As a writer I often feel awkward writing reviews of established authors in case it looks like sour grapes but there’s more to praise in this book than gripe about.
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood is another post-apocalyptic story. Good, I like those. Heck, I’ve written one, ARIA: Left Luggage, and the plot of Alien Exit travels along that route. I thoroughly enjoyed the word play aspects of O&C even though its dystopia was gloomy. I felt the names for the new GM animals were too silly, Jimmy aka Snowman’s inability to think beyond alcohol-needs even before he worked for Crake, and his narrow juvenile thinking was hard to take. Oryx had too bizarre an upbringing to turn into a cutey-pie teacher for the Crakers, and the sociopathic Crake was simultaneously interesting and annoying. I didn’t really get why Jimmy killed Crake when surely his own immunity to the haemorrhage virus would apply to Crake and Oryx. Retribution for being responsible for the humanity wipeout? I don’t see Crake’s superego letting him be suicidal especially when his creations were developing. The ending was too much a copout too. I enjoyed the read but it seemed unfinished, and not just at the end.
Literary aspects. The non-linearity of the plot appeals to me greatly. Starting at the penultimate week and then to when Jimmy develops as an adult interspersed with more back story and back to the end in iterations would normally irritate me but not the way it is cleverly executed here.
The wordcraft often pulled me up, and I like that.
Examples:
‘You think I was thinking?’
‘so many crucial events take place behind people’s backs when they aren’t in a position to watch: birth and death, for instance.’
‘(Jimmy) was to cudgel his brains and spend ten-hour-days wandering the labyrinths of the thesaurus and cranking out the verbiage.‘ [describes my working day!]
‘a trio of crows perched on a rampart. They exchange a few caws, of which he is probably the subject.’
Great fridge magnets:
Take your Time, leave mine alone.
I think, therefore I spam
Siliconsciousness
Scenarios in an extinction simulation Crake and Jimmy ran:
Microbes that ate the tar in asphalt turns highways to sand.
Geoff Nelder’s books in chronological order:
Escaping Reality – humorous thriller • http://hyperurl.co/nyjaiv
Hot Air – thriller set in Mallorca • http://hyperurl.co/di4y0h
ALIEN EXIT a science fiction first-contact novel as an ebook only https://mybook.to/alienexit
ARIA: Left Luggage – infectious amnesia scifi • smarturl.it/1fexhs
ARIA: Returning Left Luggage • http://hyperurl.co/tgtid6
ARIA: Abandon Luggage • http://hyperurl.co/26trxv
The Chaos of Mokii ebook at https://mybook.to/Kaos
Revised Xaghra’s Revenge set in present-day and 16th Century Malta and Gozo now retitled as Vengeance Island http://mybook.to/VIsland
Incremental – 25 surreal short stories • http://mybook.to/Incremental
Flying Crooked sf series
Suppose We -science fiction space exploration • https://mybook.to/SupposeWe
Falling Up http://mybook.to/FUPpaper
Kepler’s Son https://mybook.to/KeplersSon
Vanished Earth https://mybook.to/VEKindle
Opi’s World to be published late 2024 or 2025