Key themes
- Corporate biotechnology and the world it will build
- The scientist as god — and the god who destroys what he cannot control
- Nostalgia for the human world we are building toward extinction
About this book
A man may be the last human after a engineered catastrophe; sharp, scary speculative fiction.
Published in 2003, Oryx and Crake imagines a near-future dominated by corporate biotech campuses and genetic engineering. Atwood described it as 'speculative fiction' rather than science fiction — extrapolating from existing technologies rather than inventing new ones.
Discussion questions
- Crake engineers the extinction of humanity and replaces it with an 'improved' species. How does Atwood make his logic comprehensible — and at what point does his vision tip from idealism into horror?
- Jimmy/Snowman is the novel's narrator and the sole human survivor. What is Atwood saying through his inadequacy — his charm, his nostalgia, his inability to do what Crake did?
- The world of the novel is plausibly extrapolated from present-day corporate biotech. Which specific extrapolations feel most immediately prescient?
- The Crakers are designed without aggression, with limited intelligence and with built-in mating rituals. What is Atwood saying about what makes us human — by showing what an 'improved' human lacks?
- Oryx and Crake is the first of Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy. What in this first book establishes the thematic and formal framework for the whole?
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