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mburnamfink 's review for:
MaddAddam
by Margaret Atwood
I can't believe that 20 years after Snow Crash a major author could present a cackling corporate dystopia full of bad puns with a straight face, but here we are.
Atwood's books are impossible to separate out from their politics. The problem with MaddAddam is that the politics are so resolutely delugist as to be indefensible. (Delugist is a term that I'm working on, particularly in regards to climate change, with the idea that mankind is being punished for its industrial sins but that a righteous society will arise from the ashes. ) This is a dangerous fantasy, because you and the people who you love won't be among the righteous. In fact, there won't be any pure and moral survivors, just the traumatized victims who managed to be the last people standing when everything fell apart. Particularly so in this case, with the survivors being the MaddAddam crew that Crake put together--who by the way never discuss their key role in releasing the plague that destroyed humanity, the Crakers as an idealized race of God's children, and surviving Painballers, neurologically traumatized gladiators lifted from Mad Max.
The plot, such as it is, wanders around the various problems of survival for our small band, although without much urgency, flashbacks to tough guy Zeb's early career, and "strong female narrator" Toby's lovelorn moping over Zeb. The only parts that are particularly interesting are the half-recorded stories to the Crakers, and seeing how they compare with more factual accounts elsewhere in the book.
I started this review by mentioning Snow Crash, because I'm ashamed to admit that it took me far too long to realize that the settings were basically identical. The difference is that Snow Crash is a delightfully gonzo parody of cyberpunk and late-Reagan America. MaddAddam is the same hacker conspiracies and joke names, but with the earnest hairshirt eco-moralizing of a Greenpeace activist. The joke just doesn't fly.
There's an interesting book here about the Next Nature that grows from the wreckage. The Crakers and Pigoons are obvious dominant species, able to out-compete any natural species and with no existing predators. Do they find a balance, or strip the Earth bare again? Did the modifications to make the Crakers perfect pacifists work, or does hierarchy, myth, and violence arise again? There might be an interesting fourth book, but I doubt that's happening, and have little faith that Atwood would deconstruct her universe in such a way.
Reread The Windup Girl instead.
Atwood's books are impossible to separate out from their politics. The problem with MaddAddam is that the politics are so resolutely delugist as to be indefensible. (Delugist is a term that I'm working on, particularly in regards to climate change, with the idea that mankind is being punished for its industrial sins but that a righteous society will arise from the ashes. ) This is a dangerous fantasy, because you and the people who you love won't be among the righteous. In fact, there won't be any pure and moral survivors, just the traumatized victims who managed to be the last people standing when everything fell apart. Particularly so in this case, with the survivors being the MaddAddam crew that Crake put together--who by the way never discuss their key role in releasing the plague that destroyed humanity, the Crakers as an idealized race of God's children, and surviving Painballers, neurologically traumatized gladiators lifted from Mad Max.
The plot, such as it is, wanders around the various problems of survival for our small band, although without much urgency, flashbacks to tough guy Zeb's early career, and "strong female narrator" Toby's lovelorn moping over Zeb. The only parts that are particularly interesting are the half-recorded stories to the Crakers, and seeing how they compare with more factual accounts elsewhere in the book.
I started this review by mentioning Snow Crash, because I'm ashamed to admit that it took me far too long to realize that the settings were basically identical. The difference is that Snow Crash is a delightfully gonzo parody of cyberpunk and late-Reagan America. MaddAddam is the same hacker conspiracies and joke names, but with the earnest hairshirt eco-moralizing of a Greenpeace activist. The joke just doesn't fly.
There's an interesting book here about the Next Nature that grows from the wreckage. The Crakers and Pigoons are obvious dominant species, able to out-compete any natural species and with no existing predators. Do they find a balance, or strip the Earth bare again? Did the modifications to make the Crakers perfect pacifists work, or does hierarchy, myth, and violence arise again? There might be an interesting fourth book, but I doubt that's happening, and have little faith that Atwood would deconstruct her universe in such a way.
Reread The Windup Girl instead.