![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/1\/18\/TheHandmaidsTale%281stEd%29.jpg\")
Historian Timothy Snyder keeps telling us \u201cDo not obey in advance\u201d even as more and more people appear to be leaping up to kiss the ring (or perhaps a part of the anatomy) of the grifter now apparently headed back to the White House in the ultimate triumph of the January 6 insurrection.<\/p>\n
This week in his newsletter he is looking at Margaret Atwood\u2019s The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/i> in a three-part series. The third should be available the same day this post appears; the first is here<\/a> and the second here<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the first part, he critiques The New York Times\u2019s<\/i> summary of the book on its current trade paper bestseller list (where, I am glad to note, the book, which first came out forty years ago, has appeared for 139 weeks). The Times\u2019s 16-word summary reads: \u201cIn the Republic of Gilead’s dystopian future, men and women perform the services assigned to them.\u201d<\/p>\n His whole piece is worth reading, but he sums it up here:<\/p>\n Christian Reconstructionism is now at the edge of power in the United States, and the attitude of the relevant people towards the female body and indeed towards rape is an essential element of what is happening and what is likely to happen.\u00a0 Both-sidesism, prudery, and euphemisms are keeping much of the media from bringing this story together in time.\u00a0 We will need clear language in general, and this novel in particular, to see the whole picture.\u00a0 I will develop this in two posts to come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In the second essay, he makes this point:<\/p>\n The Republic of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale<\/i> is not a purely invented world based on the law and culture of one religion or another.\u00a0 It is a well-drawn post-America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Prof. Snyder thinks this book is important to understanding where we are today and I certainly don\u2019t disagree, though perhaps the most disturbing thing about what an accurate picture it paints of where we are is that the country did not take appropriate steps to head it off.<\/p>\n We can all argue about what those steps should have been, but I\u2019ll leave that to others. I\u2019m tired of dishing out blame. I\u2019m more interested in fixes.<\/p>\n Alas, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/i>, while an excellent description of one of the places we could be headed (the others being a utopia for certain tech bros and no one else or just the grifter\u2019s unparalleled corruption accompanied by significant foreign influence) is not the best book for fixes. <\/p>\n I\u2019m glad the book is still selling well, but I wish more people had read it when it first came out, as I did. We needed the fixes in place before now.<\/p>\n There is always a discussion about whether science fiction is, or should be, predictive. In general, I don\u2019t think it is. I\u2019ve always liked Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s take that it is about the present, though placed in a different environment.<\/p>\n Writers can\u2019t help but be influenced by what is going on around them and working that into their story, no matter where it\u2019s set.<\/p>\n When Atwood \u2013 who is Canadian \u2013 wrote the book, Ronald Reagan was president of the United States. He had people in his cabinet who were Christian extremists, the most memorable of whom was James Watt, Secretary of the Interior, who asserted that we should use up all the natural resources for our benefit because the Second Coming was at hand and it didn\u2019t matter if we destroyed the Earth. (I am paraphrasing from memory but I am not far off.)<\/p>\n I note that the Interior Department runs the National Park Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, among other things related to our incredible natural wealth.<\/p>\n At that time, I was disturbed by the various Christian extremist sects. I recall a conversation with my father, who was a small child during the time of the Scopes monkey trial and grew up in a community of Southern Baptists, about the resurgence of these fundamentalist groups.<\/p>\n He, like I, had thought they were on their way out over our lifetimes. Instead, they have grown and even come to a compromise of sorts with equally extreme sects of Roman Catholics. Given that I was encouraged by the liberation theology of much of the Catholic Church over the years, I was taken aback by this right-wing extremism.<\/p>\n I note that all the extremists on the U.S. Supreme Court are Roman Catholics (though I think one was just raised Roman Catholic and is technically some kind of Protestant now). Since I can remember the presidential campaign of 1960, when fear of control by the Vatican was hurled at John Kennedy, I am still stunned by how extremist Roman Catholics are now part of the problem.<\/p>\n Atwood, perhaps because she was looking from the outside, saw the potential and wrote a dystopian novel. I\u2019ve never been a huge fan of the book because of the passivity of the main character. I could see the danger, but the story I wanted was the one in which women didn\u2019t let this happen.<\/p>\n I thought we might be getting that story in real life this year. I was wrong (but perhaps you never get that story through elections). But I still want that story, want the story of how to stop this nonsense, not just how to survive or resist it. And I want that story to be women leading the charge.<\/p>\n It is important I note that women can do that, that I refuse to accept the idea that men have some kind of power over us that we cannot overcome. The fact that the average man is slightly larger than the average woman is insufficient, especially to anyone who has ever studied martial arts and knows just how well a smaller fighter can do.<\/p>\n Despite still wanting that story, I find it horrifying just how accurate Atwood was in this book. The passivity of her character is echoed throughout all the people going along with the grifter right now.<\/p>\n When the book came out, Atwood asserted she didn\u2019t write science fiction. Most of us in the science fiction community laughed out loud at that. Of course she wrote science fiction. We accused her \u2013 and not unjustly \u2013 of distinguishing herself so that she could still be considered an important literary writer instead of a genre writer.<\/p>\n Atwood defended herself by saying that she was writing about things that could happen. You could say the same about Octavia Butler\u2019s Parable of the Sower<\/i>, though Butler embraced science fiction.<\/p>\n I recall Le Guin making the observation about some of Atwood\u2019s other books that she certainly hoped they were science fiction and would stay fictional.<\/p>\n Looking at the threats in front of us, though, I\u2019m beginning to think Atwood was right. Reading Butler these days feels much the same way.<\/p>\n I would really prefer it if the best predictive science fiction wasn\u2019t so god damned dystopian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Historian Timothy Snyder keeps telling us \u201cDo not obey in advance\u201d even as more and more people appear to be leaping up to kiss the ring (or perhaps a part of the anatomy) of the grifter now apparently headed back to the White House in the ultimate triumph of the January 6 insurrection. This week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,7],"tags":[962,964,961,963],"class_list":["post-3695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-sciencefiction","tag-margaret-atwood","tag-octavia-butler","tag-timothy-snyder","tag-ursula-k-le-guin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3696,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3695\/revisions\/3696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}