Best 2003 Adventures (5)

By: Joshua Glenn
January 31, 2021

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 2003 adventure novels.

Margaret Atwood‘s MaddAddam sci-fi adventure Oryx and Crake.

Snowman is this grim postapocalyptic tale’s omega man — one of the few remaining human beings alive on Earth, with only genetically modified humanoid “Crakers” to keep him company. Snowman grew up in an early 21st-century world dominated by multinational corporations (with George Saunders-like names, e.g., RejoovenEsense); his father was a genetic engineer who helped develop pigoons, rakunks, snats, and other mutations. While growing up in a biotech corporate compound, our protagonist’s closest friend was “Crake,” a mildly autistic boy with whom he shared an obsession with smoking weed, playing online videogames, and watching live executions, graphic surgery, frog squashing, and child pornography… you know, YouTube. Crake grows up to be a brilliant geneticist and proto-Incel, who devises a plan to replace humans with peaceful, gentle, herbivorous humanoids who aren’t sexually jealous — you guessed it, the Crakers. (He also develops a Viagra-like pill which secretly causes sterilization; the more I think about it, the more Crake reminds me of De Soto, in Seeds of Life.) The titular Oryx, meanwhile, is a waif-like woman who becomes entangled in their lives — and in Crake’s sinister plans. Snowman and his Craker neighbors embark on a journey in search of answers….

Fun facts: A finalist for the Booker Prize, Oryx and Crake is the first in a trilogy that includes The Year of the Flood (2009) and MaddAddam (2013). An adaptation of the MaddAddam trilogy is in development at Paramount Television.

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Best 2003 Adventures (5)

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