In this blog entry, I will be focusing less upon the plot of Oryx and Crake, and more upon comparing it to other books in the post apocalyptic genre that I have read. I will try to compare elements that I have seen so far in the novel with elements found in The Handmaid’s Tale, Blade Runner (The film, not the obscure novel) and my least favorite book of all time, A Boy and his Dog, by Harlan Ellison.
The society of Snowman's youth is obviously heavily influenced by the Cyberpunk movements of the 80s. The cyberpunk tropes of large corporations running everything, and decaying inner cities were children of that movement, which for me can be seen most easily in the film Blade Runner, about a bounty hunter in a futuristic Los Angeles that seems like a mix of Hong Kong, and Detroit. In Cyberpunk literature, and films, there is usually a few wealthy individuals who control the corporations and live in luxury, or at least modernity. This trope is shown in Oryx and Crake in the Compounds, where Jimmy and Crake grew up, surrounded by the Pleeblands, the rest of the iceberg to the tip that is seen in the compounds, always on the edge of the story to tell us that life is much worse outside of the Compounds and the relatively sheltered life of Jimmy.
There are some differences between the setting of a average Cyberpunk novel, and the early part of Oryx and Crake. The primary difference is that Jimmy is an elite in this society. He lives in Compounds, and never seems to be bothered by fighting in the Pleeblands. If this was a cyberpunk novel, Jimmy would most likely be a dirt poor resistor to the unstoppable power in the Compounds, down in the depths of the Pleeblands. Other differences can be found in the use of genetic engineering. Though Ornx and Crake uses the ideas of growing meat for food, and organs for the wealthy, it does not go down the cyberpunk way of people experimenting with their bodies, injecting things into their skin, modifying their own bodies. Atwood does not write a cyberpunk novel when she wrote Oryx and Crake, she uses the tropes to show the early life of Jimmy, to provide a sort of base for Jimmy’s actions in the present time.
Blade Runner follows Rick Deckard in his search for artificial humans, or “replicants” who escaped and are now wandering the earth, highly dangerous and with extremely short lifespans. Blade runner shows the usual visuals of extreme urban decay, with sets looking like a rainy Hong Kong, with added poverty and seediness. The poverty, enourmous in-your face advertizments, social unrest and seediness of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles can be found in Oryx and Crake in the Pleeblands. The excess of the wealthy Dr. Tyrell, of the Tyrell Corporation, can be compared to the wealthy, sheltered life in the Compunds. The replicants could be seen as the children of Crake, though they have little in common apart from a sort of humanity that both Snowman, and Rick must grapple with in the end.
The novel that is most close to Oryx and Crake that I have read is A Boy and His Dog, by Harlan Ellison. By a sad circumstance I found this disturbing novella, buried in a list of Hugo Award winners. The novella focuses on a boy, Vic, who in character seems like a mix between Snowman and a serial rapist, and his genetically modified talking dog, Blood, who eggs him on. After reading the first 200 pages of Oryx and Crake, connections can be made between the two, to the point that they could be in the same world. Like Vic and his all consuming obsession with rape, Snowman is far from modern day sexual norms, being highly interested in child pornography and snuff in his youth, this sort of messed up material made it very difficult for me to read both books. The background of the post apocalyptic wasteland, and the genetically modified creatures that inhabit it seems to have a similar nature in Boy and His Dog. Both seem to have a cynical picture on the world, In a Boy and his Dog, Vic is only really kind to, only cares for his dog, who he has a pact with, where Blood finds women for Vic with his sense of smell, and Vic finds food for Blood, who cannot find food on his own. This is a highly cynical view of human nature, in that it shows one of the few survivors of the apocalypse obsessed with rape, and helping an animal that cannot feed itself, not because he his kind, but because he wants its services. Oryx and Crake is cynical, with its cyberpunk setting in the beginning, and its post-apocalyptic setting in the later parts, caused by human set diseases, to protect the Children of Crake, but not nearly as cynical as Boy and His Dog.
There is rarely anything new in the world of science-fiction, new tech ideas may rise, but social structures are taken from the work before them. Just as Star Wars is a mash of Dune and Foundation, as Foundation itself was taken from history, and Dune from Arabic culture, combined with environmentalism and mysticism. Oryx and Crake is influenced by the writings of novelists before it, and them themes explored by other authors.
