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This is the system that produces the exceptionally gifted Crake, the numbers person with the highest numbers of all, and thus a man granted corporate carte blanche, with unlimited scientific resources to engage in cutting-edge research and development in genetic engineering. But Crake has his own agenda, one that goes well beyond the vision of his corporate masters, who see only the possibilities of profit. His virtue (and vice) is that he is willing to follow thoughts through to their conclusions, unhindered by questions of metaphysics or ethics. God, for Crake, is simply, an excisable neural cluster. The new god, of course, is the one wielding the genetic scalpel.

As intimated, Crake's intentions are purely therapeutic. He recognizes that the environment cannot sustain unlimited human development, and is convinced that humans—victims of their own instincts and imagination—cannot limit this development. At the same time, he sees that the evolution of human culture has reached a dead-end: his own society fails to satisfy the deepest needs even of those it privileges. Thus, within the confines of his high-security, high-tech complex—aptly named Paradice—he develops a therapy to remedy both problems: the complete elimination of homo sapiens sapiens and the creation of a new species of (human?) being—the Crakers, genetically altered to live in complete physical and emotional harmony with their environment.

Atwood effectively prevents simplistic judgment of Crake's project, providing an ending that ingeniously forces the reader to wrestle with precisely the same intractable issues that drove Crake to his desperate solution. Unlike her earlier dystopia, Oryx and Crake paints a world whose outlines are all too credible. She has done nothing more than to pursue the ethos of our dominant cultural projects to its nightmarish conclusion. Christians would do well to heed her warning, and to work toward offering a living alternative to her dream of death.

Stephen Dunning is a fulltime instructor of English at Douglas College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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Christianity Today sister publication Books & Culture presents Books & Culture Corner and Book of the Week Mondays at ChristianityToday.com.

The official site for Oryx and Crake has posted an pretty extensive excerpt, discussion questions, and an interview with Atwood.

Other reviews of Oryx and Crake include:

Atwood's world wired with weird science—The New York Times (July 13, 2003)

End of the world as we know it—Las Vegas Mercury (July 10, 2003)

Science, humor combine in a disturbing future—The Oregonian (July 6, 2003)

Earlier editions of Books & Culture Corners and Book of the Week include:

The Catholic Church's Regime Change | Would lay power really augur a new epoch of openness and honesty? (July 21, 2003)

One-Hit Wonder | The long swansong of Madalyn Murray O'Hair. (July 7, 2003)

Divinely Decreed? | Re-fighting the Battle of Gettysburg. (June 27, 2003)

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July (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47