‘Perfect storms’ occur when a number of different forces coincide. So it is with the storms of human history. As novelist Alistair MacLeod has said, writers write about what worries them, and the world of Oryx and Crake is what worries me right now. It's not a question of our inventions — all human inventions are merely tools — but of what might be done with them; for no matter how high the tech, homo sapiens sapiens remains at heart what he's been for tens of thousands of years — the same emotions, the same preoccupations. To quote poet George Meredith,

. . . In tragic life, God wot,
No villain need be! Passions spin the plot:
We are betrayed by what is false within.

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This essay was originally written for Book-Of-The-Month Club/Bookspan by Margaret Atwood, January 2003. Copyright © 2003 by O.W. Toad Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this essay may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing.