Atwood’s Tale no longer in the future

In an interview with Variety, Margaret Atwood discussed how an opera based on the novel that premiered in Denmark in 2000 had showed various things blowing up, including the "Twin Towers". Atwood, who was recognised as one of Variety's Power of Women honorees, said when the opera was staged again, they had to take it out "because it was no longer in the future".

She asked the interviewer whether this gave him a creepy feeling and when he said, "Yes, it does", she replied, "They didn't get Twin Tower idea from my opera, don't worry. They got the idea from "Star Wars".

"Remember the first one? Two guys fly a plane in the middle of something and blow that up? The only difference is, in 'Star Wars', they get away. Right after 9/11, they hired a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters to tell them how the story might go next.

Sci-fi writers are very good at this stuff, anticipating future events. They don't all come true, but there are interesting 'what if' scenarios," she added. Talking about "The Handmaid's Tale", which is set in a future where women have no rights and are used for their womb, Atwood said she began writing the book in West Berlin in 1984.

"The wall was still in place. Because I was Canadian, we could go across to East Berlin, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, which we did. They were all Iron Curtain countries at the time. That definitely had an influence on the book, most particularly the feeling that people were very reluctant to talk to you until they absolutely trusted you and you were in a place that wasn't bugged.

"I had been thinking about this book for a while. I had been collecting newspaper clippings, which one did in those days. There was no internet. So my rule for it was, nothing goes in that didn't have a precedent in real life - somewhere, sometime," she said.