GM doomsday book simply reflects the present: Atwood

By SHENAGH GLEESON

People gave best-seller Canadian author Margaret Atwood funny looks when she started promoting her latest book earlier this year.

The disturbing similarity between the Sars epidemic raging at the time and the devastating virus in Oryx and Crake had audiences wondering just what Atwood knew.

But, as she told 270 people at a Dymocks-New Zealand Herald literary lunch in Auckland today, it was simply a reflection of the fact that there is nothing in her GM doomsday novel that either has not already been done or is not technologically possible.

For example, the illustration of lime-green frogs on the inside of Oryx and Crake's dust jacket was inspired by a glow-in-the-dark rabbit created for a magician and scientists have made a spider goat, which produces spider silk in its milk.

Atwood is not, however anti-science. She grew up in a family of scientists and almost became a biologist, she said today.

"I got much better marks in biology than I did in English. That was in the days when they took marks off for spelling. I've never been a good speller."

She also toyed with the idea of becoming a home economist before becoming a writer in her 20s.

Atwood is nearing the end of an international promotional tour for the Booker Prize short-listed novel and the ardent conservationist said she was particularly pleased to be in New Zealand because of its birds.

Her husband, Graeme Gibson, is writing a book about birds and their relationships with humans and the couple are devoting eight days bird watching at Miranda, in Otago and on Stewart Island.

They hope to see a kiwi having previously only heard one snuffling in the bush before and seen one on the Kiwi nugget tin.