BioTechnology and the Media

Neither a sequel nor a prequel, The Year of the Flood weaves a narrative that is a bit of a back story, a concurrent tale and a denouement of sorts for her 2004 novel Oryx and Crake written by Canadian Margaret Atwood.

Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel set at some point in the near future, when the lure of scientific discovery has overtaken common sense. Genetic splicing has given rise to a number of new unpredictable – species.

Humans have basically been reduced to two castes: those who live in secure compounds controlled by The Corporations and those who scratch out whatever living they can in the violence-suffused pleeblands.

Through the eyes of narrator Jimmy, a.k.a. Snowman, Atwood shows one result of what scientific tinkering can unleash: an unstoppable virus that wipes out the human race.

And her website for the new novel (http://www.yearoftheflood.com), plus Atwood’s blog and Twitter sites, have already created buzz about the novel.

The Year of the Flood is a gripping read, revealing the writer in her most masterful storytelling mode. Atwood’s writing is not sparse like McCarthy’s. Instead, it evokes the brave new worlds of Aldous Huxley and Anthony Burgess. With its near-futuristic slang and its echoes of the present, the book is a cracked mirror of the times we live in.