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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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So there's speculative fiction
and there's science fiction.

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And there's science fiction
fantasy and there's fantasy.

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And you might put them
all under a big umbrella

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called wonder tales.

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So wonder tales
are not naturalist.

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They're not the world that
we find ourselves in here

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They're not the world that
we find ourselves in here

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and now today.

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Speculative fiction is a way
of dealing with possibilities

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that are inherent
in our society now,

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but which have not yet
been fully enacted.

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You can look at books like
"Brave New World," Zamyatin's

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"We," and "1984,"
things for which we've

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got the technology more
or less, and arranged

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got the technology more
or less, and arranged

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in a space on the planet
we happen to be living on.

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Science fiction,
usually we think

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of other galaxies, other
planets, other sorts of things

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entirely.

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And I write
speculative fiction not

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because I don't
like the other kind,

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but because I can't write it.

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It's not within my skill set.

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It's not within my skill set.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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If you're interested in writing
speculative fiction or even

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science fiction, look
around you at what's

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happening in the world.

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Read some newspapers.

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Often the back pages of
the newspapers, or even

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a magazine like "New Scientist"
or "Scientific American"

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a magazine like "New Scientist"
or "Scientific American"

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will open the doors
to some of the things

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that people are
working on right now,

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but may not have
succeeded in doing yet.

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But it does show what they're
interested in achieving.

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And you can take that
idea, and just move it

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a little further down the road.

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My mother, I found, when
going through her effects

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after she had died, had
saved two whole newspapers.

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She saved the whole newspaper
about the moon landing,

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She saved the whole newspaper
about the moon landing,

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and she saved a newspaper
about a report made

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by the Club of Rome in 1972.

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And what the Club
of Rome was saying

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in 1972 was if we don't mend
our ways in relationship

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to the environment,
by the year 2010,

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things are going
to be like this.

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And we didn't, and they are.

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And we didn't, and they are.

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Unfortunately, human beings
are quite short-term thinkers,

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and especially politicians
are short-term thinkers.

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So had I been writing a
spec fic about social media,

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it would have been quite
easy to predict that somebody

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was going to steal
all the data and use

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it to manipulate elections.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Speculative fiction is fiction,
and therefore, all the rules

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Speculative fiction is fiction,
and therefore, all the rules

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that apply to writing
fiction, including

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making it interesting,
making it plausible,

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making it accurate to
itself, all of those things

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apply to it.

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Just because it's speculative
fiction does not mean

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it's going to be
automatically interesting.

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There is a whole category of
readers who won't read it.

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They just say, I
don't read that,

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which is kind of silly
of them, because there's

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nothing about genre that means
that a genre book is a bad book

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nothing about genre that means
that a genre book is a bad book

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or that it's a good book.

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It's a book, and it has to be
good on its own terms, period.

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So by saying, I don't
read that, they're just

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excluding a lot of
pretty good books

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from their reading experience.

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If you're writing speculative
fiction or science fiction,

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you can't violate the rules
that you yourself have set up,

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you can't violate the rules
that you yourself have set up,

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or just to take it back
to "Gulliver's Travels,"

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one of the origins of
this kind of writing,

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if it's a society of horses
and the horses are virtuous,

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you can't show an evil horse.

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If the horses are,
by nature, virtuous,

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they're incapable of
these bad behaviors,

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and you can't therefore show
one doing those bad behaviors,

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unless you're changing the
story pretty radically.

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unless you're changing the
story pretty radically.

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So if I say it is so that
women aren't allowed to read,

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I can't show them
gaily reading books

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in public, just for instance.

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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Are there some themes that are
common to speculative fiction?

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It depends whether the
speculative fiction

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is a utopia or a dystopia.

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So in a utopia,
you're portraying

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So in a utopia,
you're portraying

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a world that is supposed to be
better than the one we live in.

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And in a dystopia,
you're portraying

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a world that is supposed to be
worse than the one we live in.

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So a single person alone on
an island is not a dystopia.

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Dystopias and utopias
are all about societies,

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or groups of people, either
living better or living worse.

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And it's also true that
one person's utopia

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And it's also true that
one person's utopia

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is going to be another
person's dystopia.

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So "Brave New World"
is a case in point.

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The people in "Brave
New World" think

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they're living a pretty
good life, the character who

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comes in from outside
and looks at them

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thinks they're
degenerate and soulless.

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So it depends who's looking,
and it's also usually true

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that within every
utopia, there's

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a little dystopia, quite
frequently located in the past.

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a little dystopia, quite
frequently located in the past.

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This was the horrible past.

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This was the awful thing
that we needed to fix.

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Or it can be in a dystopia
also located in the past.

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This was the better world
that has now been destroyed.

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It's a yin yang arrangement.

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If the world is
worse, in comparison

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with what is it worse?

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If it's better, in comparison
with what is it better?

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If it's better, in comparison
with what is it better?

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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The story of "Oryx and
Crake" is that our hero,

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whose name began by
being Jimmy, but who

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has renamed himself as
Snowman, is living in a tree.

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And around him in
his vicinity are

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living some
bioengineered humanoids

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living some
bioengineered humanoids

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who have been designed
so that they don't have

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the built-in human
problems that have got us

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into so much trouble.

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So for example, they
don't require clothing.

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They've got built-in sunblock
and insect repellent.

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I would love that.

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And so they don't need clothes.

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And because they
don't need clothes,

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they don't need to grow
any of the materials

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from which clothing is made, or
create any of those materials,

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from which clothing is made, or
create any of those materials,

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or kill any animals
to get their skins.

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They don't need
to do any of that.

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They are vegetarian, so
they don't kill any animals.

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And not only are
they vegetarian,

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but they can eat
leaves, like rabbits.

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And therefore, they don't
need to cultivate any crops.

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They are egalitarian.

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They have no interest
in kings, leaders,

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or any people of that kind.

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They're peaceful.

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They mate seasonally, like
other mammals, but unlike us.

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So there's never
any no means no.

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There's never any can't
go out with you on Friday

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because I'm washing my hair.

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Nobody gets rejected.

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And when it's not the
season for mating,

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nobody's interested in sex.

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So they don't have marriage.

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The children are
the children of all.

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The children are
the children of all.

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And when mating season
approaches, parts of them

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turn blue like parts of a lot
of other mammals and creatures.

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They go into mating
plumage, as it were.

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And mating is group
mating, like that of cats.

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So there isn't any
patriarchy because nobody

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knows who is their daddy.

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knows who is their daddy.

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So no property ownership.

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Everything is shared.

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And those are the people
that Jimmy is living next to.

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And as it turns out, he
finds them pretty boring.

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So then we get
Jimmy's back story.

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And that is the story of how
these people were invented

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and how our kind
of human being then

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had to be destroyed, because we
know from looking at history,

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had to be destroyed, because we
know from looking at history,

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particularly the
history of colonialism,

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what happens to peaceful,
egalitarian types of people

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when weapon-wielding,
hierarchical other people

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appear in their vicinity.

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Usually they get
slaughtered or enslaved.

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So that's not going to
happen to these people

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because their creator
has annihilated

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because their creator
has annihilated

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most of our kind of humanity.

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That's the sort of
deep back story,

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but the front story is how
we follow Jimmy, Snowman,

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in his day to day adventures.

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And then what happens when
some other human beings like

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him show up, what will he do?

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What inspired this
book was rumination

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What inspired this
book was rumination

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on extinction, which there
is a lot going on right now.

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And also, rumination
on what gets people

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into the kinds of problematic
situations they so frequently

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seem to find themselves in.

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So how would you get rid
of the characteristics

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that we have that get
us into these problems

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that we have that get
us into these problems

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if you were bioengineering
a new race of people?

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I was asked to address a
meeting of some geneticists.

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And I was talking about
my use of this in fiction.

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And I gave them
about seven examples

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of new things that
could be created.

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And some of them actually
already had been created.

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Some of them exist now.

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Some of them I had invented.

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Some of them I had invented.

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So I gave them this
list, and then I said,

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I made up four of those.

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And they went, hurray--

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[LAUGHS] --because they
couldn't tell themselves.

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For speculative
fiction, for me, it

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has to have its roots in
things we can already do

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or on the road to
being able to do.

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So the growing of
human organs in pigs

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had already started by the
time I wrote "Oryx and Crake."

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They had not quite
succeeded, but now they have.

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They had not quite
succeeded, but now they have.