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So on the train, and during breaks, I slogged through Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake this week, and now I want to find the source I recall hearing of about how Atwood tried to keep the horror of the sci-fi tag from polluting her precious Literature.
Dude, the book's sci-fi. But it's profoundly crappy sci-fi. While I've had issues with just about every Atwood book I've ever read, there's always been enough that I liked that it kept me going back. Not so here - I just want to pat her on the head and tell her to leave the science fiction to the people who respect the genre, thanks. I imagine she had lots of fun with the sci-fi world-building part, and she at least does that part sufficiently, if not with any real originality. But who cares about the world you've built when you forgot to create characters to live in it? Because her characters have as much development as a five-year-old's stick figure drawings.
Ironically, I suspect the book goes over much better with people who generally aren't science fiction fans. So maybe it's just as well that it avoided falling in with the absolute gutter-trash that is genre fiction, oh shame and scandal!
Dude, the book's sci-fi. But it's profoundly crappy sci-fi. While I've had issues with just about every Atwood book I've ever read, there's always been enough that I liked that it kept me going back. Not so here - I just want to pat her on the head and tell her to leave the science fiction to the people who respect the genre, thanks. I imagine she had lots of fun with the sci-fi world-building part, and she at least does that part sufficiently, if not with any real originality. But who cares about the world you've built when you forgot to create characters to live in it? Because her characters have as much development as a five-year-old's stick figure drawings.
Ironically, I suspect the book goes over much better with people who generally aren't science fiction fans. So maybe it's just as well that it avoided falling in with the absolute gutter-trash that is genre fiction, oh shame and scandal!
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thank you. you are the first person i've encountered who doesn't like Oryx and Crake. now, i love Margaret Atwood, but that book is just not her finest hour. i couldn't help comparing it to Sherri Tepper's novels along similar themes and finding it lacking. but, of course, Tepper is only a lowly sci-fi author.