Comparing Wells Oryx And Crake

LIT265:Literary Mad Scientist

Assignment 2

Word Count: 2500$$$

Introduction. (200)

H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake are both considered to be important works of literature within the genres of science and dystopian fiction. Indeed, M. Keith Booker argues that The Time Machine is one of the most ‘important founding texts of the genre of science fiction’ and a ‘forerunner of modern dystopian fiction’ whilst … asserts that Oryx and Crake is …. Coral Ann Howels argues that the ‘primary function’ of the dystopian novel ‘is to send out danger signals to its readers’. Therefore, this essay will explore how, as works of science and speculative fiction, both The Time Machine and Oryx and Crake engage with utopian

Ultimately, this essay will argue that whilst scientific developments facilitate the creation of dystopian worlds in both texts, the dystopian worlds are in fact caused by the irresponsibility of capitalist driven and socioeconomically unequal societies.

Booker argues that dystopian literature ‘situates itself in direct opposition to utopian thought, warning against the potential negative consequences of arrant utopianism’ whilst also offering a ‘critique of existing’ social or political systems. This interpretation of dystopian literature is directly applicable to The Time Machine. In the text, an unnamed homodiegetic narrator recounts the story of a peer, named only ‘the Time Traveller’ who, upon inventing a time machine, travels to several spatio-temporal locations in the distant future. As the Time Traveller travels through time, he witnesses the development of human society, ‘I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time’. However,

In The Time Machine, Wells offers a utopian vision in which humanity successfully subjugates nature and overcomes all human ailments. This is made evident when the Time Traveller states, ‘the air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi (…) the ideal of preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been stamped out. I saw no evidence of any contagious diseases during all my stay. Whilst idyllic, humanity’s dominance over nature in The Time Machine becomes one of many factors that contribute to the dystopia of the Eloi and Morlocks. However, in contrast to Well’s imagining of humanity’s triumph over nature, in Oryx and Crake, humanity’s dominance over nature becomes one of Atwood’s severest indictments and warnings of the current capitalist focus of scientific development. As Gerry Canavan notes, Oryx and Crake presents a vision of the world in which ‘deregulated neoliberalism’ and ‘unchecked accumulative profit-seeking’ controls the scientific developments of the text. Similarly to the utopian society of The Time Machine, Atwood envisions a world in which humanity has subjugated nature via corporations such as ‘HelthWyzer’ . As a biotech coparation, HelthWyzer develops cures for diseases which generate their income. The need for medicine, Crake posits, causes ‘wealth to flow from the sick to the well’. The problem facing the medical industry by eradicating all