What Future?

Having read the first half of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake I find it impossible not to draw similarities between the futuristic world she envisioned and the one we are living in now. It is eerie how easily this book could become the story of our future; almost as if Atwood has seen where we are headed and has come back to warn us of the fatalities which lie in wait, urge us to derail this train of scientific improvement, mutant crossbreeds, killer spliced bacteria, lab made meat and food that really can’t be considered food anymore. 

We are already on a face paced track toward having pleeblands and compounds of our own, in some places, separation like this are already in existence. NooSkins and OrganInc., stripping your entire epidermis for a new one, growing multiple organs in pigs for harvest... it doesn’t take any stretch of the imagination to see ourselves endorsing such concepts in fifteen-twenty years. Even the creation of ChickieNobs, chickens genetically reduced to just breasts or legs, is not too far off from what we do today. Already the chicken we eat has been altered to ensure that certain areas, like the breasts of the chicken are larger than naturally necessary.

It’s just a small jump in genetic engineering and we’ll have ChickieNobs of our own. The question at this point is when was the turning point, what pushed Jimmy and Crake’s world over the edge? Have we as a society already passed this point, or are we capable of avoiding the same apocalyptic fate?