowd, hoping her message catches them.
I loved the open ending, somewhat placing the future in our everyman's hands. I've enjoyed hearing people speculate on what happened next, exactly what she wanted IMHO.
I read it after seeing many references to it on slashdot.
in a word. weak.
to each his own, i guess.
You AC whoring McWhores!
First post, woo hoo
How ya like that?
No, he doesn't think it's science fiction because he found parts of it hard to understand. Science fiction, as we all know, is only read by subliterate teenagers. If the grandparent poster, obviously a man of superior intellect, couldn't understand parts of it, how on earth would one expect the average spotty Sci-fi fan to cope? Ergo, it is not Sci-fi.
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
Hi! I find it interesting that googling for "Atwood deliberately mutilates words" comes up with a result in Google! In fact, those couple of sentences are ripped directly from this much more complete review. Nice try though!
I'll take Canadian Literature for $1000, Alex.
What are "Things I Never Want To Be In A Position To Say To Margaret Atwood?"
Language of the Future in literature has always interested me, so I'm curious to see some examples of her literary "mutiliations and grotesqueries."
The greatest books that ever used altered/mutated language as metaphors for the state of humanity were 1984 and A Clockwork Orange. Something about "Ultraviolence" and "Doubleplusungood" strikes just how society has evolved.
How does this compare?
I remember back in 2nd or 3rd grade, some kid got on the PA system and said something funny...can't remember what it was. Wasn't anything bad though.
There was a microphone in the office, speaker in every classroom.
He got suspended for like 3 days.
I listened to this audiobook earlier last year and loved it.
The narration was excellent. The book was like a fine candy to enjoy. When I was done, I was both satisfied and saddened to leave the characters behind. I would *not* like to see the book extended to a sequel; I think the enjoyable flavor of the book is dependent on being brief and ambiguous at the end.
This is absolutely one of my favorite titles. If you dig apocalyptic tales, ever played Wasteland on your computer, enjoyed the Mad Max movie series or read Snow Crash - you'll likely enjoy this book.
Don't get the link between Snow Crash and O&C? Consider the way that the enclaves transcend traditional government "social balance" to bring dangerous corporatism to the forefront. Another book that I would link in this area is Beggars and Choosers by Nancy Kress. Probably more for the focus on an era where humanity is more or less done and something else has taken over than for the "corporatism" angle.
I obtained my copy of the book from Audible. I've been a customer there for a very long time and have enjoyed so many audiobooks that if I can find an unabridged audio title, i'm more likely to select it than a text edition. I would invite you to check out Oryx & Crake as an audiobook, I think you'll find that audiobooks with this quality of narration are *more* enjoyable than the text-only editions. The measured delivery has a different and desirable effect on the imagination. It also tends to shorten roadtrips.
Currently I'm listening to the Dark Tower series from Stephen King, and reading eBook editions of the Heritage of Shannara series from Terry Brooks on the commuter train. Both audiobook and eBook reside in my Dell Axim PDA - one of the most useful functions of my PDA so far.
- Bill
On the other hand, the reader is quite good, so I would recommend the audiobook version -- in exchange for the loss of print oddities you get the reader's inflection and tone which can contribute quite a bit to the meaning.
My only disappointment with Oryx and Crake was that the eventual ending seemed a bit abrupt. I wasn't sure why the book stopped at that point, specifically. Certainly the plot was complete, the world had been adequately filled out, you now finally understood everything that had happened; but you don't really get to do anything with this character that you now fully understand -- ready, steady, charge and ---? THE END.
An epilogue in the language of the Crakers was needed to wrap it up.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
It's a sad state of affairs indeed. But the shelves in my local book store are crammed with the novels that give SF a bad name.
I'm also totally aware that Banks, Stephenson, Clarke at el write good books by any standard, but I can understand why other authors would want to disassociate themselves.
Solutions? How about creating a new name for creative, literate SciFi?
It worked for "Graphic Novels", right?
I'm aware this is snobby, but it also happens to be true. It's those covers, man, I can't go near them. Any ideas for a name?
'This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it' - Eeyore
You have a lot of balls for calling someone up on reposting from another source, when you did exactly the same thing not half-an-hour ago.
& th reshold=0&commentsort=0&tid=186&tid=214&mode=threa d&pid=7903959#7904430
http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=91901
In my opinion, this kind of thing deserves banishment from slashdot.. and maybe bamboo spikes shoved under the nails.
"It's a projection of a dystopic future, where all political and economic power is held by militaristic corporations."
isnt' that just current day USA?
The Handmaid's Tale is probably one of the best books I've read. Essentially its 1984 except remove Stalinism and replace it with the American Religious Right. The characters are done extremely well, the story is a page-turner, and it contains some very thoughtful analysis of social issues.
Its more an "elseworld" story like The Man in the High Castle than it is sci-fi so I can understand why people used to space operas, techno-thrillers, and cyberpunk might not like a book that is a tad more sophisticated the same way TMITHC is some of PKDs most sophisticated work.
Margaret Attwood doesn't write science fiction. When asked she said:
"No, it certainly isn't science fiction. Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that.".
She cannot risk it being science fiction because it won't be accepted as 'real' literature.
Why couldn't the author's name appear in the teaser? I had to go all the way to the article to see it was crappy, misogynistic Margaret Atwood.
Bleah.
Exactly. There's no new ideas there, just the old mildewy mad scientist meme, that goes all the way to Frankenstein and actually even further into the medieval legend of Dr. Faustus.
I wrote a review of the book shortly after returning from four years living in Canada, where Atwood is of course revered.
Oryx and Crake
Margaret Atwood, 2003
Doubleday
Margaret Atwood is probably the most famous living Canadian author. However, despite living in Canada for four years, I never got around to reading any of her works, and so I resolved to rectify this by reading her latest novel, "Oryx and Crake". Atwood is well known to write speculative fiction that addresses trends in society that she finds distressing -- if her literary credentials weren't so impeccable, she would be called a science fiction author. In the case of "Oryx and Crake", the trend she is addressing is biotechnology.
Now, I'll admit that I am not the most receptive audience to books attacking biotech -- I am after all a microbiologist, and, although my own research is more basic than applied, I am naturally sympathetic to applications of biotechnology. On the other hand, I agree that there are ethical problems with some applications of biotechnology that cannot be ignored. So, does "Oryx and Crake" address these ethical problems?
In a word, no. Basically, Atwood's arguments boil down to the assertions that 1) tampering with organisms is creepy and disgusting and 2) scientists are insane and will destroy society for the hell of it. Oh, and they're also pedophiles to boot.
The book is written as a flashback, as the hero, Jimmy (or Snowman), describes how he ended up as one of the last human survivors on Earth. He was a high school friend of Glenn (or Crake), the guy who later created a plague to kill everyone off. This is all evident in the first few pages, so I'm not giving much away here. Plotwise, the only reason to continue reading is to learn Crake's motivation, but this is never fully revealed in any case. I suspect we are to accept that Crake was warped by attending a university dedicated to molecular biology, while noble Jimmy attended a liberal arts college and thus became a better person.
But enough about plot. This isn't a novel by a hack like Crichton, but a work by a serious author. How is the writing? I'd have to say somewhat disappointing. While certainly much better than that of Crichton, I'd have to say that the more literary science fiction authors such as William Gibson and Neal Stephenson actually write better prose than Atwood, if "Oryx and Crake" is representative of her work.
In summary, I don't think that Atwood's high reputation could have been based on such cartoonish work. I can only assume this is one of her lesser works.
Im currently reading Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Space - It is a very interesting read, however I must say at about the half way mark, the book is very depressing when you look at the overall picture it has created.
I dont like depressing, the snow and ice does it well enough for me.
Whoa, defensive much?
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
Anyway, I'm happy to see something besides Flash Gordon science fiction getting reviews here.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
Throughout the novel Atwood deliberately mutilates words /. wear werds are mutilated compleatly bye misstake.
That is totaly unlike
Wow, that looks *exactly* like an AIM chat log ;)
Very Geeky Books has links to 32 more reviews!
the link at the bottom forwards to goatse
In terms of her use of language, form, depth of charaterisation etc. the 'The Blind Assassin' is technically Atwood's greatest novel so far.
Good lord that book was depressing. It was pretty good though.
Of course, I've read only this one.
It's a projection of a dystopic future, where all political and economic power is held by militaristic corporations. Most of these themes have been explored before...
It's not the last time, either. Just wait 'till the 2004 Democrat Convention.
Spam spam spam spam.
And yet this guy is modded up every day? Way to support unsolicited advertising, guys.
Is that too much to ask for? I'd like to know who wrote the book before I click on the review for it, frankly, so that I don't waste my time on a review of the latest Eddings or Goodkind claptrap.
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
spammer
Actually... what am I saying? This is
Regards,
Hank Kingsley
I can confirm this and since I'm not an AC, maybe someone will listen. Sorry if my spelling is bad, I am just beginning to get the hang of being blind...
True story.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I too listened to the Audible.com version of this book and while I found the book to be okay, with a few memorable bits, the ending ruined the book for me. You have to read the entire book before you have the whole picture of "what happened" and then it abruptly ends, and I mean abruptly. Most books have peaks and valleys of the plot while things happen, tension is created, then resolved. There is none of that in this book. Within the first few pages we know/deduce WHAT happened to the world that ended it "as we know it", but the big tension of this book is that you don't know WHY until you are almost finished with the book. But there's no "climax", only information. And the final scene is not climactic or even particularly meaningful. Here, I'll tell you the scene, and knowing it does not in the least spoil anything. The final scene is the main character coming out from behind a tree and the author writes, "Zero hour. Time to go." but you have no idea what "zero hour" could mean, or where the main character is going, or even why, and the story just stops like the author hit some word limit. It is so open-ended that you feel cheated and like you just wasted all those hours. It's like somebody tore the book in half and you didn't know it until you hit the spot where there's nothing more to the book. This technique works okay for a short story, but not one that is 10 hours long. Don't waste your time unless you have a lot of time to waste and don't care about what happens at the end. You'll never know.
Some days it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
Are you from the UK?? ;)
........
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful: Atwood's Best?, July 11, 2003 Reviewer: A reader from Exeter, Devon United Kingdom
Perhaps not. In terms of her use of language, form, depth of charaterisation etc. the 'The Blind Assassin' is technically Atwood's greatest novel so far.
Snowman starves and lives in a tree even though the world is full of
empty houses and the supermarkets are full of canned goods.
To create a convincing science catastrophy it would be more fun
if the basic science were not so obviously bogus.
First, Crake would do what every creature does,
destroy the creatures that are NOT LIKE HIMSELF.
Second, his utopian creation could never be anything other than
a short-lived peaceful society
because of basic Darwinian principles.
The author should have read the basic (not difficult) books like
Jared Diamond's Third Chimpanzee or, Robert Wright's Moral Animal.
The love triangle is unconvincing. The ending not coherent.
For a more entertaining end of humanity try Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos.
FYI, this book was reviewed in the bio-geeky prestige journal Science
who have never before (in my memory) reviewed sci-fi.
They screwed up choosing this one.
It's a subject though where there is lots of room for good authoring work.
Wait, Margaret Atwood is my grade 13 english (in Ontario in 1987) nightmare author - She's supposed to write real literature, not stuff that I would normally want to read. How can it be reviewed on /. ?
Is the reverse true? That Stephen King (who is discussed lots on slashdot) could have been one of the authors we had to read in english class? What dimension did I miss out on.
Yup it's a goatse link modded to (as of now) 3.
It's easy to verify, though. Rigth click on the post number, and open in a new window. Then resize the window so that it is really small. Then click the link within the post. That way, no blindness occurs.
-no broken link
So one of the title characters decides to wipe out humanity...so much for the surprise, huh. I guess I don't need to bother reading this one. I really should stop reading reviews...
snat. A cross between a rat and a snake that resulted in a venomous rat. When it's hungry it doesn't bother rooting through rubbish, it just bites a higher mammal, waits until they drop dead, and then starts gnawing.
And if anybody ever made one, could you ever be sure that there were none in the wild?
That's "unbelievable" not as in "I can't believe it", but rather "I don't believe it". Atwood's division of future society into insular, privileged enclaves and downtrodden, dangerous "pleeblands" (she gets a Tin Pen award for that poor neologism) is simply not believable. C'mon -- we're already well into an era when there are more ways to communicate than ever before. Yet the novel's privileged characters grow up with no contact with the other class? Please. Come back when you've got a realistic vision of social dynamics, Ms. Atwood.
The novel has some moments, I guess, but I just kept thinking questions like "has she played any computer games recently?" The ones in her novel sound straight from the future... if you're living in 1996.
As for her tin ear for neologisms -- well, read Greg Bear's Darwin's Children and compare for yourself. Mr. Bear (a science fiction writer) has a better grasp of evolving language than this so-called "literary" author.
This is one novel that had to be sold as "literary fiction", because any decent SF editor would have thrown it back for a rewrite or three.
Snowman starves and lives in a tree even though the world is full of empty houses and the supermarkets are full of canned goods. To create a convincing science catastrophy it would be more fun if the basic science were not so obviously bogus. First, Crake would do what every creature does, destroy the creatures that
are NOT LIKE HIMSELF. Second, his utopian creation could never be anything other than a short-lived peaceful society because of basic Darwinian principles. The author should have read the basic (not difficult) books like Jared Diamond's Third Chimpanzee or, Robert Wright's Moral Animal.
The love triangle is unconvincing. The ending not coherent.
For a more entertaining end of humanity try Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos.
FYI, this book was reviewed in the bio-geeky prestige journal Science who have never before (in my memory) reviewed sci-fi. They screwed up choosing this one.
It's a subject though where there is lots of room for good authoring work.
What are you trying to say exactly? From a pedantic point of view, of course you haven't read the book, you've listened to it. So what? Does having a book read to you destroy your ability to imagine the people and places being described? Meaning, as always, resides ultimately with the viewer, reader, or listener. Inflection and tone can be used to convey a richer set of meanings than the bare text, but it is my meaning that is the meaning, not someone elses.
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I would thank you for the information, but I have yet to obtain a Braile terminal.
True story.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I went out and bought the book after seeing this topic. I read about 60% of it and it's very good stuff. A little bit short for my taste though.
What? It explores digital convergence and resembles Fahrenheit 451, but it's not SF?
I find myself rereading parts because I have to let the words sink in a bit
If you haven't already, read some Gene Wolfe. Is that not SF either because the author is creative with language? Is SF constrained to be flat colourless prose?
I too was puzzled by the ending.
It could be argued that she stopped writing because at that point the story would fork, either Snowman kills the intruders, or he joins them, or, I suppose, he is killed by them. I don't think she's really interested in that sort of story.
I've read (and probably failed to understand) most of Atwood's books, this is a lot more fun than most of her stuff.
...as I believe the young people say.
THT didn't really work as SF, it was far too much concerned with the present day world. As, I suppose, was 1984 when it was written.
Atwood's work has usually struck me as humourless, O&C made a nice change.
The Blind Assassin was complete and utter dreck.
Dismal, depressing, pointless, who cares about the characters. I wanted to kill myself.
Science Fiction is my thing and has been for close to forty years. For me, the best writers and best writing in the world take place within this genre.
I read extensively outside the realm, too. Atwood is in the top tier of all current non-science-fiction English-language writers and may end up with the Nobel someday.
I was therefore pretty smug after reading 'The Handmaids Tale'. To me. this was an unoriginal, although well-crafted, American theocracy story done first and better by Heinlein in 'Revolt in 2100'. It made a great movie, however (well worth renting.)
I was therefore all prepared for a similarly unoriginal dystopian effort with 'Oryx and Crake'. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Atwood has done her research. The science is good. The ideas are original. And you get Atwood's wonderfully concise and brilliant imagery too. Atwood takes 50 words to paint a picture, not a 1000. For me, this book is her best and surefire Hugo material.
I completely agree. The audiobook is a collaborative art form including the work of the director, reader, and author. A book by a very good author, when read by an incompetent reader can be much worse than the original book, and when read by a good reader with inspired direction, quite a bit better. When I said that there is more meaning in the tone and inflection I didn't mean to pretend that the author was somehow the origin of that added meaning.
When text is used in a purely representative mode then switching do a slightly different representation isn't necessarily a problem. But text can do much more than merely represent and translation to a different medium can lose this. Again, wordplay is a prime example. Wordplay isn't about representing anything, it's about doing stuff with the words on the page. It can be as important to a text as the stuff you visualize while reading it.
The most common things that I notice are lost in the translation from text to spoken word are spellings and text formatting. Much of the Fantasy gendre seems to rely on spelling a common name in an unusual way to make them seem otherworldly, which in spoken form is lost. Captioned or boxed text is likewise very difficult to convey, so that the Chapter headings for e.g Dune tend to mix in to the body text although their text formatting indicates that they should be treated seperately. Mystery and suspense novels make the transition quite well, as do histories, biographies, and some humor.
But in the case of Oryx and Crake, since I've never seen the book I was completely unaware that Atwood had written it in an unusual style, and I am provoked to go back and look at the book again in printed form if I can find a copy among my friends.
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I found this site that has links to tons of more info on this book. Here is the link.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I agree. Perhaps I'm getting Snow Crash and The Diamond Age mixed up in regards to corporatism. The question then is where did those folks who lived in the enclaves in Snow Crash work? In O&C, the enclaves encompassed work and home.
Your second paragraph - the optimistic outcome - I'll have to review that part of the book again, it's been long enough to forget. One issue I have with reading too many of the same genre at the same time - I forget who said what.
Slashdot favorite Snow Crash and Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson are also available from Audible. Unfortunately Cryptonomicon is only available as "Unabridged Exerpts".
*In truth usually it resumes about 30 seconds before that point if I've turned it off or played something else in between.