For my Margaret Atwood seminar class, I'm currently reading Oryx and Crake. So far it's interesting, in a creepy and disturbing way. I like it though.
It's a futuristic novel about a man's recollections of a futuristic world before it was essentially wiped out. In it, he seems to be the last (or one of the last) remaining humans around as humans have been altered and enhanced to live in the harsh climate of the ruined world. There's also lots of spliced animals running around, which is freaky. All I really know so far is that the man, called Snowman, used to be good friends with Crake, the evil genius that destroyed the world and created his own enhanced humans. And Oryx was Snowman's mysterious girl friend/lover. I think she had a hand in Crake's creations as well, but I haven't read far enough to know yet.
In class, we've been discussing how Margaret Atwood fights the genre title of Science Fiction put on this book (and the squeals). She calls this trilogy Speculative Fiction. The difference is that Speculative Fiction is more realistic. It's a believable future, a future that we can imagine happening in a logical progress from today by taking current events to extremes. So, for example, it would not include technologies that are so beyond our current abilities that they are only possible in our imaginations. Or alien creatures like talking squids, etc...
Makes sense. I just haven't heard of this as a genre ever before. There's always something new coming out. Of course, Margaret Atwood's writing could have a genre all it's own. I'd call it, Ambiguous.
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