Crake’s placement at “Asperger’s U” naturally begs the question of whether or not Atwood was implying that Crake had Asperger’s Syndrome. Looking at Crake’s mental offspring, I believe the answer to be “yes.” While Crake’s genetic modifications of humans into Crakers was ostensibly aimed at eliminating traits that would lead to long-term self-destruction or adding traits that increased survivability against wolvogs and the like, there seems to be another element. Crake appears to have created a society in which the more subtle nuances of human communication are no longer used.
When Snowman first speaks to the Crakers, we find that they are completely blunt. “From an ordinary man Jimmy would have found it brusque, even aggressive, but these people didn’t go in for fancy language: they hadn’t been taught evasion, euphemist, lily-gilding. Their interactions are similarly simplified whenever we encounter them. Their mating ritual is structured such that its rules are completely clear, and can be described with perfect accuracy. The structure eliminates jealousy, but if Crake and his team could ensure that no jealousy existed after the ritual, they could also have ensured a lack of jealousy within various monogamy or polyamory based structures. What he’s done is to create a society with as few individualized relationship, and thus as little need to build them through interaction, as possible. On one level, it’s like Aperger’s paradise.
On the other hand, the trade-off of Asperger’s as presented by Atwood is the focus available for continued intellectual pursuits. In this new world, where a life’s academic exploration is necessarily short, and most of the modes in which it could be pursued have been destroyed, walking this far down the Asperger’s path seems rather unnecessary. Perhaps Crake created his children in his image for the same reasons that anyone reproduces biologically, and this part of his plan had less to do with utility (for he seemed to know that he wouldn’t see this bright new world of his), and more to do with a fundamental need to see one’s self placed within the universe.