Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, which began with Oryx and Crake, published in 2003, and concluded with MaddAddam in 2013, is a powerfully frightening cautionary tale. I once read an article in which Atwood was asked where she finds the inspiration for her vividly imaginative plotlines, and she replied that they were less imaginative than one might think, being right there amongst the black-and-white headlines of newspapers for all to see. When she writes, she simply nudges the current narrative just a teeny-tiny bit forward and presto - that dystopian fiction morphs into the harsh reality we're all facing.
Sales of the MaddAddam trilogy soared throughout the Covid pandemic, and its no wonder. Atwood's story weaves itself around the aftermath of a brutal global pandemic, which we come to discover has been bio-engineered. Long before the majority of humanity succumbs to the horrors of this virus, however, the societal situation was already becoming quite unhinged. We learn, through a series of flashbacks and backstories, how desperate and depraved life was for so many, as a snowballing advance of misused technologies was matched only by the rapidly decreasing empathy and awareness of humanity at large. In witness to the fragility of life and the corruption of power, a young genius decides to play god. With state-of-the-art pharmaceutical labs at his fingertips, he engineers a brand new species of humanoids, devoid of the many 'defects' he has identified. This new species, nicknamed the crakers, in the infancy of their existence, are innocent and uncorrupted. When a group of surviving humans are confronted with these crakers, the reader is led to consider what sort society will evolve, going forward, with such a human/craker blend.
The books are very enjoyable, especially the first volume, Oryx and Crake. Atwood is very clever, possessing that rare magic of having brilliant ideas and then being able to expertly execute them. Her writing is concise, yet always evocative. Her political themes ask us to think, and her successful career offers hope that perhaps the scores and scores of her readers are doing just that. There is a quote, after all, in the second volume of the series, The Year of the Flood, that says, "We must be a beacon of hope, because if you tell people there's nothing they can do, they will do worse than nothing."
Long ago, those who penned fairytales and myths knew the power that fictional stories could awaken. The Grimm Brothers knew that writing about princesses and magic spells could teach ideals like honesty and kindness. Aesop knew that fables of anthropomorphic animals acting jealous or lazy could offer valuable guidance and issue stark warnings. Atwood is our Aesop now, and we should really heed her words.