Environmental Engineering Reference
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too far beyond the boundaries of the novel itself, it seems that whatever immediate
fate awaits the Crakers and the surviving humans, they will all have to take account
of an environment more malevolent than that envisaged by Crake. Both groups
will need to encounter and—if they are to survive—deal in some way with the
numerous, predatory pigoons and wolvogs, those internal invaders now let loose
among creatures ostensibly weaker than themselves. We might read this as
something of a return to the prehistoric conditions of humans, forced by necessity
to develop the physical, cultural, social and technological attributes and innovations
that led over tens of millennia to survival and then to triumph, to the Age of the
Anthropocene. Or we could instead project forward to a future we might have to
endure sometime later this century, as the ecosystem we as a species have done
much to damage reaches some tipping point. There probably will not be wolvogs,
pigoons or Crakers in that potential environmental apocalypse. But Oryx and
Crake 's dark fantasy requires us to consider that, as well as massive physical
deprivations, we also could find ourselves threatened not only by the unwelcome
machinations of other desperate humans, but also by the inhuman capacities and
designs of insects, lions and eagles, among countless other creatures subject to the
unforgiving law of the survival of the fittest.
References
Atwood, M. 2004. Oryx and Crake , Toronto, Seal Books.
Atwood, M. 2005. Introduction. In: Wells, H. G. The Island of Doctor Moreau , London,
Penguin, pp. xiii-xxvii.
Bruce, D. and Bruce, A. 1998. Engineering Genesis: The Ethics of Genetic Engineering in Non-
Human Species , London, Earthscan.
Huggan, G. and Tiffen, H. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment ,
New York, Routledge.
Lavalley, A. 1989. Invasion of the Bodysnatchers: Don Siegel, Director , New Brunswick, NJ,
Rutgers University Press.
McKibben, B. 1990. The End of Nature , London, Viking.
Merchant, C. 1992. Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World , New York, Routledge.
Singer, P. 1976. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals , London,
Jonathan Cape.
Warkentin, T. 2009. Dis/Integrating Animals: Ethical Dimension of the Genetic
Engineering of Animals for Human Consumption. In: Gigliotti, C. (ed.) Leonardo's
Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals , Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, pp. 151-171.
Wells, H. G. 1898. The War of the Worlds , London, William Heinemann.
Wilmut, I. 1998. Xenotransplantation: Organ Transplants from Genetically Modified Pigs.
In: Bruce, A. and Bruce, D. (eds) Engineering Genesis: The Ethics of Genetic Engineering in
Non-Human Species , London, Earthscan, pp. 63-66.
Film
Siegel, D. director, 1956. Invasion of the Bodysnatchers , Republic Pictures.
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