Perhaps it was a childhood haunted by the threat of nuclear annihilation, or maybe it is a basic human conundrum, for tales of The End are as old as history; I have always been fascinated with dystopian tales. Before McCarthy's The Road, Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake was one of the last fully absorbing, can't-put-it-down books in recent memory. I'm thrilled that she returns to this world again in her newest, Year of the Flood.
Ms. Atwood's creations are not quite far away enough from our own world to be a comfortable jaunt into "what if". She describes it as speculative fiction rather than science fiction. This world reflects potential outcomes of current trajectories by unchecked human meddling in the web of life. As the Times review puts it,
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