Week 13, Lit Speculation

Remy Tost, Novemeber 14th

The feeling I got after reading last week’s story, Lilith’s Brood came back to me again while reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. It had sudden weird twists and turns and it made me feel off and freaked out. It also made me second guess who the characters were and whether they were good or bad. That sudden strange need to wash my hands came back a few times too. Also reminded me vaguely of A Clockwork Orange and 1984 due to the weird and fucked up actions that happened within the society that where viewed as “ok” by their standards (ex- child pornography).

But on a different note before I read the short story I read a brief synopsis to see what I was in store for, since the title didn’t really give me any clues. I found that the writer herself explained that she didn’t believe this was a science fiction story at all, but a speculative fiction and "adventure romance" because she thought this story to her wasn’t something humans today can’t do.

The story itself is again weird, but with decent pacing. The world, as messed up as it was Atwood made a reference to something that could be related to today was kind of cool. The dirtysockpuppets.com reminded me of Avenue Q the Musical. And I’m sure they other, grosser sites are based off on real sites as well.

Crake, Jimmy, and Oryx were an interesting group of characters, and for a while it seemed strange that Crake and Jimmy made it as best friends as children to adult since they were so different. But when Crake was “sane” it lasted well enough.

Also the concept of Crackers and the idea of getting rid of the defective human race was a motif I’ve seen many times. But I liked how Jimmy (Snowman) kept his word and protected the Crackers. Overall interesting world, and apparently there are gonna be some follow- up novels for this coming up soon. Even HBO is gonna make this a series, which would make since seeing how HBO isn’t on cable and this book has its racy moments. Not sure if I wanna check that out when it comes but we’ll see what happens.

Also, random side note, when I read about Oryx when Jimmy first see her and when she has an affair with Jimmy “China Girl” by David Bowie popped in my head.