TY - ABST T1 - The Testaments Y1 - 2019 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

Sequel to 1985 Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale that begins during the establishment of Gilead but the shifts to the internal and external opposition to it, and it ends with a lecture at “The Thirteenth Symposium on Gilead Studies” from the same professor whose lecture ended The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel was serialized on BBC Radio 4 in fifteen installments between September 16 and October 4, 2019.

PB - Nan A. Talese/Doubleday CY - New York N1 -

Canadian ed. Toronto, ON, Canada: McClelland and Stewart, 2019. U.K. ed. London: Chatto & Windus, 2019. An audiobook was released simultaneously with the print version. 

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ER - TY - ABST T1 - The Heart Goes Last Y1 - 2015 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

Post-catastrophe dystopia in which some people are given the choice to join Consilience/Positron in which they spend one month in prison and one month in a house, which is used by others when they are in prison.

PB - McClelland & Stewart CY - Toronto, ON, Canada N1 -

U.S. ed. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2015.

ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Torching the Dusties" Y1 - 2014 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

The story is told from the perspective of an old, nearly blind woman living in Ambrosia Manor, a home for the wealthy aged, as protests by the Our Turn Movement erupt throughout the country. The  protests are against the old for despoiling the planet, hoarding its wealth, and living too long and, as a result, depriving the young of what they see as their birthright. On the whole, the authorities support the protesters, and such homes are being torched.

JF - Stone Mattress: Nine Tales PB - McClelland & Stewart CY - Toronto, ON, Canada SN - 978-0-771-00680-7 978-0-385-54912-8 N1 -

US ed. (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2014), 225-268. 

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ER - TY - ABST T1 - MaddAddam. A Novel Y1 - 2013 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

Third volume of a dystopian trilogy following 2003 and 2009 Atwood. This volume has many of the same characters as the previous volumes and shows they struggling to survive in the changed world.

PB - McClelland & Stewart CY - Toronto, ON, Canada N1 -

U.S. ed. New York: Nan A. Talese Doubleday, 2013.

ER - TY - ABST T1 - The Year of the Flood Y1 - 2009 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

Ecological dystopia with a eutopian enclave set roughly at the same time as 2003 Atwood with some of the same characters. See also 2013 Atwood.

PB - McClelland & Stewart CY - Toronto, ON, Canada N1 -

U.S. ed. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2009. U.K. ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.

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ER - TY - ABST T1 - “Payback” Y1 - 2008 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

In the book Atwood reflects on the nature of debt and the debtor creditor relationship from a number of different perspectives, primarily in literature and myth. In the last chapter, “Payback” (163-203), she presents a twenty-first century Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (). This “Scrooge Nouveau,” as she calls him, owns multiple corporations, and is only concerned with more and more money and has no interest in the damage his actions inflict on other people or the planet. The first spirit is the Spirit of Earth Day Past who shows him how Earth was nurtured in various cultures but also shows him the Black Death and other ways humans negatively impacted the Earth. The Spirit of Earth Day Present shows him various contemporary disasters-in-the making. Finally, the Spirit of Earth Day Future multiple possible futures. In one, the human race is extinct. Finally, alternative futures are present, one in which the Earth is recovering and the other in which there is a food shortage, inflation has destroyed Scrooge’s wealth, and he is in danger of starvation.

JF - Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth PB - Anansi CY - Toronto, ON, Canada SN - 978-088784-810-0 U5 -

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ER - TY - ABST T1 - Oryx and Crake Y1 - 2003 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

Dystopia. Most of the novel is set in a post-catastrophe future, but some is set in the dystopia of our day and a near future dystopia of corporate competition over genetic manipulation, which leads to the catastrophe. See also 2009 and 2013 Atwood.

PB - McClelland & Stewart CY - Toronto, ON, Canada N1 -

U.S. ed. as Oryx and Crake. A Novel. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Rpt. New York: Anchor Books, 2004.

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ER - TY - ABST T1 - The Blind Assassin Y1 - 2000 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

In a novel focusing on a family history two stories are told, one intermittently throughout the novel and one in a few brief sections. The first is a dystopia describing an authoritarian country on another planet and its institutions, particularly those around the sacrifice of virgins. The second is a male fantasy flawed eutopia which the men find fades over time.

PB - Bloomsbury CY - London U5 -

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ER - TY - ABST T1 - "Freeforall" Y1 - 1986 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

After the world is ravaged by sexually transmitted diseases, breeding is controlled to guarantee disease free children. The Freeforalls are where anyone who is outside the breeding program is sent. In these walled compounds, food is dropped in daily by helicopter, and there is no limit on sex, but it is expected that most will die fairly soon.

JF - The Toronto Star N1 -

Rpt. in Tesseracts2. Ed. Phyllis [Fay Bloom] Gotlieb and Douglas Barbour (Victoria, BC: Porcépic Press, 1987), 130-38; and Northern Suns. Ed. David G. Hartwell and Glenn Grant (New York: Tor, 1999), 17-24. 

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ER - TY - ABST T1 - The Handmaid's Tale Y1 - 1985 A1 - Margaret [Eleanor] Atwood (b. 1939) KW - Canadian author KW - Female author AB -

Dystopia of the  right in power set in the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, a theocracy that sees all women as inferior, whose primary purpose is to produce children, and fertile women are a valuable commodity. The novel ends with Historical Notes from “The Twelfth Symposium on Gilead Studies.” 2019 Atwood, The Testaments is a sequel that begins early in the history of Gilead. Canadian female author.

PB - McClelland and Stewart CY - Toronto, ON, Canada N1 -

U.S. ed. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1986.  Rpt. New York: Anchor Books/Penguin, 2017, with a new “Introduction” by the author (xiii-xix). There is a graphic novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The Graphic Novel. Art & Adaptation by Renée Nault. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2019. An audible book is available as The Handmaid’s Tale: Special Edition. Np: Audible Studios, 2017 narrated by Claire Danes and others and with addition material by Atwood. 

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