:00:00. > :00:14.There are writers of world renown whose reputation rests
:00:15. > :00:18.There are others who write more prolifically but always
:00:19. > :00:29.Margaret Atwood's output fizzes with energy,
:00:30. > :00:33.She's best known for her novels The Handmaid's Tale,
:00:34. > :00:35.The Blind Assassin and Oryx and Crake.
:00:36. > :00:38.But she's written poetry, blog fiction and in 2016
:00:39. > :01:15.So what keeps her creative juices flowing?
:01:16. > :01:17.Margaret Atwood, welcome to HARDtalk.
:01:18. > :01:28.I have just referred to your prolific output, diverse output over
:01:29. > :01:32.so many years but you've just done something you've never done before,
:01:33. > :01:35.you've taken on adapting Shakespeare and you've always Shakespeare is
:01:36. > :01:42.pretty much your favourite author, so daunting was that? Very, very
:01:43. > :01:47.daunting. First of all, you knew that you are going to get a lot of
:01:48. > :01:50.people saying that you shouldn't do it and you can't improve on
:01:51. > :01:57.Shakespeare et cetera et cetera. And second because I took on The Tempest
:01:58. > :02:06.and that has a whole slew problems of its own. The brief was very
:02:07. > :02:11.broad, so it was, choose a play and do whatever as long as it is a
:02:12. > :02:17.novel. And I mean you have created this wonderfully sort of imaginative
:02:18. > :02:22.new take where it is thought all set in a prison, Prospero becomes the
:02:23. > :02:25.guy who is sort of a theatre manager who is thwarted in his career and
:02:26. > :02:30.then goes back to the prison to produce a drama, there is a play
:02:31. > :02:34.within a play, there is a lot of music and dance, it is pretty
:02:35. > :02:38.extraordinary because it is so imaginative and yet as you say all
:02:39. > :02:44.anchored you know in a story hundreds of years old. Yes, well, I
:02:45. > :02:48.have to have something in the novel in each case that corresponded to
:02:49. > :02:52.all of the elements that were in The Tempest. Some of the people in the
:02:53. > :02:59.Hogarth Shakespeare series took a much broader approach and didn't do
:03:00. > :03:05.that but I felt that this is the one play in which Shakespeare is writing
:03:06. > :03:10.about something he did all the time, it is what he did for a living, he
:03:11. > :03:14.was a director, producer, probably sometimes actor and manager of a
:03:15. > :03:21.theatre company. That was his thing. And The Tempest is about a director
:03:22. > :03:28.who is not seen by the actors working with the special effects
:03:29. > :03:37.guy, namely Arakl putting on a plate, -- aerial. Putting on a play.
:03:38. > :03:41.Make me a pretend Tempest. OK, done. That is what a special effects guy
:03:42. > :03:50.would do. So here is this play going on, which is The Tempest, and within
:03:51. > :03:54.it there is another plate, which is the Mask of the three Godesses, and
:03:55. > :03:58.there is Prospero, I'm seen as a director is, doing the stuff behind,
:03:59. > :04:03.and the special effects guy is also invisible. As you say, you are not
:04:04. > :04:08.the only author who has been commissioned to sort of do these...
:04:09. > :04:12.There is eight altogether. Updated Shakespeare stories. I just wonder,
:04:13. > :04:18.what do you think it is about Shakespeare that, you know, if one
:04:19. > :04:21.thinks about artistic creation as evolutionary, you know, he has
:04:22. > :04:25.survived, he has proved to be the fittest of all the fittest in terms
:04:26. > :04:30.of the longevity of his work. Why? First of all, he is very good.
:04:31. > :04:36.LAUGHTER yes, but what does very good mean, what is so very good
:04:37. > :04:39.about his work? OK, he does have something for everyone. So he is
:04:40. > :04:43.very different from the French classical drama of roughly the same
:04:44. > :04:50.period, which was for a rest at rates. And they wanted the unity,
:04:51. > :04:55.they wanted elevated language for everybody. He mixes them up. So the
:04:56. > :05:01.posh people in Shakespeare speak posh language and the clowns,
:05:02. > :05:08.plebeians and ditch diggers speak vulgar language and make dirty
:05:09. > :05:13.jokes. And his audience was very diverse. It was everybody. There
:05:14. > :05:18.were expensive seats for people who wanted to pay more money but there
:05:19. > :05:22.were also cheap seats. I love that answer, because I am going to make a
:05:23. > :05:26.handbrake turn or a lurch to some of the other things you do right now in
:05:27. > :05:29.your writing, because you just talk about Shakespeare's ability to reach
:05:30. > :05:34.out to so many different groups and to use diversity as a tool in his
:05:35. > :05:39.armoury. It seems to me you do just the same thing. Because if I reflect
:05:40. > :05:42.on the way you produce now, you have embraced the Internet, you have
:05:43. > :05:47.embraced blog fiction, you tweet like crazy and use that as a tool
:05:48. > :05:52.for some of your thinking and your take on life. You've got 1.3 million
:05:53. > :05:58.Twitter followers. Has it been very important for you to sort of utilise
:05:59. > :06:04.every available technology? I think I am just a curious pen monkey.
:06:05. > :06:10.That's a quote from a guy who has a blog called Terrible Minds. Because
:06:11. > :06:14.writers can monkeys and I think that's very good. Chuck Wendy, you
:06:15. > :06:18.can follow him on Twitter. He has some good advice for writers.
:06:19. > :06:23.Anyway, so it's not so much that I embraced things, I like to try them
:06:24. > :06:30.out to see what they are. So it is curious pen monkey. I will try
:06:31. > :06:36.anything once. I have gone on a carnival ride called the Mighty
:06:37. > :06:40.Mouse. I'll never do it again. It was horrible. But I've done it once.
:06:41. > :06:45.So I tried all of these things... You never stop trying. This for
:06:46. > :06:49.example, I believe... Your publisher has said you should publish it as a
:06:50. > :06:53.traditional book. It started as a serial. So I've always been
:06:54. > :06:57.interested in serial writing because of course the 19th century did it a
:06:58. > :07:01.lot. Early Charles Dickens novels, he wrote them in instalments. So
:07:02. > :07:05.this book, The Heart Goes Last, is it written in a different way,
:07:06. > :07:13.stylistically, is it different because it began as blog fiction? It
:07:14. > :07:16.is now because I pick it apart and put it altogether. In the next
:07:17. > :07:25.instalment you have to remind people what they just read if you do that
:07:26. > :07:29.in a bookity book book it would get very annoying. I took out the bits
:07:30. > :07:33.where I was reminding them about what happened before. Now, maybe it
:07:34. > :07:36.is for you to argue about but it seems to me your best-known novel is
:07:37. > :07:41.the Handmaid's Tale. That is true but remember how old it is. Well,
:07:42. > :07:46.that is exactly what I want to get to. It has had a lot of time to
:07:47. > :07:50.become well known. When I talk about the evolution of creativity and
:07:51. > :07:56.those that you know, survive, one has to assume, are the best. You
:07:57. > :08:00.can't assume that. Can't you? No. Do you feel that with the Handmaid's
:08:01. > :08:04.Tale, its longevity, my daughter for example adores the book and she is
:08:05. > :08:12.18. I mean, do you see that as a sign of its quality or something
:08:13. > :08:19.else? It can be either one but there are only for arrangements of quality
:08:20. > :08:23.and fame. -- four arrangements. Good books that are successful. Good
:08:24. > :08:26.books that are not successful. Bad books that are successful and bad
:08:27. > :08:31.books that are not successful. Why are some good books not successful,
:08:32. > :08:34.do you think? I don't know, sometimes they are successful later,
:08:35. > :08:38.like painters. You know, painters who have not done very well in their
:08:39. > :08:45.lifetime and then become hugely successful, like van Gogh. I think
:08:46. > :08:49.the Handmaid's Tale, it is two reasons, number one, the religious
:08:50. > :08:55.right in the United States has not faded away. And for those who
:08:56. > :08:59.haven't read it, you wrote it in the mid- '80s at a time when the sort of
:09:00. > :09:04.Christian conservative movement was taking off in the US, the so-called
:09:05. > :09:08.moral majority and all of that, and you clearly, you looked at that and
:09:09. > :09:12.you extrapolated to what a society might look like if these guys with
:09:13. > :09:18.their sort of take on biblical fundamentalism had their way, and it
:09:19. > :09:27.was a pretty dystopian vision. Well, you may not get the costumes as
:09:28. > :09:33.such. I got the costume of the old Dutch package. For people who don't
:09:34. > :09:36.know, the handmaids in your story, where women are, fired at our
:09:37. > :09:43.receptacles for childbearing and all of that, the handmaids in question,
:09:44. > :09:48.they wear at a red card and they are easily identifiable. Yes. You don't
:09:49. > :09:54.have to go far back in rest in history to find the same... -- red
:09:55. > :09:56.garb. Here is my question, to do with a point about describing The
:09:57. > :10:01.Handmaid's Tale as speculative fiction. There you were in the mid-
:10:02. > :10:05.80s speculating like mad about what society might look like if the moral
:10:06. > :10:10.majority took over. We are more than 30 years later now. Do you now look
:10:11. > :10:14.back and think, well, I was a bit sort of too worried, I got a bit
:10:15. > :10:21.carried away or not? I don't think I was worried enough. LAUGHTER.
:10:22. > :10:26.Yeah, I think if you look at state by state, some of the laws they are
:10:27. > :10:33.putting in right now, you know, I probably wasn't, I wasn't quite
:10:34. > :10:37.worried enough. The Handmaid's Tale has become a meme in US politics and
:10:38. > :10:40.you'll find it turning up on Twitter, somebody needs to tell the
:10:41. > :10:45.Republicans the Handmaid's Tale is not a blueprint. And when you hear
:10:46. > :10:50.Donald Trump talking about women... ? Donald Trump is in a category of
:10:51. > :10:58.his own. Number one, he is a throwback to sort of mashers in the
:10:59. > :11:02.50s. If we can put it that way. LAUGHTER.
:11:03. > :11:08.He is not religious in any way. He's pretending to be. But he is
:11:09. > :11:12.certainly not a true believer. A lot of women in America might regard him
:11:13. > :11:17.as a misogynist. That's a different thing. Of course. You can be
:11:18. > :11:21.misogynist as all get out without being a true believer. I suppose
:11:22. > :11:24.what I'm getting at is The Handmaid's Tale raises all sorts of
:11:25. > :11:29.questions about gender equality, about relationships between men and
:11:30. > :11:33.women. Absolutely but what I really see it as is the totalitarianism
:11:34. > :11:39.told from the point of view of a woman. And, you know, in an
:11:40. > :11:43.even-steven sort of what you might call feminist universe, all of the
:11:44. > :11:47.men would have more power than all of the women - that is not the case
:11:48. > :11:52.here. The women at the top have more power than the men at the bottom. So
:11:53. > :11:58.it is a true pyramid which is what totalitarianisms are. May I get a
:11:59. > :12:02.little personal with you about some of your own motivation. Personal...
:12:03. > :12:06.LAUGHTER. You are Canadian. No kidding!
:12:07. > :12:11.LAUGHTER. How can you tell? You know, I can
:12:12. > :12:16.tell. The Handmaid's Tale is, it is set in a sort of mythical land which
:12:17. > :12:21.really is the eastern seaboard of the United States of America called
:12:22. > :12:25.renamed Gyliad. It is really Cambridge, Massachusetts and all the
:12:26. > :12:29.buildings are really there. Are you a Canadian who quite like a lot of
:12:30. > :12:33.Canadians looks at the United States and things, my God, we are so much
:12:34. > :12:37.more civilised and progressive than they are? No, I don't think that.
:12:38. > :12:42.Why? I have lived there. Number two, we've lived in Canada and we have
:12:43. > :12:48.some nasty skeletons in our own closet, some of which are coming out
:12:49. > :12:55.right now. We are unlikely to get a totalitarian theocracy simply
:12:56. > :13:02.because we are too diverse. You need about 30% of any population to get a
:13:03. > :13:07.really good totalitarianism going. And probably it wouldn't be Canada.
:13:08. > :13:14.Isn't that true of the US as well? And yet you speculated about a
:13:15. > :13:18.totalitarianism in the US. They've got 30%, that's just it. Looking at
:13:19. > :13:22.the numbers, they probably have a bit more than 30%. And I do put into
:13:23. > :13:29.The Handmaid's Tale, what you need is some catastrophic event of either
:13:30. > :13:33.an economic kind or an environmental kind or both because they are joined
:13:34. > :13:39.at the hip to get people really scared. And that's when you can get
:13:40. > :13:44.a coup going and take over a country. Interesting you talk about
:13:45. > :13:48.the environmental concerns. Would it be true to say that in your own life
:13:49. > :13:54.over recent years that the thing that has motivated you most, got you
:13:55. > :14:00.campaigning loudest and longest, has been your concern for the
:14:01. > :14:03.environment and climate change? I'm just thinking again about Canada.
:14:04. > :14:08.Canada is one of the biggest oil producers in the world and I just
:14:09. > :14:12.come back on HARDtalk from a long trip on the Thai sounds of Alberta.
:14:13. > :14:17.And did that frighten you? It fascinated me. Here you have a young
:14:18. > :14:20.Prime Minister, Mr Trudeau, who says, well, he has indeed signed up
:14:21. > :14:24.to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, he said he is going to
:14:25. > :14:30.cut Canada's emissions by 30% and yet at the very same time he is
:14:31. > :14:35.supporting the expansion of the Tar sands and clearly within decade you
:14:36. > :14:38.are going to be if not the biggest but the second biggest oil producer
:14:39. > :14:43.in the world if current trends continue. Maybe, maybe not, I don't
:14:44. > :14:47.think he's supported the expansion of the sands of such party supported
:14:48. > :14:53.a pipeline. Some would say that. The two go together. There is some
:14:54. > :14:55.debate possible. Do you worry about Canada? I worry all the time about
:14:56. > :14:58.everything. Next in. So if you are going to do that,
:14:59. > :15:03.if you are going to continue with the carbon fuels,
:15:04. > :15:08.you have to think of other ways in which you can cut emissions
:15:09. > :15:11.or absorb carbon, and they are going to have to start thinking
:15:12. > :15:16.about that really fast. When you talk about these
:15:17. > :15:18.issues inside Canada, I just wonder how Canadians react
:15:19. > :15:21.to you, do you feel at one with your people,
:15:22. > :15:33.or somewhat out of sync. There isn't a people,
:15:34. > :15:36.there are these people And these other people over here
:15:37. > :15:40.and those other people over there. So if we are talking about mowing
:15:41. > :15:43.through indigenous people's rights in order to do
:15:44. > :15:46.this stuff, I would be If we are talking about,
:15:47. > :15:50.we have to shut down all consumption and production of oil immediately,
:15:51. > :15:53.that's actually just not practical. I think at one with my people,
:15:54. > :15:59.I think most "my people" would accept both of those points of view,
:16:00. > :16:10.or at least 80% of them would. Let me bring you back
:16:11. > :16:17.to writing and creativity. You have said that you always
:16:18. > :16:20.place your stories and imaginative Although some people call
:16:21. > :16:24.you a science-fiction writer, It depends how you are going
:16:25. > :16:28.to define it. If you wanted to take science
:16:29. > :16:32.fiction as a great big umbrella that includes things like Frankenstein
:16:33. > :16:34.and zombies then sure. We are all writing wonder tales
:16:35. > :16:39.in that area. But if you want to translate
:16:40. > :16:44.the genealogy of two different kinds of those tales, number one
:16:45. > :16:50.the Jules Verne line, he thought he was writing
:16:51. > :16:52.about things that really could happen, and a number
:16:53. > :16:55.of his things really did Or on the other hand, HG Wells,
:16:56. > :17:03.about whom Jules Verne said in horror "But he's
:17:04. > :17:06.making things up!" So that gives us science-fiction,
:17:07. > :17:11.the Time Machine, the War of the Worlds leads
:17:12. > :17:13.to the sci-fi on other planets Only because I'm not good
:17:14. > :17:26.at writing the other stuff. Because you have now in this last
:17:27. > :17:31.year put together with a wonderful illustrator a comic book
:17:32. > :17:34.which of course is pure So you are not positing
:17:35. > :17:41.a future, you are just I am writing a comic book,
:17:42. > :17:45.of the superhero kind. Sorry to disappoint
:17:46. > :17:51.you, but actually no. Your character is way
:17:52. > :17:54.more interesting. Let me get this straight,
:17:55. > :17:58.it's a man who, through a series of events, becomes half
:17:59. > :18:01.owl, half cat. I'm just thinking to myself,
:18:02. > :18:12.what possessed you? OK, if you look at it very closely,
:18:13. > :18:16.you will see that it's connected with a parallel programme
:18:17. > :18:24.which is called www.catsandbirds.ca. And that is run by Nature Canada,
:18:25. > :18:30.and it addresses the very serious problem of the precipitous decline
:18:31. > :18:34.in North American, particularly migratory, birds, both species
:18:35. > :18:43.and numbers within species. There are four horsepersons
:18:44. > :18:48.of the apocalypse in that scenario. One is glass window strikes,
:18:49. > :18:53.one is poisoning, one is habitat loss and one is predation by cats,
:18:54. > :18:59.which are out of control. But you cannot tell the cat
:19:00. > :19:02.people cats are bad, you must flush your cats
:19:03. > :19:04.down the toilet. Yes, I have been a cat person
:19:05. > :19:08.for thousands of years. How better than through a superhero
:19:09. > :19:16.who is part cat, part bird? So how much fun is it writing
:19:17. > :19:21.a superhero comic book? I cannot tell you how much fun
:19:22. > :19:23.I've had. If you are not having
:19:24. > :19:28.fun, then what is it? You remember how much
:19:29. > :19:34.we didn't like that. You just strike me as such
:19:35. > :19:38.an interesting mix of things. There is a lot of humour
:19:39. > :19:41.in your books, even when they are quite dark,
:19:42. > :19:47.and you do appear to be somebody And yet you are campaigning,
:19:48. > :19:51.and you've talked about conservation, cats and birds,
:19:52. > :19:54.big oil, fossil fuel, There is one other thing I want to
:19:55. > :20:00.talk to you about which is your very passionate challenge to the Canadian
:20:01. > :20:02.government over this legislation, C51, which you say is a fundamental
:20:03. > :20:05.threat to freedom of speech. It is a throwback to the
:20:06. > :20:15.Inquisition. So when last did we have a situation
:20:16. > :20:18.where people who you don't even know who they are,
:20:19. > :20:22.can testify against you and you have Some Canadians might say when last
:20:23. > :20:29.did we face the sort of security threats that come out
:20:30. > :20:31.of jihadi terror? We have to respond to
:20:32. > :20:38.the world we live in. Well, it's not that there
:20:39. > :20:41.shouldn't be any supervision, it's not that there shouldn't be any
:20:42. > :20:44.care taken with these things, but the structure of C51
:20:45. > :20:47.is what is at issue here. Nobody is saying we shouldn't have
:20:48. > :20:49.any intelligence people, But should they have ultimate
:20:50. > :20:54.control over your lives such as that maybe one of them has a grudge
:20:55. > :20:57.against you because you slept with his wife, he can
:20:58. > :21:00.frame you, big-time? And you will never
:21:01. > :21:06.find out who did it. I just wonder, we've talked
:21:07. > :21:09.about the way you have impressed technology,
:21:10. > :21:12.and you are something of a sort of futurologist in that
:21:13. > :21:14.you love to speculate I just wonder whether you are very
:21:15. > :21:19.worried about things like artificial intelligence,
:21:20. > :21:21.you know, the pervasive All the different ways
:21:22. > :21:28.in which technology is changing I'm not very worried on my behalf
:21:29. > :21:37.because I'm going to In previous books you speculated
:21:38. > :21:41.about what's going to happen Paint me a picture of human society
:21:42. > :21:46.in the rich world OK, so there is no 'the future',
:21:47. > :22:00.there isn't any one the future. There are an infinite number
:22:01. > :22:03.of possible futures, and as Donald Rumsfeld said,
:22:04. > :22:07.it was probably about the only thing he said that I agree with,
:22:08. > :22:09.it is the unknown So we don't know what the unknown
:22:10. > :22:13.unknowns are because But leaving them aside,
:22:14. > :22:20.should we continue down the road that we are on,
:22:21. > :22:23.the biggest threat to us as a species would be
:22:24. > :22:25.the death of the oceans. The reason that is the biggest
:22:26. > :22:29.threat for us is because we are not 60-80% of the oxygen we breathe
:22:30. > :22:41.is created by marine algae. As it was created in the beginning,
:22:42. > :22:44.this did not used to be So kill the oceans,
:22:45. > :22:50.we will choke to death. You have reflected a lot
:22:51. > :22:54.on what is in here, what makes us human and motivates us,
:22:55. > :22:56.most recently in rewriting The Tempest because that
:22:57. > :22:59.is in a sense is what We need to get more
:23:00. > :23:14.motivated politically. There are a large number
:23:15. > :23:16.of organisations working One thing I would like to do before
:23:17. > :23:23.I kick the bucket is put together a group of sci-fi writers
:23:24. > :23:26.who are often very inventive thinkers, to just noodle around
:23:27. > :23:28.these problems and see I've got somebody that's
:23:29. > :23:48.helping me do that. The question is who are
:23:49. > :23:51.we going to do it with? Are we going to do it
:23:52. > :23:54.with the government, with some private companies,
:23:55. > :23:56.are we just going Well, we will wait for
:23:57. > :24:02.that to happen and get We have seen a lot of showers
:24:03. > :24:40.earlier on in the night, and some nasty thunderstorms around
:24:41. > :24:43.the Irish Sea as well. We start off at least
:24:44. > :24:47.on quite a showery note. After Monday, it turns
:24:48. > :24:49.noticeably chillier. And, as the winds become lighter,
:24:50. > :24:53.there is the risk of some patchy fog