Like A Handmaid's Tale and mumble's Mumble Mumble Mumble, Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel exploring the post-apocalyptic future of sex and the human race by following a small number of characters very closely.

In this case, the main character appears to be the only member of homo sapiens left alive, and the sole caretaker of a new human-like species, the Children of Crake, genetically re-engineered to be peaceful, happy, naturally insect-repellant vegans perfectly suited to their environment. The book focuses on the main character's life, from childhood, through his friendship with the aforementioned Crake and later with Oryx, eventually building up to the catastrophe that left him the last man on earth, victim and friend of a genius and a madman.

The first 2/3 of the book or so goes very quickly -- she starts you off at 90% of the way through the story, and the foreshadowing and sense of pacing Atwood employs as she backfills all the details make for highly motivated reading. Once the backstory is resolved however, she dumps the main character at the beginning of a brand new plot element and gives up. Feel free to stop reading after the Children of Crake try to fix his foot -- the remaining pages of the book add nothing, and you'll be less frustrated than you will be when you turn the page and see "About the Author" instead of a proper ending.



Okay, so I read a book after taking Rob's History of Sci-Fi half-course, that I thought was by Atwood but turns out it wasn't, and damned if I can't remember the title or the author. A human anthropologist visits another planet, where the native humanoids are sexless except when in estrus. During this period they can take either form -- meaning that someone with two kids could have been the father of one and the mother of the other. At a monastery, they have developed a way to form a group of individuals into a sort of oracle, where one of the roles in the group must be filled by someone with a disorder leaving them constantly in estrus. The culture is otherwise analogous to Earth humans of the late 20th century, and the story is character-focused. It's not post-apocalyptic, but it's definitely melancholy and certainly saying something about how ridiculous human sex is.