Margaret Atwood Interview

The latest interview with Margaret Atwood discussing her dystopian tale "The Year of the Flood", she considers herself an optimist, she has also in the past denied that she writes anything science fiction. The truth is, however, most of her novels paint a grim and dystopic portrait of the future of humans here on Earth.
From the article:

In "The Handmaid's Tale" (1985), religious fundamentalists rule the United States and women are treated as chattel. In "Oryx and Crake" (2003), genetic engineering has run wild and commercialism dominates society. And in her latest novel, "The Year of the Flood" -- a companion to "Oryx" -- civilization buckles under humanity's carelessness, wiping out much of the species.
In "The Year of the Flood," set in the not-too-distant future, things have gotten pretty well along the path. Corporations and governments are intertwined, and the well-off live in protected corporate communities. Much of the population, however, lives in slums and scrounges for food -- some eating the creations of fast-food joints such as SecretBurgers, where the secret was "that no one knew what sort of animal protein was actually in them," Atwood writes ("Soylent Green," anybody?).
Latchkey kids roam the streets, stealing and making trouble. The unlucky dead are discarded like so much biological waste, perhaps to be made into something commercially useful. Animal DNA has been crossed and tinkered with to create beasts such as rakunks and wolvogs. And a handful of characters, notably the hard-bitten Toby and the wide-eyed Ren, make their way through the world, helped by the faithful of a religious group called God's Gardeners -- and their own wits.

The optimism Atwood claims she has is all about writing a novel, she feels it takes a lot of positive thought to complete a novel and hope it gets finished then published and then read. Her stories are less than optimistic, however.
When I see how people are living today (at least in California) due to the economy, some 23 people crammed in one small house with all of their relatives and some friends, outright living in tents, not showering regularly, torn clothes, broken shoes, the stories by Margaret Atwood do not seem that unlikely. I love a writer that write dytopian novels because I believe our future holds a lot of pain and destruction even though I still believe that people can cooperate and create in the distant future a life that is more peaceful, that is also why I love the ideas presented in the Star Trek universe, that eventually humans will need to work together and somehow leave greed and selfishness behind. I hope we get there one day.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Margaret Atwood and the end of humanity (cnn.com)