Oryx and Crake

by Margaret Atwood (Bloomsbury)

I hesitate to use the term "science fiction" because these days it conjures images of teenage Star-Wars shootouts and the like. But what good science fiction does -- what it's meant to do -- is project forward into a possible future, and then cast a fresh light on the present.

This is exactly what Atwood does in Oryx and Crake. It's set at a time a few months after an awful catastrophe has wiped out most -- or perhaps all -- of the world's people. It follows a lone human called Snowman as he tries to survive and, at the same time, make some sense of what has happened. And in trying to adapt to the present, Snowman tries, through memory, to keep a grip on the past. However, he's aware that it's slipping away from him.

The world he lived in was one of genetic experimentation and manipulation in the hands of huge organisations in competition with one another. Society was divided into the cleverest people living in compounds -- owned by the organisation in which you worked -- while everybody else lived in "pleebland". Pleebland was considered dangerous and distasteful by the compounders and, as a compound kid, Snowman simply never went there.

Snowman himself wasn't a genius, but at school he befriended Crake, who was. At the end of school Crake was snapped up by a prestigious learning institution (they would bid for the smartest students) and was set for a meteoric career. Snowman was accepted into a down-at heel school for the arts.

Atwood's dark humour pervades the story. As teenagers, Snowman and Crake played chess. They also played "Extinctathon" and "Kwiktime Osama". On the Internet they had a choice of reality shows where you could watch real-time executions or people committing assisted suicide.

Snowman, as a "neurotypical" -- ie, of ordinary intelligence, as opposed to the clever set -- hadn't much to look forward to in life. But when he wakes up in a tree at the start of the novel, in a world that is utterly changed, he hasn't anything to look forward to at all. There's a sense that he's been liberated from his previous, restricted life, but at an appalling cost.

This story is told, convincingly, from Snowman's perspective, and Snowman is very human indeed. This, in part, is what allows humour in to the story. The novel is shocking and gripping, but also, at times, wickedly iconoclastic. There is a sense of the author enjoying herself thoroughly. At the same time, she gives the reader significant pause for thought.