Parable of the Sower
The novel that made Butler a prophet: a New York Times bestseller decades after publication, source of an opera and a graphic novel, and the founding text of modern climate dystopia.
Book Entry · Science Fiction
Oryx and Crake
by Margaret Atwood · 2003 · MaddAddam Trilogy, book 1
What is Oryx and Crake about?
Snowman — formerly Jimmy — may be the last man alive, sunburnt in a tree, custodian of the Crakers: gentle, green-eyed, genetically optimised people who smell of citrus, purr to heal, and were designed by his best friend to replace us. The flashbacks rebuild the world that ended: corporate compounds and pleeblands, ChickieNobs and pigoons, the games (Extinctathon, Blood and Roses) where Crake's worldview assembled itself, and the beautiful, unknowable Oryx whom both men loved. The plague was a product launch; the apocalypse had a marketing plan. Atwood's satire is so close to the biotech news cycle it reads like embargoed copy.
Why it matters
Booker and Orange shortlisted, the founding volume of the MaddAddam trilogy and a cornerstone of modern climate-and-biotech dystopia: the engineered apocalypse as corporate deliverable.
Where does it sit in the series?
Atwood's bioengineered apocalypse: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam, charting the corporate compound world before the plague and the strange green peace after it.
In the Guide from MaddAddam Trilogy:
- Oryx and Crake (2003)
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