Oryx and Crake

Oryx and Crake is a post-apocalyptic work by Margaret Atwood. The plot shifts back and forth between the present - one human survivor watching over a group of genetically engineered human-like people- and the recent past - during which society is rife with ethical problems that eventually lead to the annihilation of humanity. The world is ruled by corporate interests rather than a government and society is stratified physically separating, and protecting, the haves from the have-nots. The story is sharp, terrifying, painful, funny, and tragic. The tone is ambivalent toward the characters. Though the plot follows only one character, presenting only his point of view, the reader is allowed to decide if his perceptions are accurate and is not encouraged to like or dislike him or anyone else.

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I am not a person who likes surprises. I get upset if my husband tells me that he has a present for me several days before I get to find out what the present is. When I first read Good Omens, I kept thinking of how nice it would be to read the book the second time through when I can not worry about the plot and just focus on how it is written. Contrary to common sense, books cause me no less anxiety when I read them the second time. Quite the opposite. I read East of Eden many times, at least once a year, sometimes multiple times in a year, to the point where I often open the book to a particular section I like and just read those parts and then put the book back. I know the story, I have lived with the characters for about 8 years now, the Hamiltons are my friends. But each time I read it, I get tense whenever Charles attacks Adam, when Kate/Cathy starts to drink. Will Joe finally get the breaks? Will Tom handle Dessie's death? Will the ice-pack plan work? Again and again, the story does not change, but the anticipation builds. Do I really think the text will change? No, but I always really hope it will, I am always disappointed when something goes wrong, fearful when something bad is going to happen, something irrevocable, plot changing.

But I try to resist the temptation to read the wiki plot before I read a book (although I almost always do before I watch a movie). I have it on good authority that it is somehow better that way (the books, not the movie). So I try. Truth be told, not even the wiki would have prepared me. So READER BEWARE: If animal cruelty, even if only mentioned in passing, upsets you, then you may not want to read this book. If torture as a sport or kiddie porn is one of your buttons, you probably do not want to read this book.

Which is not to say that the book is about these things. But the main characters, Snowman, Crake and Oryx, meet because the former two saw (or thought they saw) the latter in a kiddie porn flick. Snowman and Crake do not seem to have an aversion to things like watching torture or animal cruelty or child pornography. I suspect that the type of person who does, knows that it is wrong, really, really wrong, and enjoys it for that reason. There seem to be no taboos, or no serious ones, in this culture. I don't know if this is a statement about the availability of this stuff on the internet or the (supposed) increasing desensitization of children toward horrible things.

These things can make me put a book down, throw it away, burn it, leave it out in the rain, shred it. For a couple of days, I even asked my husband if he could put the book where I would not accidentally start reading it again (I'm a little OCD about having text near me, I see written words and I have to read them). Eventually, the nagging feeling of an unfinished plot got to me and I decided that I had to finish it. So I did the only thing I could do, I got out the white out and erased the parts I couldn't deal with. I am hoping that eventually I will actually forget what is written underneath and when I read it again, I won't have to be so bothered.

I am not going to summarize this one because I haven't decided which parts are plot-important and which ones are Meg-important. So I am going to focus on certain elements of the book.

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Genetic modification plays an important role in the plot. Animals and plants are modified to produce more food or to mimic the flavor and texture of other food, to be immune or at least resistant to viruses, and to grow organs for transplant into humans. Humanity is also experimented on to prevent at least the signs of aging and to prevent disease. Everything in the book is possible in that, while we perhaps have not achieved these things, we have the knowledge and capability to attempt them and succeed in time. These are not ansibles or warp drives. This is diamond-hard science fiction.

Oryx and Crake constantly pushes the question, "How far is too far?" Genetic engineered food is common in the western world. Plant and animal DNA is being spliced across species. Giant rabbits with green glowing eyes? Sure, I guess, if the glowing doesn't hurt them. But why would I want those eyes? Hormone induced meat animals? I can't afford to choose the alternative. Pigs growing extra organs for human transplant? Supposedly doesn't harm the pigs and afterward the pig doesn't die from loss of its heart. But that doesn't feel right. ChickiNobs? Animals (I guess you can call them that) that grow only one edible part of a chicken, such as a breast or a leg, capable of reproducing in large numbers, but without a head or feet or wings, without feathers, with only an orifice to accept nutrients, with only the parts of the brain the concern digestion, reproduction and growth, incapable of feeling pain. Is that an animal?


The book also toys with Genesis, in that the human-like people, the Crakers, live in a self-sustaining home that provides them with food and protection. They are even vegetarians. Snowman eventually leads them out of their shelter to the world at large when he fears that the electronics maintaining their home may one day cease to function. Snowman also unwittingly sets up elements of a crude religion. They live near the remnants of a destroyed technologically advanced society which they are incapable of understanding. The Crakers are simple, intentionally designed to be so simple that they will not commit the human sin of amassing knowledge. So the simple things they are told tend to take on more meaning. I need to think more about their religion and its development but I can say this for it, at least it has both a male and a female deity. No religion is complete without both.

Do Anroids Dream of Electric Sheep?

This book is the basis of the movie Blade Runner. While there are obvious plot connections, the book has a completely different feel. The plot obeys one of Aristotle's classical unities: the unity of time.

The book introduces a machine that controls and creates emotions, even complex emotions like the pleased recognition of the husband's wisdom. Deckhard's wife struggles with the use of the machine, refusing it to use it or selecting a setting that causes deep depression and guilt. Like her husband, she is searching for what is real, true and human but forced to rely on the artifical, the machine for the catharsis she needs, the human connection she craves.

Empathy is the primary way to distinguish androids and humans. In the movie, there is a definite confusion between empathy and sympathy. Both indicate an ability to understand what another person feels and be able to feel what they are feeling. Sympathy is a step further; it includes compassion and ongoing concern for another person. In the book, the newest androids can empathize with humans, are capable of feeling what another feels. On a superficial level, they are capable of identify and emulate feelings. However, Rachael reveals that this ability to empathize is not inherently a positive characteristic. Understanding Deckhard's love and pride in his goat, she murders the goat in revenge. In the movie, Roy exhibits sympathy, compassion, when he elects to save Deckhard while he himself is dying.

The book also features a religious element which is absent in the movie. Mercerism is a religion that allows its members the ability to experience the founders struggles and martyrdom. The followers are linked through empathy boxes. Through these boxes, a follower enters the journey of Mercer, seeing and feeling what he saw and felt. They are also connected to the thoughts and feelings of everyone else who is presently using their empathy box.

Mercerism is threatened by Buster Friendly. Buster encourages consumerism and vapid feelings of content. Buster is the only television show on Earth and maintains a monopoly on entertainment. Mercerism is its only rival. Buster may be a frequently replaced android since he seems to never age or sleep. The androids that are staying with JR state this after Buster "reveals" Mercerism to be a fake.

Deckhard reflects that this supposed revelation will not fundamentally change people and their practices because the religion offers more than its foundation story. For many people, it offers their only connection to others, the ability to feel and communicate with them.

Deckhard himself experiences a religious vision after Mercerism is exposed. Throughout the novel, Deckhard experiences doubt about the ethics of his job and increasing empathy for the androids he retires. His relationship with his fake sheep continues to bother him. He feels that it is necessary for him to maintain his sheep, pretend that it is real, for the sake of appearances. But he resents the sheep, its mechanical demands, the constant care it requires while being artificial. His need to pretend that his sheep is real, to treat it as if it were, flies in the face of his profession as an android killer.

Deckhard's revelation is of Mercer telling him that he must compromise his ethics in order to do what is right, to kill the killers. After killing the last android, Deckhard travels out to a desert and climbs up a hill, mimicking Mercer's Sisyphean journey in the empathy boxes. Before reaching the top, he returns down the hill to his car. Unable to decide what to do next, Deckhard spots a frog, believed to be extinct. The frog was considered special to Mercer; Deckhard interprets this to be a blessing. Deckhard returns home to find his real goat murdered; his wife discovers that the frog is actually a fake. Deckhard is upset but glad to know the truth. Despite the frog being artificial, Deckhard wants to keep the frog and care for it.

Oh, such a delicious ambiguity! He despises his fake sheep, takes pride in his real goat, and decides to love and care for a fake frog. Despite his growing empathy for androids, he retires the renegades with precision. Deckhard desperately wants what is real but relies upon the artificial. The fake human is to be killed, the fake animal to be provided for, cared for, petted. The religion is proven false but potent, much like Deckhard's frog, much like the new androids.

A Word About Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi

The post-apocalyptic genre details the destruction of civilization or the planet, the end of life on earth, and/or the struggles of the human remnant to survive and recreate civilization. The cause of the destruction may be disease, invasion, nuclear holocaust, or a mundane disaster, such as the melting of the poles or dimming of the sun's power. This genre has ancient roots, present in Babylonion and Israelite myths. The threat of the end of times and millenialism has cycled through humanity constantly over our history.

Disease
The disease may be naturally occurring but is most often a manufactured weapon in biological warfare that has been spread by accident. A desperate race may ensue to contain and treat the diseased. The survivors may have natural immunity but frequently have acquired immunity from some government connection, possibly this connection is to the government which unleashed the disease. The survivors rebuild the population while fighting the disease and a second outbreak. Some survivors may interpret the disease as a religious punishment that spared only the just or faithful.

Invasion
Alien invasion may either decimate the population or destroy the habitability of the Earth. Survivors may fight back in war or attempt to escape the Earth in search of a new home planet. Invasion may also come from a supernatural source, such as zombies, or mutated humans who seek to supplant human culture, I am Legend. The Day of the Triffids is similar except that the invaders are an intelligent and lethal plant life that had been genetically engineered for economic purposes.

Nuclear holocaust was a popular element during the cold war era and the paranoia caused by the space race. This destruction is the result of either direct attack in a war or of misfired weapons. The survivors are understandably hostile and distrusting. Crude clans or governments form according to rule by fist. The threat of nuclear fallout or mutation haunts characters.

Classic Examples:
Earth Abides
Dr. Strangelove
Planet of the Apes
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Book of Eli
The Road

Related Genres:
Utopia/Dystopia

A Canticle for Leibowitz

After a nuclear holocaust, the world and humanity attempt to recover. Many people suffer horrible and painful mutations. Culture, technology, science and reading are met with hostility as these are seen as the cause or catalyst of the destruction. A man named Leibowitz attempts to create a secret religious order, charged with the duty of preserving knowledge and books.

This book chronicles the span of 26 generations of the order, from the dark days of knowledge after the war, through a renaissance, and up to the end of human life on Earth. There is an enduring struggle between the monastery, passing governments and the religious head in the Papal state. There is also a struggle between religious and secular ethos, especially when it comes to euthanasia of mutants. One particular story focuses on the struggle of a woman and her infant, both mutated and in horrible pain. She eventually chooses to end their suffering because she believes there can be no good in the suffering of her child who can understand only its pain.

There is a wandering character who lives throughout all these ages, appearing at key moments to key players in history. He seems to be perpetually waiting. The legend of the Wandering Jew is all but forgotten to modernity. It is the legend of a Jewish man, often who has cursed or denied comfort to Jesus, who is fated to endure eternity until the Jesus returns to Earth. The legend is also seen as an allegory of the stateless Jewish population in Europe during the middle ages. However, the identity of the wandering Jew is confused with the Saint Leibowitz, who was himself a late convert to the church.

I avoid religion in fiction because it is painful to read amateur interpretations of religious literature. I am a pathetic snob but I am also an academic and my speciality is modern Jewish thought. But I loved the religious elements of this book. It is charmingly ironic that scientific knowledge is entrusted to a religious society. Actually, I suppose this is not ironic at all but an example of Miller's use of cyclical time events. Despite the hope of the crew on the starship, the tiny ark carrying all terrestrial knowledge, we know they are doomed to repeat history.

The Road

The Road is written by Cormic McCarthy, who also wrote No Country For Old Men. His taciturn method obliterates what normal comfort one finds in Sci-Fi, the familiarity of humanity, and even in most post-apocalyptica there is the saving grace of knowing what went wrong offering the reader the chance to illogically prepare for such a disaster. But none of that. Instead, we are shown what I know to be the flaw of cannibalism-the ethics of procuring human meat. In situations were the meal is already deceased or, as in the dire case when lost at sea, the victim has drawn lots with foreknowledge of his risk and his offering of salvation to his crew, in these situations I feel no moral outrage. Even in the case of Hannibal Lectur, his victims are killed first, or dulled against the pain, or viscious sinners for whom we need feel no remorse.

Again, not so for Cormic. Instead they are the hunted and the tortured, who are forced to endure in suffering and privation. He did try to warn me, gradually building up and offering clues but I was too sleepy and although I could tell that he was trying to get across to me something, I could not put the clues together nor could I fathom the horror he was trying to shield me from in the beginning. Until one page, in my foolish hope, I fell down into his pit of terror. There are some things that wreck me, that pull my innards from me and throw me into despair. It does not matter if they are fiction, movie-magic, make-believe. The terrible possibilities of humanity . . . things I cannot look at, things that break me down. Too cruel.

This book is among them and I must beg Oprah, why, why would this be on your booklist? Not that I read it because of her happy seal of approval, but still, why would she put this into the hands of the masses and say "read, please do"?

I have lived in a tremor since yesterday. Scared to sleep, scared to close my eyes for what I might find there, scared to let my mind wander. A horrible road. A sore throat had me down, but this knocked me out. I was weak on waking, slow in moving, scared of breathing. It has been a hard few days physically, emotionally, psychologically. I am coming round, rallying. I have I Am Legend which bears precious little resemblance to the movie. Why another post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel? Because I already know the story. I have taken the precaution of reading the wiki plot of any book that I may venture into.

I recently did one of those Myer-Briggs tests. I wanted to see if my anti-depressants/anti-anxiety meds had turned me into an extrovert and was a little surprised to find that it had not. If anything, my introversion is the only hard certainty although I have moved from Thinking into Feeling since high school. So I am Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling and a 50/50 Judging/Percepting. No matter which of the latter, I am said to live a rich inner life and I am only lately coming to realize that this is not in fact the norm, which I had previously assumed. And J or P, I am a healer-helper-counselor. And with either combination, or both, I am said to find safety in predictability, habit, and preparation when I cannot be sure.

Earth Abides

This was my first science-fiction novel/novella/short. I suppose this is not entirely true but it is the first one that ever affected me.

It is one of the early Apocalypse stories that became so popular during the cold war and the Bush W. administration. The story is told by Ish who observes the end of the world and the beginning of a new one. The catalyst is an unknown, air-born disease that kills off at least 99.99% of humanity sparing few with natural immunity. The world that ends is only the civilized world and the world that is rebuilt is only the world of mankind.

The title refers to the apathy of the planet upon which this human drama is played. Ish tends to watch the world instead of interacting and shaping. He notes that the few species to take notice of man's demise were domesticated in one sense or another: dogs, cats, rats, cows, etc. I suspect he is wrong about his evaluation of the survival of dogs, cats and horses. These animals are not tamed, even if they are domesticated. We like to pretend that they are and if we can appease dogs and cats and break horses, they will limply go along. But I suspect that a wild dog has a decent chance. And aren't all horses wild in each new generation?

The easy criticism of the book is Ish's own failure to respond. He gripes a great deal about inaction, such as failing to teach the children to read, but he never seems interested in acting. Why didn't he begin to read to his children in their infancy? It seems that in his absurd hopes for a chosen, golden child he readily forsook all of human knowledge.

Ish is, however, not what stays in my mind year after year. Instead, it is Stewart's imagine decay of civilization, for good and ill. The surviving "tribe" shares more work and has a communal ethic that eases the burdens of all. Racism is a luxury of a large society that the tiny tribe can no longer support. Yes, I am using "luxury" perversely. But sexism thrives, possibly out of necessity since the women are expected to bear any number of children to repopulate the world. Monogamy seems to establish itself in the second generation although there are two female survivors who share a husband. Superstition also survives.

Stewart also touches on a theory in studies of early human history. A population must be large enough before it can support and maintain progress. In Ish's doomed son lies hope that future generations will be able to access the treasury of knowledge in the libraries. When he dies, this hope is extinguished. Presumably, everyone else is too busy foraging and hunting. Though this is truly Ish's lame failure, it echoes a truth from across the ages. You cannot make advances in smelting it you are busy surviving.

Day of the Triffids

Day of the Triffids is so classic it is almost cliche. The book is predicated on cold war paranoia and middle-class fears. Wyndham makes allusions to communism in the single-minded Triffids who act with a single intent, destruction and consumption of humans, with callous disregard for individuals of its own species.

Some foreign country designs a new type of plant, the triffid, as a weapon of economic warfare. However, the plant is spread when an attempt to steal a box of seeds goes wrong, allowing the almost weightless seeds to spread all over the world. The new plant has some disturbing behaviours. A mature plant is capable of stinging and blinding a human; the plant is carnivorous; the plants are capable of moving, especially over dirt but they can cross pavement for short distances if necessary; the plants are intelligent and probably have a means of communicating to each other through vibration.

A possibly-unrelated meteor shower blinds any human who gazes at it, rendering humanity helpless. The Triffids take the opportunity to break free of their prison-farms and attack the newly blind. Attempts to gather, protect and repopulate humanity quickly go awry. Our protagonist carves out a small niche in a farm, batteling the Triffids and attempting to creat self-sufficiency. Eventually, they face the option of joining a more survivors on the Isle of Wight where the Triffids have been prevented from taking root literally or giving in to a fascist military organization.

If I seem dismissive about the plot, please forgive me. It was an original that has been used, manipulated, borrowed and stolen so it is as familiar as peanut butter. The story takes place in the middle of events, the day after the meteor shower, while the protagonist is healing from a Triffid sting. It similarly ends in a transition as the farm community strikes out to cast their lot on the island. Struggle and doubt are felt the entire plot length; they are never resolved. It's a lot like life - blind people groping about to survive, trusting those who claim to see, petty fighting, constant threat, uncertaintity, etc.

There are four failed attempts to (re)establish society: 1-A society repopulated by seeing men procreating with numerous, mostly blind-from-birth women. This experiment is aborted before it is even tested. It is met with some resistance because it goes against current mores and because it fails to provide for those who are newly blind.
2-A second attempt forces the seeing to be shackled into slavery to save the blind by scavenging for food. The seeing person is handcuffed to one or two blind persons so he can not simply escape. Their lives are spend searching for increasingly depleted food sources. Eventually, a strange disease, possibly food poisoning, begins to work its way through the blind, and possibly other people who can see.
3-A third society is created by one of the dissidants in the first group. She creates an impractical and overly idealist religious colony based upon Christian morals, or at least her interpretation of them. While this society temporarily functions, it fails to provide adequately for the future and the threat of Triffids.
4-The final attempt is the small farm tribal self-sustaining farm that faces increasing threat from the Triffids. This little society tries to fence out the world and Triffids but cannot continue to defend itself from either.

The fifth society is not reached. It is created by the original leader of the first movement but with some practical modifications.