Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood and the Coming Plague
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The Year of the Flood: A Novel
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Oryx and Crake
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Oryx and Crake
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The Year of the Flood
Margaret Atwood's most recent novel The Year of the Flood is a continuation of Oryx and Crake, the 2003 dystopian masterpiece that she calls 'speculative fiction' (as opposed to 'science fiction').
Whatever these novels are called, they are compelling and brilliantly rendered.
Both novels have been compared to classics like 1984 and Brave New World and are destined to become prophetic texts for our age. Atwood is fast becoming to the 21st century what Jules Verne was to the 19th century.
The Year of the Flood and Oryx and Crake take place in the not-too distant future; from 2015 through 2025. Gene splicing and biotechnology have become the most profitable games in town and the developed world has sorted itself into two radically unequal economic tiers.
The top tier consists of hermetically sealed corporate compounds that protect the brilliant scientists who bioengineer new life forms and genetically-based medical treatments. These bioengineered medical products enrich a few multinational corporations at the expense of society as a whole. These corporations now replace nations as the dominant political forces on the planet.
The bottom tier of society is comprised of the ultra-violent, incredibly filthy 'plebelands' where everyone else on earth tries to survive by any means possible. Sexual exploitation, gangs, and outright slavery are commonplace. Bodies are thrown in vacant lots and recycled in garboilers that reduce any organic material to usable oil.
The privileged few inside the corporate compounds are well-educated and well-insulated from the suffering in the rest of the world (except when they tap it to satisfy perverse sexual interests). The corporate compounds are like gated communities with airlocks and every possible amenity trapped inside. By contrast, life in the plebelands is brutish and short and not unlike life in the wrong part of any major U.S. city today.
Keeping these two tiers separate is a brutal private police force called the CorpsSeCorps (for Corporate Security Corporation); a sort of cross between the CIA and Blackwater, only way nastier and way more omnipresent.
What makes The Year of the Flood and Oryx and Crake so terrifying though is not the imaginative scientific detail. What makes the novels terrifying is how familiar it all is. The setting and the characters are futuristic but not by much: The most horrifying elements of 2025 are already present and recognizable right here, right now.
Much of the gene splicing and biotechnology is already taking place today. Atwood gives it only a small push in a direction it is already clearly headed.
Human organs (for transplant) are grown in multiples inside huge pig/human hybrids called pigoons. Wolf/dog hybrids called wolfogs wag their tails in a friendly fashion and then tear people to shreds. (The wolfogs are sold as security animals, for use in perimeters and moats and so forth.)
Cosmetic procedures that grow new skin on the faces of old women are sold in spas with names like Anoo Yoo, while drugs that cure diseases are laced with germs that cause new diseases so as to create a demand for new drugs. Weird looking sheep with blue, pink, or green hair create transplantable wigs for human women.
In the plebelands, a fast food chain called Secret Burgers sells sandwiches made of ground meat with origins are openly questionable (fingernails are not an unusual find), and sex is sold in legal private clubs that are corporately owned and operated and have names like Scales and Tails and SeksMart.
Virulent plagues constantly break out in global hot pockets; a result of the ongoing manufacture of biological weaponry and the unintended consequences of gene-splicing experiments. These outbreaks are dealt with brutally and swiftly by the CorpsSeCorps, who quickly quarantine and exterminate the victims to prevent contagion.
The specter of a final global plague hangs over the corporate compounds and the plebelands at all times. This global genetically-spliced plague is considered so inevitable that cult-like religious groups have grown up around the certainty of its eventual occurrence.
The "flood" in the The Year of the Flood is comparable to the flood God sent in the time of Noah, but this time it is a waterless flood--an inevitable and uncontainable plague that will eventually lead to the complete extermination of the human race.
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The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story
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The Hot Zone
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All We Need Now Is the Right Germ
After reading these two novels (Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood), I can now barely get through a day without relating what I see around me to the dystopian trends and institutions in Atwood's fantasy.
That's how believable the novels are.
Atwood has fast-forwarded what is actually going on today only a little bit, and the exercise is so credible and so expertly executed that it sticks with you whether you want it to or not.
So do read the books.
I won't go into the details any more than this because that would be a spoiler. I will tell you that Atwood uses her gift for storytelling from multiple perspectives in these books, and she doesn't do it in an arty or annoying way, but in a way that rivets your attention to the story.
I literally could not put the books down until I finished them.
Having said that, I want to talk about something else, something I noticed when I was in South Bend recently to help my son who was sick with Swine Flu.
My son is 23, and works as a cook in a popular restaurant close to the University of Notre Dame. The restaurant is frequented by alumni who come to town to see the football games. My son likes the job and is good at it. He works very hard, but the business is not large enough to be able to subsidize group health insurance, and like a lot of young people, my son does not make enough money as a cook to be able to afford private health insurance at any price.
He had been sick for two weeks when he called me and he was getting worse each day, so I drove to South Bend, took him to a doctor and paid for it out of pocket. It turned out he had developed secondary infections in his lungs and sinuses from the initial flu infection, and he needed antibiotics to recover. The doctor advised him to stay home for three days at least and longer if the antibiotics did not take hold, and gave him a note for his manager.
When he presented the note, the manger threw his clipboard across the kitchen and stomped off swearing. The kitchen staff had been decimated by the Swine flu (including the manager) and half of the staff was sick. My son had cooked three nights with the active virus before getting sick enough that he couldn't stand that long. He wasn't the only one working with a highly contagious illness. The management knew it, and encouraged it.
I realized a number of things during this incident that should be truly terrifying to everyone who lives in the U.S.
- The people who prepare our food often work sick. This is because they are low paid and can't afford to miss work, and also because they are often pressured to work sick.
- The people who prepare our food often are uninsured. Restaurant kitchens are often staffed by the same illegal aliens that so many Americans passionately believe should be denied health care, never mind health insurance. This seems foolish to me--insane, even.
- Germs don't care how much money you have. The people who eat at that restaurant are wealthy graduates of one of the most expensive private schools in the United States. They got a free side helping of Swine Flu with their Killian's those two weeks. I hope they enjoyed that. At least no dollars were spent on health care for poor people.
- All we are waiting for right now is the right germ. Swine flu kills some people, but it isn't the waterless flood. It isn't the plague. But the next germ might be.
- When the next plague hits, we will not be able to handle it. Not only do we not have adequate insurance for all, we don't have adequate medical facilities to handle a pandemic should a serious one ever hit. We don't make public health a priority in the U.S. If a deadly pandemic ever hits, millions will die, including plenty of rich people.
In other words, The Year of the Flood and Oryx and Crake are fictionalized versions of a real life danger. We are set up in such a way that when the right germ hits, it will spread like wildfire, it will be impossible to contain, it will kill millions, and we will be scrambling (ineffectively) to catch up. It could wipe us out as a species.
Maybe that doesn't scare you. But maybe it should.
Then again, maybe the planet will be glad of it. Plague is how nature handles overpopulation, squalor, and the tendency to soil ones own nest. Maybe it's time to thin the herd.
Anyway, the books are excellent.
Enjoy whatever time we have left.
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Comments
Good review. I enjoyed A Handmaid's Tale and am glad to see Atwood get back to speculative fiction. I wasn't as fond of her mainstream-literary efforts, though I'm not real fond of literary-mainstream anyway so that should be no surprise.
Good point about the restaurant and very ironic about the wealthy patrons getting their helpings of swine flu along with the hardworking staff. It's something that other countries do enforce and of course, other countries do have health care even for people who can't afford insurance.
Hi Catherine and Robert--I just was struck by how possible, even probable, her 'waterless flood' plot really is. I mean, it could happen way before 2025. We just don't take it seriously at all. Look at the spike in food borne illness during the Bush years. It's still a huge problem. Now add to that a workforce that is underpaid, overworked, and pushed to labor while ill in industries that can spread disease and you have recipe for disaster.
The CDC is out and about encouraging businesses to have a plan for how to deal with a disease outbreak at work, but less than a third of businesses say they have a plan, and of the businesses that do have a plan, for many the plan is 'wash your hands, spray your keyboard'. That's not a plan.
Hi Pgrundy, Yes Margaret Atwood has the ability to forecast thing that seem eerily familiar. None of her novels struck me that way more than A Handmaid's Tale. As I see the secular fundamentalist attempting to restrict personal choice and freedom more and more, I often think of that work.
I can't subscribe to a doomsday view of the future. Just can't. Whatever comes, comes, but I have faith in the strength of the human spirit. I'm not as concerned about plague as I am of the shift of manufacturing and profit to China. i.e. General Motors. Isn't that the ulitmate kick in the butt. The U.S. and Canadian taxpayers have financed their move to China. Bend over -- and take another. But excuse me for digressing all over your lovely article.
Not only do I have faith in the strength of the spirit, but I have faith in the strength of the human body. Let's keep things in perspective. All this talk about swine flu, this frenzy in the media and the truth of that matter, shown statistically, is that it has killed marginally more than normal seasonal flu. I am almost sixty years old and as far back as I can remember, experts have called for another pandemic each year. After all these years of 'Wolf' I'm no longer a believer.
I want to read the both books - love this type of Science fiction, and have read the Handmaid's Tale, and see the undeniable connection between the fiction and reality - as you said, not just about what may or will happen, but what is already going on. I'm also disgusted with the resistance to a public option and with the fact that your son and my son,and millions of people do not have health care in a country that spends billions on unnecessary wars! The world is moving in the terrifying direction of two classes only - the rich and the poor - like the scenario you describe in the novel. Kartika
I have always been an admirer of Margaret Atwood. There is always a bit of the past present and future mixed into her works. Sort of sci-fi to boot and I think it's the futuristic aspects/time periods which she writes in/of that make it so. This is actually one I have not gotten my hands on yet, but definitely will. By the way, I think youa re so right on about the facts you lay out concerning our food preparers. That makes a scary story in and of itself, and perfect for Halloween.
Excellent review and frightening at the same time. You are right that many of the parallels are not so fiction.
Not sure if I could read them. I get WAYYYY TOOOO involved in my books.
Definitely getting the books.
Hope your son is better now?
Can't wait to read these books. Scary story. Shows that it is in the interest of the rich to make sure there is less poverty.
One for my christmas list then. I know that these days in the UK it is frowned upon if you are sick and so we have workers spreading germs around, and yes that includes in Hospitals.
Your book reviews were great. You should do more of them. I will just ditto what IMMARTIN said in her comment. Keep up the good work and I hope your son gets well soon, and I know he will with the faith and help you gave him. Don White
I haven't read any of your works, as yet; however, I certainly intend to do so. This novel promises to be all that it has been classed as - "a literary work of art."
What a terrific book review! I enjoyed reading "Oryx and Crake" and am a big Margaret Atwood fan, since forever. This is great. I went and scooted up to Amazon link and ordered it with one click. I love Amazon for that! No hassle, price is always right, and they always deliver it SOONER than they say they will. I have another book on my must-read list. Thank you!
Interesting, I'll try to add this to the list of books I must explore. While the settings are all-too familiar sounding (from a cyberpunk aficionado, anyway) the truths you speak have been evident for years.
People work sick often, whether it be food or various other capacities. Luckily, however, the human body has an immune system. And the more we're exposed to (preferably, unknowingly) the better we are, in general.
As far as a plague...no one is ever ready for one, and by very definition if an illness hits plague status it can't be taken care of by medical knowledge of the times.
However, I feel, even though obtaining food and products from foreign and far off sources is less efficient than growing them in your own nation humanity has something to gain in being exposed to the biologics that exist elsewhere.
Thanks for sharing this author with us--and don't forget your H1N1 vaccine! ;D
This will be on my reading list for this next week. Reading the hub I was remembering Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. For a number of years I've had a queasy feeling in some of our American eateries just looking at who is handling the food and don't forget handling paper money isn't a germ free experience either.
Thank you for this, Pam. Recently it seems like Margaret Atwood's name has been cropping up among more of the free-thinking crowd. And now that you've given me the Cliff's Notes version, I can see why. It's been a while since I've seen near-future dystopia done well - the early-to-mid nineties, with FASA's Shadowrun role-playing game (megacorporations who have lobbied the government so successfully that the land they own is considered foreign soil. Imagine going into grocery shopping and the minute you walk in the door, you're in Safeway-land - where the guards at the door with guns have every legal right to shoot you if they think you're a threat to the economic interests of Safeway-land. Or stop by the local fast-food franchise Tasty Ghoul, where you could be eating the processed remains of that celebrity murder victim that made it onto the news a week or so ago)
While this sort of thing is presented very blatantly obviously for the purposes of exposition, I've done enough research into similar stories (radioactive waste ending up recycled into our everyday consumer goods, for example) that the "sci-fi" element really isn't the audacious inroads made into peoples' rights, its actually the availability of the information to the average person. Here our world, we don't tend to find out what isn't being shown on the news (even when it's just a Google search away), whereas in these dystopic fictions everybody already knows and just doesn't mind. So I suppose the only major difference is that they've abandoned all pretense of caring and having a set of social morals. So perhaps that's not so much of a vasty plot hole, as a valid social trend that's just around the corner. Socially-accepted collective psychopathia. For now at least, we manage to cloak it in at least the semblance of caring, but being either far too busy or skeptical of alternative news sources to take action to stop these kinds of atrocities. (Then, of course, we forget the whole issue and go, "Lunch sounds good right about now. Oh hey, there's a Tasty Ghoul not two blocks away!")
nice........
Hi everyone,
Thanks for your intelligent and thoughtful comments. I'm a bit overwhelmed this week because my partner is in the hospital. Brought him home Friday after a week and by Saturday morning had to take him right back. He's in so much pain it still hurts when he's shot full of IV opiates, and they still can't figure out what is wrong. It's getting pretty scary.
Atwood's latest is definitely a good read. As to the plague and the way our society is set up, I'm finding few people are on the same page I am. I do believe in the resilience of the human spirit and so on and so forth, but a person can have a beautiful, resilient spirit and still die of an infectious illness. I also don't think working sick is noble or normal or OK. I think when people are sick they should rest and be treated for their illnesses until they get well. It seems weird to me how many people seem to think this is a radical notion. Oh well.
My fear of a coming pandemic isn't mine alone, however. Read "The Hot Zone" (nonfiction) along with these two by Atwood and see if you still think I'm way out there. It's not a question of "will it happen?"--it's a question of "when will it happen?"
Thanks again everyone, and say a little prayer for my Sweetie, those of you who believe in that.
Thanks for introducing me to this author's work. I'm always looking for a good book. I like the category, speculative fiction. It fits.
Have had concerns about kitchen workers and their health issues since I worked in a restaurant years and years ago.
Thanks for the great book reviews. Prayers and hopes that your sweetie is feeling much better.
It is all a consequence of people breeding uncontrollably without thought of consequence. In this regard, they are no more intelligent than cats, rats, dogs...
Religious wackos and ethnic demagogues are the "wolves" shepherding the mass of stupid "sheep" that comprise most of the human race.
Unfortunately, there is no cure for stupidity, so that or similar dystopian views WILL come true in some manner or another.
BTW "Speculative fiction" is the wannabe literary name for science fiction, which includes many similar novels. "Soylent Green"; another one from 10-20 years age set in Los Angeles about a giant pyramid housing the elite, surrounded by the masses; the Philip Dick novel from which "Blade Runner" was made; and MANY more.
http://hubpages.com/hub/indiscriminate-spawning-a-
"Whatever your cause, it is a lost cause without population control."
Hi Peg and dabeaner--Thanks for your comments.
I loved Blade Runner and I also loved sci fi when it was for guys--Heinlein, Asimov, Dick, etc.
I do think there are too many people. If you crowd any animal this way the animals get sick and crazy.
Thanks for your thoughts.
pg,
Truly hope everything is going well for Bill. I'll be sending some groovy vibes your way tonight, as I meditate. Keep the positive glow and the happiness in the heart.
Thanks Ixxy. New tests today, hopefully they find it.
Your reviews of marg's books as well as the review of your son's swine flu experience are both equally as chilling. I'm reaching for the o.j and the vitamin c and zinc as I type this! -Trig
Your remarks about the spread of disease reminded me of a scene in Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner. The anti-hero of the novel spread the 1918 flu to his isolated community by running rum. Personally I am going to try to see that my family is well stocked in the food area in case we need to quarantine ourselves. I love Margaret Atwood. Her imagination is expansive, but her themes are so dark and troubling. I always have to read something fluffy after I read her books.
I hope your son and partner's illnesses both improve so you can get back to doing what you love.Thanks for the great review and the food for thought.
Hi wannabewestern--Yes I am off the library this week to find something fluffy too! My partner finally was released last night. They found ulcers in addition to his surgical complications, so they are treating those, and he is responding. What a week. I feel like limp dishcloth. Thank God he is back home. Thanks for your comment.
Will definitely read Atwood's 'Oryx' and 'Crake', after I read 'A Brave New World' got hooked. The movie 'Code 46' with Tim Robbins is on my top ten sci fi futuristic to watch.
I got some bug a week ago, hate being sick with no insurance. Hope your partner is getting better.
Hi eonsaway--We are finally home today and now I am getting sick--chest cough, wiped out, etc. Well, at least he's home. thanks for your comments and you feel better too!
I hope P., your son is okay now. I hate when my boys are sick! And,please, do not read doomsday books when you are sick. You need something more cheerful and optimistic, some comedy to watch or some funny book you like to read and chicken soop and lots of camomile tea, if you please.
Wish you well!
Extremely well-said. I'm speechless, so...two thumbs up!
You sold me, I'm going to have to check out these books.
As for not being prepared for a waterless flood of a virus...
Google "FEMA Coffins" "FEMA Camps" and "FEMA Train Cars".
I don't believe in any of it, but through my research I've found quite a lot may or maynot lead back to a virus outbreak conspiracy.
A friend of mine supplied me with the name I couldn't remember of the book that I mentioned above about the giant pyramid -- an arcology set in Los Angeles -- where the rich live, surrounded by the impoverished masses.
"Oath of Fealty" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
Here is the Amazon description:
"In the near future, Los Angeles is an all but uninhabitable war zone, racked by crime, violence, pollution and poverty. But above the blighted city, a Utopia has arisen: Todos Santos, a thousand-foot high single-structured city, designed to used [sic] state-of-the-art technology to create a completely human-friendly environment, offering its dwellers everything they could want in exchange for their oath of allegiance and their constant surveillance. But there are those who want to see the utopia destroyed, whose answer to tomorrow's best and brightest hope is mindless violence. And they have just entered Todos Santos. . . ."
dabeaner--that sounds really good. Thanks for the description and for recommending it.
BTW, I hope your friend is doing better.
I love Margaret Atwood. She is the real deal, convincing, thoughtful, unforgettable.
I had to come back and reread this hub because I picked up a copy of Oryx and Crake and read it from cover to cover after reading your review. Atwood is a powerhouse writer from every angle. Her main character is brilliant, and believable, a misunderstood mess, and the world she invents for him is unsettlingly familiar. You did a great job reviewing this book and I loved reading it, but I'm on to fluffier stuff now. Hope your family is able to celebrate a peaceful holiday at home. Regards.
Hi wannabewestern--I agree about Atwood. She won the Booker Prize this year and clearly deserves it. I felt the same way after reading Oryx and Crake. It was a hard book to shake. Thanks for coming back and you have a great holiday too!
Pgrundy - I had heard of these books. Atwood is considered a major author here in Canada and she gets considerable press, but your review is the first one I read that did a good job of clearly summarizing the books. Well done.
It may interest you to know that in Canada Atwood is gaining a reputation for being actually clairvoyant. In fact there is a story that for a charity auction she donated a sealed envelope that would contain answers to questions that were going to be asked by the winning bidder (unknown to her at the time) as well as private details about the future winner that only the winner would know.
The reporter who one the prize wrote an article saying that what she read was incredibly accurate. Now of course the auction might have been fixed, but it makes you wonder about her dystopian predictions.
About the coming plague(s), I agree with you that it will happen, whether as a result of bioengineering gone wrong or through the spread of new viruses presently restricted to remote forests and jungles (eg ebola). But I would disagree with you that this necessarily means the end of humanity. In fact, it may be necessary to save us from death and starvation though resource depletion, overcrowding and pollution. A smaller world population eats less, uses fewer resources and pollutes less. There has never been a virus that is 100 percent fatal. Even ebola and the bubonic plague don't kill all they infect. So humanity will survive.
Hi quotations--Good point about the survival of humanity. Even in Atwood's novels humanity survives, but of course the world is radically different.
Fascinating about her clairvoyance! She may be the Jules Verne of our generation. I wish we could move to Toronto. We're too old and broke but we really liked it there. Thanks for stopping by. :)
I loved Oryx and Crake. I should read it again.
As for the next big bug wiping out humanity... well, good riddance, it had to end sometime.
Hi Eldritch Elegy--Cool screen name! I'm on the same page with you regarding humanity. If we make it, fine, but it's not like the planet will miss us if we don't All good (and bad) things must end some day. Maybe our day has come. Thanks for stopping by. :)
Catherine R says:
2 months ago
Thanks so much for a great review. I am really looking forward to reading 'The Year of the Flood' as I am a huge Margaret Atwood fan. Your observations on the food industry are of course worrying. I think this is an issue that is pertinent to many countries. Restaurants in many countries employ illegal immigrants because they can get away with paying next to nothing. Of course these people don't have health insurance and even if they are in a country with adequate public health systems they are outside of that too.