Margaret Atwood has a reputation as a science fiction writer, based heavily on recieving the Arthur C. Clark award for Handmaid's Tale. While the setting is futuristic, there is nothing about it to suggest that it is based on any sort of fantasy world. The novel presents a dystopian future that calls to mind George Orwell's 1984 and seems like a future we may still head into. In it, women are stolen from their husbands, given to men of power, are renamed as their property (Offred, Ofglen, etc.), and forced into an emotionally unfulfilling life of enforced alienation. The characters are memorable. Serena Joy plays a complete Tammy Faye Baker, a female (and therefore supposedly more palatable to a female audience) version of Pat Robertson. Fred, a framer of this republic, realizes the pitfalls of the society he helped to create, but has created a society so vile that even he is helpless against it. The book is an entangled web that weaves a powerful spell.
Other books of note include Cat's Eye, The Robber Bride, and Oryx and Crake. Atwood is also known for her poetry. While much of her poetry is about myths and fantasies, the poem she is best known for is a much-anthologized imagist piece that sets up an Eisensteinian contrast:
You fit into me like a hook into an eye;
a fish hook, an open eye.
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