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Can you imagine buying a protein product that was grown in a vat, completely detached from a brain, a beak, or a central nervous system? While you're at it, picture a medical facility where a human life is saved using a heart harvested from a genetically engineered pig. If this sounds like a far-fetched future dystopia, it was, but now these are literal snapshots of modern reality.
Welcome back to Fiction Predictions.
This month we explore Margaret Atwood’s chilling 2003 dystopia, Oryx and Crake. Decades before biotech startups began serving cultivated meat and surgeons successfully crossed the species barrier in organ transplantation, Atwood mapped it out for us in story. But was she seeing the future, or, as she claims, simply following a logical thread to its conclusion
Author & Book Overview
The Author: Margaret Atwood is a literary icon, a master of speculative fiction who anchors her worlds in harsh realities rather than fairytale fantasy.
The Book: Make no mistake, Oryx and Crake (2003), the first book in her MaddAddam trilogy, is a dystopian novel that can take a hot minute to get into. Once hooked, it will reveal itself through the eyes of Snowman (formerly Jimmy), the lone human survivor of a man-made apocalyptic plague. Told through flashbacks, the story immerses us in a corporate-controlled world where we meet Jimmy's genius childhood friend, Crake, and the mysterious woman they both loved. Not unlike themes in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Taneth Lee's Silver Metal Lover, we live through unchecked scientific hubris that doomed humanity. Not for the faint of heart!
The Setting: As you can imagine, it's a bleak, corporate-dominated future where gene-splicing is a consumer-driven pastime and society is strictly divided between wealthy tech compounds and chaotic slums.
The "Predictions"
Lab-Grown Meat: Enter "ChickieNobs," genetically modified organism chunks that grow breasts and wings without brains or feelings. This mirrors today's rapidly advancing cultivated and cellular meat industries. (Forget about shopping organic, pesticide-free, non-GMO, let alone no bad oils).
Spliced Animals: And here we have "pigoons" (pigs bred to grow human organs for transplants) and "splices" like "snats" (snake-rats). The word sounds cute, but trust me, they aren't. Today, scientists are already onto it, growing human organs inside pig embryos (xenotransplantation).
Biotech Pandemics: The plot revolves around a man-made global pandemic engineered inside a corporate lab to wipe out humanity. It perfectly mirrors, if not reality, then the modern anxieties regarding synthetic biology and biosecurity.
Extreme Climate & Hyper-Consumerism: The book depicts a world of blistering UV rays, collapsed ecosystems, and corporations commercialising everything from youth serums to suicide.
Was Atwood a "Seer"?
I want to say yes, but I know Atwood famously claims she does not predict the future; she simply looks at the present and follows the trends to their logical conclusions. Still, is that now a form of 'seeing'? Is that so much different from Shelly, Lee, Ballard, the rest...?
What do you think? I would love to see your thoughts in the comments.
Kim 📘 🙏🏼 💙
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About Kim Falconer
The Amassia Series
Kim Falconer, also writing as AK Wilder, has released Crown of Bones, a YA Epic Fantasy with Curse of Shadows as book 2 in the series.
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| Quantum Enchantment |
Throw the bones on the AKWilder.com site. See you there!
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