From the Back of the Novel:
Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.
Ornx and Crake follows the story of Snowman, what is probably the last human, in what seems to be your streotypical genetic engineering apocalypse, complete with dangerous animals with names taken from combinations of present animals. He spends his time living near a group of humanoids, "The Children of Crake" which though they seem superficially human, their mannerisms and their glowing green eyes show that they are not human at all. Snowman seems to think of himself as a sort of caretaker of these "Crakers," who are named after Crake, a childhood friend of Snowman, who had a hand in the creation of the "Crakers."
The novel seems so far to be a story told in two time frames, a present, and a past, switching back and forth between the two. Snowman, being alone in the world, does not seem to be entirely coherent, and when his thoughts stray into the past, so do we, the readers. The novel goes back to the past to show the past of Snowman, then to the present, to show the interactions of Snowman with the "Children of Crake", then back to the past again and again. This dichotomy between past and present is certainly interesting and for myself, reminds me of the other Atwood book which I have read this year, The Handmaid's Tale, which has a similar past, present, past, present way of telling the story. I do not know if this is common between all books by Atwood or just those two.
Crake is Snowman's childhood friend. He appears only in the sections of the book about the past, though there are many references to him in the present, as Snowman seems to create an entire religion based upon Crake and Oryx for the Children of Crake. Crake is shown as an intelligent, well spoken person, who has a sort of worldly cynicism about the world. He seems to have created the Crakers, at some time in between the current time and the past time, when Snowman and Crake were friends. He seems to be dead or missing, Snowman claims, in one of his mental tirades, that Crake forbid people to call themselves by anything other than real life, quantifiable things in the presence of the Crakers, Snowman's name is a direct refutation of that, he names himself after the Abdomidable Snowman, something that the Crakers will never see, and claims that Crake would have forbidden it if he was around. Crake is conspicuously absent in the present timeline.
Oryx is a female person a former child prostitute, that Crake and Snowman both are attracted towards while watching child pornography on a stolen account. Little is said about her at the current point. She appears often in Snowman's thoughts, sometimes talking to Snowman, in a way. Her importance in the Crakers religion, created by Snowman, and the title, suggests a much more important role in the story later.
Snowman's father and mother appear often in Snowman's mental reveries about the past. The father seems a sort of pushover, aiding the corporations with their genetic splicing, being sort of disinterested in Snowman He seems at home in the world of the past, a sort of oligarchy, a world ruled by groups of genetics companies, with affluent company-owned neighborhoods, interspersed with ghettos, and cyberpunk styled urban decay. Snowman's father works for first one company, working with making pigs with human internal organs, before going to another one, working on making pigs with human skin and human brain material. His foil is in Snowman's mother, who is disgusted with the abuses going on in the corporations, and leaves, disappearing to far away, far from the knowledge of Snowman, though the police often interview him as to where his mothers whereabouts are in the past.
Snowman himself is the obvious main character and the only real character in the present setting. He seems to be not quite there, reminiscing heavily about the past, not thinking about improving his own situation. The sections of the book set in the past show how Snowman came to be, his childhood coming up into his teenage years in the early part of the book, his interest in sex and wordplay, his friendship with Crake, while his current actions are more along the lines of survival and teaching the Crakers about a religion that he made up, featuring Crake and Oryx. Despite a interest in child pornography in his teen years, he seems to be relatively relatable, being a stranger in a strange land, a last human in an empty world.
So far, I feel that the book has been well written, but not gone out of what I think is quote tired ground for apocalyptic science fiction. evil corporations, genetically modified animals, genetically modified humans, disgusting sexual preferences (Snowman's interest in child pornography and snuff) and urban decay are all extremely common tropes in science fiction, ones that I think are quite tired by now. However, so far, I think that Atwood, though she uses common tropes in science fiction, she uses them well, and the novel is far from over, and is quite good.
