Oryx and Crake: Literary Speculation

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood was a great choice to read for this week's focus, which was literary speculation. We talked about how these novels can be freeing, seeing as they can focus on certain genre tropes while remaining independent of the genre itself, but my personal opinion is that genre is a fluid thing. I think literary speculation is an important distinction solely because it is aware it is not a genre. Some of my favorite stories play off of the idea that genre can be a little of this and a little of that. Oryx and Crake represents this idea, and I think Herman Mieville encompasses it as well.

All of that being said, I wanted to discuss our prompt, which was "is this an important distinction or not?" Personally, I put less emphasis on this than our class discussion did, but I think the distinction needs to be made nonetheless. The fluidity of genre is what makes it so appealing to me, and the I think the speculative aspect of this course was finding those 'gray areas.'

Oryx and Crake in particular was a strange read that had many highlights I didn't expect. The grungy nature of the world Atwood built was original both in creation and presentation . I would recommend this novel for anyone interested in the areas of literature that are less defined and make room for some of the most creative stories.