And Atwood had a horrifyingly prescient eye for how a state like Gilead could come to exist: “… after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-

And Atwood had a horrifyingly prescient eye for how a state like Gilead could come to exist: “… after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time … Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The road-blocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn’t be too careful.” Eventually, women’s bank accounts are frozen, taken away from them, women are fired from their jobs. It happens step by step. How do you boil a frog? You turn the heat up slowly. Stories are good at illustrating points in an argument, but not at helping to predict the future. Books need to be fun to read, so realism will give in to the needs of the plot eventually.