Review by W. R. Greer. Amazon
In a capitalistic society, the successful companies provide a product the public desperately wants or must have. In Margaret Atwood's dystopia, the biotech companies control the world because they pander to society's aching desire for what they don't have. Providing products or techniques to allow for perpetually youthful looks and skin, drug-induced euphoria, and ultimate sexual satisfaction makes their products indispensable to the public. By bioengineering plants and animals that allow maximum production of food and other products, these same companies allow the rape of nature to continue as the world struggles to provide for a continuously growing population it can no longer support. The author obviously feels this is one potential future, where a combination of man's destruction of his environment while attempting to provide for too much population and man's arrogance that he can sculpt the world in his own vision will lead to an untenable world. While Jimmy can't figure what his place in that world should be, Crake's solution is to start all over again.
Review by Jackie Pray USA Today
Genetic tinkering. Rampant profiteering. A deadly virus that sweeps the globe. Are these last Tuesday's headlines or our future?
In Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake, the answer is both. For Atwood, our future is the catastrophic sum of our oversights. It's a depressing view, saved only by Atwood's biting, black humor and absorbing storytelling.
Review by David Kipen, Sa Francisco Chronicle
Arguably the shortest of all short stories, the late science-fiction writer Fredric Brown's "Knock" reads, in its entirety: "The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door." Or, to put it another way, "One day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand." Whether in Brown's distilled version or in Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," this scene always tells the same story: A man thinks himself alone, then discovers otherwise.
Review by Mary Whipple Mostly Fiction
Obviously not hard science fiction, the novel is a vividly described cautionary tale of science and scientists run amok in a society which has failed in its guardianship of the environment and of life itself. More light-hearted than terrifying, and more allegorical than heart- stopping, Oryx and Crake carries a powerful environmental message of great relevance, and Atwood's devoted fans should make this novel a big seller.
Review by Ron Charles Chrisyian Science Monitor
The end of the world would be bad, of course, but books about it are a disaster. Once in a while an author carries off the Apocalypse with some pizazz - St. John comes to mind - but even the best writers have trouble with it. Three years ago, T.C. Boyle brought things to a dismal close in "Friend of the Earth." And now Booker Prize-winner Margaret Atwood is thundering away in "Oryx and Crake."
Review by Sven Birkerts NY Times
Atwood's scenario gains great power and relevance from our current scientific preoccupation with bioengineering, cloning, tissue regeneration and agricultural hybrids, and she strikes a note of warning as unambiguous as Mary Shelley's in ''Frankenstein.'' This is the intention of the novel: to goad us to thought by making us screen in the mind a powerful vision of competence run amok.
Review by Michiko Kakutani NY Times
Unfortunately Ms. Atwood's brave new world never feels remotely plausible: it is neither fully imagined as a place with its own intractable rules and realities, nor is it a convincing sendup of contemporary life. Instead the book feels laboriously manufactured: a lumbering mutant, part Michael Crichton novel (minus the suspense), part back-to-nature screed against a fake, plastic society in thrall to money and looks.
An Essay by Peter Watts