Where are we headed?
Speculative fiction like Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood often shows us emergent possibilities based on features of the present. Atwood’s novel is an eirie close future where bio-engineering and global corporate ghettoization have created a dystopia waiting for the “perfect storm” of a plague.
I finihsed Orynx and Crake this weekend and really liked it (I am a sci-fi enthusiast and always looking for good sci-fi.) One of the best treatments of the dangers of bioengineering yet. I’m not sure I understood Crake’s motivation at the end. I don’t think she developed it well enough for me to believe he would uleash a plague on everyone. I did find the vision of a stratefied life with pleebs and an upper class in compounds alarming and a realistic extension of the gated communities emerging from the pervasive fear of the US. We seem to be headed there – an upscale version of the corporate towns like Hershey PA. I also found her imagined splitting of “word” people who just write advertising copy and “number” people who do the science disturbing – see my previous post on Atwood’s Globe and Mail commentary. It again seems like a road we are on where the arts and humanities become purveyors of decisions made in corporate labs by engineers. I guess the third class is the sex workers, and that part is also effectively disturbing. So you have Orynx – sex worker, Crake – bio engineer, and Snowman – wordsmith to the others. I can see echoes in the names of Crake and Snowman, but not Orynx – a gazelle. Ideas?
The web site contain an interview and other materials. Interesting design.