My Atwood Project, Part 11: The MaddAddam Trilogy

 (Just a reminder that these blog entries do not purport to be thorough analyses or even proper reviews. They are just my musings upon re-reading Margaret Atwood’s fiction after reading her memoir.) 

I again broke the rule of chronology by re-reading the MaddAddam trilogy together, though the three novels were spaced apart thusly: Oryx and Crake was published in 2003; The Year of the Flood in 2009; and MaddAddam in 2013. Still, nothing like the 34 years separating The Handmaid’s Tale from The Testaments. And, as she did in those two books, Atwood again takes pains to remind us that her fiction is based on events and ideas from the real world. 

Origin: Atwood began the book on a worldwide trip that started in Australia, after an observation that the Aborigines never changed because they had everything they needed. So could we use gene modifications to change what we need? She also chose to tell the first novel from a mainly male point of view, after being asked many times why she “always” wrote about women. 

Title characters: Oryx and Crake is named for two would-be architects of a new world. Crake, once known as Glenn, is a gene-splicing genius who wants to create the ideal human: immune to war and overpopulation, among other improvements borrowed from existing species. Oryx is Crake’s lover and accomplice, and the center of a love triangle with Crake’s comparatively dimmer friend, Jimmy. 

Plot: The book begins at what seems like the end of the world. Jimmy, now calling himself Snowman, thinks he may well be the last human, or at least the last Human, version 1.0. The only other…people he’s aware of are Crake’s creations, Humans 2.0, whom he calls Crakers. They have no possessions, not even clothes; they eat leaves, so they don’t have herds or crops or territory; and they only have sex when the female is in “season” -- once every three years. 

AS USUAL: SPOILERS AHEAD!!

We learn that as Crake was developing his new race, he was also sending Oryx around the world to give out samples of a fun new drug, BlyssPluss. What we don’t learn until much later is that Oryx was also spreading a plague engineered to destroy the OG humans and clear the playing field for the new team. Crake and Oryx die together, and Jimmy is left holding the bag…of new people. 

The world building is good and thorough, but not entirely original. The Corporations and their live-in campuses are strongly reminiscent of Neal Stephenson’s Enclaves, which appear in several of his novels, such as Snow Crash (1992) and The Diamond Age (1995). The idea is that corporations will need to secure themselves and their employees from headhunting and secret-stealing, so gated communities evolve into their own self-sufficient mini-cities. 

The spread of an engineered virus to wipe out humanity harkens back to the movie “12 Monkeys” (1995), though I’m sure it’s appeared elsewhere. 

Predictions: Atwood foresaw technology being used in many ways that it is being used today, such as “digital genalteration” (deep fakes). However, she has college kids staying in touch via email, not knowing about texting yet. It will show up in the other two books. 

Parallels: Atwood’s favorite plot devices, love triangles and abandoning parents, make their appearances here. Jimmy sees the mother who abandoned him for her ethical beliefs on a TV news segment, much as Offred in The Handmaid’s Tale saw her mother in a documentary about a pro-choice rally, during her re-education. 

While the first novel sets up the end of one race and the birth of another, from the point of view primarily of the scientists and corporate employees, The Year of the Flood takes place for the most part in the “pleeblands,” where everyone who is not part of a Corporation lives. Here we meet my favorite characters, Toby and Zeb, who are important members of God’s Gardeners, an eco-religious group preparing for the “Waterless Flood.” 

The God’s Gardeners seem oddly prescient regarding the coming plague, until we understand that they have become a haven for apostates from the Corporations. Toby, though, is just an ordinary pleebrat, rescued from an abusive boss. Zeb, on the other hand, has an extremely interesting past (magician’s assistant! eater of a bear!), which is recounted in great detail in MaddAddam. 

When the plague hits, Toby is in hiding from that abusive boss again, and is able to quarantine safely: much of The Year of the Flood takes place in the AnooYoo spa (I love Atwood’s brand names), where Toby is holed up eating things like Lemon Meringue Facial. Another important character is Ren, who was already in quarantine in the strip club where she works, Scales and Tails, due to a torn “biofilm.” 

In MaddAddam, pleebs and scientists must work together. They discover that the scientists that Crake “recruited” to create his perfect humans were actually “scooped” against their will. We get Zeb’s amazing backstory, and the genesis (haha) of God’s Gardeners. It is the least satisfying book to me, though, because the big plot points are past and this third part feels like tying up loose ends. 

However, I love the series as a whole, especially the first two books. They tackle the big questions: what does it mean to be human? How would you re-design humanity, if you had the chance? And finally, will Crakers and OG humans be able to hybridize? I can’t spoil that one for you, because it’s left unclear…perhaps a fourth book is in order, Ms Atwood?