Bioengineering and the Generational Link in Atwood’s Oryx and Crake

November 20, 2024

By Derek DiMatteo

Margaret Atwood’s first novel in the MaddAddam Trilogy, Oryx and Crake (2003), is both prophecy and satire. Prophecy because it imagines a future that is based on technologies we already possess. Satire because it eviscerates hallowed institutions and the excesses of capitalism. And like all stories about viruses running amok, this novel feels even more eerily prescient when read after the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is not a work of science fiction but rather speculative fiction, which as Atwood defines it in literature means “a way of dealing with possibilities that are inherent in our society now, but which have not yet been fully enacted.” As a work of speculative fiction, the novel projects into the future things that are already happening in the real world of our present time, such as bioengineering or living in company-owned towns, by extrapolating what would happen if pushed further. Thus it imagines a future that could be ours but which has not yet come to pass and could as yet be avoided. Hence the feelings of prescience and prophecy when read today, particularly because the narrative also looks back onto a present similar to our own. Oryx and Crake imagines a future in which homo sapiens are all but wiped from the planet due to a bioengineered virus, something humanity was forced to contemplate in the real world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the pandemic, people realized just how dependent they were on technology and skilled tradesmen for almost everything, such as fixing air conditioners and cars. It wouldn’t take much for this knowledge to be lost, a hypothetical situation raised in the novel during a casual conversation between Crake and Jimmy about what would happen if civilization were destroyed:

“All it takes,” said Crake, “is the elimination of one generation. One generation of anything. Beetles, trees, microbes, scientists, speakers of French, whatever. Break the link in time between one generation and the next, and it’s game over forever.” (p.  223)

Jimmy objects that instructions would remain, so the subsequent generations could rebuild. But Crake notes that without electricity and the advanced technology needed to extract resources, and without enough specialists to read the instructions and pass on their knowledge to apprentices, there would be no successors to maintain the technology. Here the novel reminds me of a passage in Don DeLillo’s White Noise (1985) in which the son remarks on the fact that although we have many books and watch TV programs about modern technology and science, the average person cannot make a refrigerator, create electricity, or even a wooden match. If thrown back into the stone age, most people today would be unable to lead humanity back out of it. Oryx and Crake explores this scenario after the bioengineered pandemic wipes out most humans.

The pandemic’s mastermind, Crake, believed that humanity was inherently flawed and could be improved through bioengineering away its worst traits, but that in order for a new species of humans to flourish on Earth, the existing species needed to be exterminated. The new human species contains gene splices from other animal species and marks a return to animality, including what Crake believes to be a more straightforward set of mating rituals that he codes into their DNA. The mating rituals involve pheromones, genitalia that turns bright blue, presenting flowers to one’s mate, and singing. I was reminded of the mating ritual depicted in the movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), when a magical creature called an erumpent (evocative of a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros) is in heat (a sac near its horn turns bright colors) and attempts to mate with Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler).

Oryx and Crake—the first volume of The MaddAddam Trilogy—is followed by The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam. If you are new to Atwood, you might also want to read The Handmaid’s Tale.

References and Resources

Atwood, Margaret. Oryx and Crake. Anchor Books / Penguin, 2003.

De Lillo, Don. White Noise. Penguin Books, 1985.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: Erumpent Featurette. [Video]. YouTube, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ8r98G80Dc.