Books

The Year of The Flood


By Andy Frisk
February 14, 2010 - 19:29

In Margaret Atwood’s 2003 novel Oryx and Crake, the award winning author returned to speculative fiction of the kind that made her an internationally renowned author when her novel The Handmaid’s Tale was published back in 1985. This time instead of focusing on a dystopian future where right wing religious fascists reign supreme and women are dominated and repressed, Atwood creates a world of the not too distant future that is controlled by competing corporations whose abuse of advanced gene splicing and genetic engineering has wrought wide spread destruction. Crake, a brilliant scientist with God like intentions, decides the world has deteriorated enough under the weight of a destroyed environment, corporate control, and its morally corrupt citizens, and decides to do something about it. Namely, he creates a virus (a “waterless flood”) that wipes out most of the Earth’s population allowing his genetically engineered “children” to inherit the leftovers, and a few survivors to scratch out an existence while battling the genetic horrors left over by the corporations in their mad dash to have the best bottom line.

Wolvogs (a genetic splice between wolves and dogs) pigoons (pigs genetically engineered to grow human organs, including brain tissues, for harvest), rakunks (tamed and genetically engineered pets spliced together from raccoon and skunk DNA), and Liobams (genetically spliced lions and lambs which prove that they can lie down together when they are one) dominate the landscape. The climate has deteriorated to a season-less stretch of broiling days which are punctuated by violent thunderstorms in the late afternoons. The world wasn’t always this way though…

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Corporations with dumb downed, phonetic inspired names such as AnooYoo, Helthwyzer, and RejoovenEsense controlled everything. The CorpSeCorps, short for Corporation Security Corps, are the police force, the military, and the Gestapo of this future world where everything and anything is for sell. Throughout Oryx and Crake and its sequel The Year of The Flood, there is nary a mention of a government or political leaders. Even the military has been privatized. The only thing that matters are profit margins, and if one doesn’t excel in a marketable skill, like chemistry, physics, or mathematics, they’re regulated to run down old liberal arts colleges where at least they might learn how to crank out propaganda for a major corporation. There really isn’t a need for scholars or literary study since, well…there’s no profit in it.

Scarily, this future world Atwood has dreamed up isn’t that unimaginable. The science of genetic engineering grows everyday and the promise of speculative cross breeding and tinkering with human genes represented in Atwood’s work don’t seem too much of a stretch. With the US Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission which basically allows corporations to blatantly and openly buy politicians, corporate domination also looks less and less like a case of speculative fiction as well. In Atwood’s world, it’s hard to discern which world is more frightening, the pre or post plague world as both have horrors all their own.

In The Year of The Flood, Atwood reveals to her readers what life is like pre and post plague for the denizens of the pleeblands. The pleeblands being the left over cities filled with the left out members of Atwood’s corporate dominated society. Members of the major corporations live on corporate compounds which are really CorpSeCorps protected cities in and of themselves. The rest of the populated areas are the prey of corporations and their products. Crake’s father is murdered because he discovers that the corporation he works for manufactures diseases, releases them among the population, and then sells vaccinations and cures for them. Obviously, this event has a profound effect upon Crake.

Oryx and Crake is a literary tour de force which is packed with a multitude of philosophical ruminations on the nature of mankind, genetically inherited traits, and whether or not there is a God and if there is, isn’t He really only a gardener? Much of the speculations on the above subjects occur between the novel’s two main protagonists Jimmy (later Snowman) and Glen (later Crake). Atwood engages her protagonists in incredibly well thought out philosophical scientific debates on the nature of hope, sexual drive, its complicating and destructive effect on humanity, and the differences between the practical biological natures of animals vs. the higher brain driven biological natures of humans which gives rise to war, idolatry, greed, and eventually mutual destruction. Several of the debates seem custom made to tie up grad students in endless yet productive debate indefinitely. Atwood does all of this without boring, bludgeoning, or belittling the reader. Her straightforward prose and well plotted story make for a unique combination of reads. Oryx and Crake is a page turner and a thought provoker that can stand up to multiple readings.

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Margaret Atwood

The Year of The Flood meets the expectations established by the masterful Oryx and Crake in the page turner department, but falls short in the thought provoking department. This isn’t necessarily a failure on Atwood’s behalf. The Year of The Flood sort of fills in and derives its own story from the peripheral characters in Oryx and Crake. Oryx and Crake focused upon Snowman, Crake, the woman of their mutual affections, Oryx, and their life in the corporate compounds. The Year of the Flood focuses on characters that were the background in the first novel and Snowman and Crake become the background. We’ve witnessed all the debates between the two, and we know what Crake does. So we end up watching the consequences unfold and how the pleeblands deal with their post apocalyptic situation. There are some interesting speculations on Atwood’s behalf on the shapes religion and eco extremism would take in this bottom line dominated world. Also, her long running theme of gender politics and women’s roles continue to be a focus, but The Year of The Flood feels much more like a science fiction novel and companion piece to Oryx and Crake than a sequel to a masterful work of speculative fiction.

This is not to say that The Year of The Flood is in anyway a flawed work, or isn’t worthy of the talents of Atwood as a writer, which are great. It’s just more like a bridge work between what hopefully is the superb ending to the tale which will bookend the other side of the trilogy’s superb beginning. Oryx and Crake and The Year of The Flood are both incredibly relevant and important works of cautionary fiction that warns us of the possible and, in some cases, probable dangers of a world gone completely privatized, and completely mad.

Rating: 7 /10


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