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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pielorinho" data-source="post: 1793587" data-attributes="member: 259">Moderator's Notes: I'm going to take the liberty of changing the thread's title to include [spoilers!] in it.  If anyone hasn't read the book, be aware that my post, and the posts that may follow, may contain unboxed spoilers:  I doubt very much that a discussion of this book will be interesting to anyone who hasn't read it.  If anyone objects to this, lemme know; I'm doing it as a convenience more than anything, and will be glad to change it back if folks want.[/moderator's notes] And that's all the warning you're gonna get about spoilers.  (Note that's not a moderator's warning <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ). That said, I think the question was why Crake created the virus.  And I think the answer was that he felt a deep, overwhelming despair at the state of humanity.  Remember, he lived in a world in which kids watched children being raped on television for fun, in which executions and tortures were entertainments, in which social classes were divided to a ridiculous degree.  He was in love with a woman who was repeatedly raped as a child; his best friend, by virtue of not being quite as smart, is going to a terrible school and will end up in an awful job.  Everything is under human control, yet everything is out of control. Crake kills humans off like a surgeon cutting out a tumor.  He thinks that by removing the metastizing flesh, the healthy flesh can grow healthy again. Of course, he's also playing God:  for him, healthy flesh is that which he's designed.  As badly as human control has made the world, he's still convinced that his control will be wonderful, that he's smart enough to engineer Paradise, to construct an Adam and an Eve that won't ever find the Tree of Knowledge.  Therein lies the book's tragic irony. That's my take, anyway.  I liked the book pretty well. Daniel</blockquote>

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