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Oryx and Crake belongs to the genre of speculative fiction. Speculative fiction deals with things which may actually happen to our world in the near future based on the status quo of social and scientific possibilities. Books of this genre are not necessarily futuristic but “allow[ ] for alternate histories and futures to be explored” (Quimbaya 2011: 111). as shown in Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Their content is based on empirically observable facts. Atwood describes speculative fiction as follows:

I write about something called the future, which is a wonderful thing to write about because nobody can fact-check it. But I try to base my futures on realities that are with us today. So I’m not writing about Planet X. I’m not writing about a galaxy far, far away. I’m writing about this Earth in the near future. And everything that I’ve put in has a basis in reality, something we’re doing now, something we’ve already done, something we’re thinking of doing. (internet source 10)

Oryx and Crake is based on current scientific possibilities such as genetic engineering and on social, economic and environmental tendencies like increased privatisation and global warming and therefore can be allocated to the genre of speculative fiction.

Speculative fiction helps “to imagine the long-range effects of our actions” (Adami 2011: 145). This is an effect Atwood makes use of. Her books are not only meant to entertain the reader, they are meant to change something for the better, to prevent her dark visions by pointing them out. She herself stresses:

[Oryx and Crake] is not a prediction. It's not saying this would inevitably happen. Nobody can really write about the future because we haven't been there yet. [...] You're really writing about now, about your concerns in this life. (internet source 3)

The concerns she has focused on in Oryx and Crake are most notably environmental destruction and the ethics of genetic engineering. Those will be further discussed in chapter 7.