“The Testaments" by Margaret Atwood feels both more prescient and more hopeful than "The Handmaid's Tale“. In 1985, women’s rights seemed assured and the world described in Gilead was a strange dystopia. Sadly, Gilead seems like a real possibility now. “The Testaments”, set 15 years after the events of "The Handmaid's Tale," shows that the Republic of Gilead is a theocracy teetering on the brink of self-immolation.

The story this time around is not just one woman's inner turmoil and her often-lonely struggle to stay sane in the midst of a life of religious slavery. In "The Testaments", instead of just the story of Offred, this book features the stories of three radically different women all caught in the same morass.

I'm very impressed with cover designer CS Richardson, whose twist on quintessential American Dream Novel THE GREAT GATSBY's classic cover is just perfect for a post-civilization set in and around the "egg" compound where Oryx and Crake did their work.  The future/present of said American Dream as depicted in MADDADDAM ("some of us will survive, and our coffee substitute is made from dandelion roots") is quite an "orgasmic future", which will indeed bear us back "ceaselessly to the past".

Signed first edition.

In the news today we see that Emma Watson, the gorgeous, gamine ingenue who first portrayed Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, will be cast in a post-apocalyptic female "Game of Thrones" type movie. I guess post-apocalyptic female dystopias are in the air! Good; Perhaps someday Spunk, a Fable, will be made into a movie, and won't that be fun!?

Okay, I'll admit it, I've played the game (in my mind of course); "who would I want to play the lead in the movie of my book?"

For the physical description of the character Pink, I imagined, not the singer who goes by that name, but the actress Lily Cole, who I consider a great beauty.

For Yuki-Kai, I imagined Paz de la Huerta, an altogether different type of beauty, but a beauty nonetheless.

I imagined Helen Mirren as the perfect Senga, but the other older women characters seemed too different to be embodied by any present-day stars. Of course, Buffy could only be played by someone like Kathy Bates, or even Kirstie Alley, a woman of substance. And who could play The Abbess? In a movie, the villain always has to cut the most striking figure-- and yesterday I read that Barbra Streisand, a most striking figure indeed, has been awarded an honorary degree--Yes; Doctor Barbra Streisand would be a most suitable Abbess!