Science Fiction — I never had a great love for it. I remember how it saddened me when Doris Lessing switched over to it. A year or so ago I had read THE ROAD by Cormac McCarthy and was surprised that I liked it a lot; it was later followed by a movie. Movies are mostly disappointments to me after reading the book and after having established these fixed images in the mind. Now I noticed that for many years Margaret Atwood was writing scifi! I was ready to try it again. But sorry to report, I was completely lost with this story: the characters were strange and I realized they were a follow up from her previous book, ORYX AND CRAKE which was hugely acclaimed. I should have started with that. And the imaginary world did not become clear to me for a long long time. Well I admire Atwood, her poems, her style, the diversity of her books, her imagination, but I cannot get excited about scifi, I just don’t get it.
It’s an epic and very strange. Two religious groups devoted to living under the command of the natural world. They wear beige cloth-sacks, cultivate mushrooms, harvest honey and curse each other by shouting: Pig-Eater! Their community is only tolerated by the CorpSeCorps, the ruling power, because they are not perceived as threatening. But, this is a world where gene-splicing is the norm; where lions and lambs have become Liobams and pigs have human DNA. The times, and species, are changing at a rapid rate, and with loyalites as thin as environmental stability, the future is a dangerous place. And, if the Waterless Flood does indeed arrive, as predicted by the Gardeners, will there even be a future to contemplate? Ren is a trapeze dancer at Scales and Tails, and can work a plank just as well. After a rip in her biofilm she is placed in solitary confinement until they can guarantee she is without disease. Her story is one part of our gateway into this uniquely constructed world. The other is Toby, an ex-counter-girl at SecretBurger ('Because we all love a Secret'), a natural cynic and source of extensive homeopathic knowledge; she knows her aminatas from her puffballs. Their stories weave beneath the holy teachings and saintly-songs of Adam One to create a truly apocalyptic vision, a world that harnesses Atwood's wit, dystopic imagination and sharp insight.
As I said, I lost it. Sorry.
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