MARGARET ATWOOD: The Doyenne of Dystopia turns to creating climate utopias

Margaret Atwood is best known for her mega-bestselling dystopian fiction, including the Booker Prize-winning novels “The Blind Assassin” and “The Testaments”, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and, most recently, the essay collection “Burning Questions”.

The Canadian firebrand imagines future societies, specifically the worst scenarios in these future societies, worlds of genetic modification, pharmaceutical and corporate control, human-made disasters and theocracies where women’s bodies are controlled by capitalist overlords. And this is the thing – her dark fantasies have a horrifying habit of coming true, Exhibit A: “The Handmaid’s Tale”, a portent for the new abortion laws in the US, the erosion of American democracy, even the January 6 insurrection.

However, at age 83 Margaret, dubbed “the prophet of dystopia”, is turning her vibrancy and wild care to creating… utopias. Or rather, she is trying to find a way to save the world via an online program where participants work with experts to develop solutions to all the wicked problems we’ve created.

Today we discuss how the subordination of women and theocracies follow particular economic cycles, why she’s not quitting Twitter (yet) and what hope will need to look like. 

We mention Rebecca Solnit’s book Hope in the Dark and Paul Hawken's book Drawdown, as well as Martha Gellhorn: A Life

Follow Margaret on Substack

Check out Practical Utopias here

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