2nd (or 3rd?) time reading the Handmaid's Tale, it still holds up. Not sure where some reviewers and people I know who felt the setting wasn't plausible are coming from. The dystopia depicted feels very plausible, perhaps now more than ever. People say that they can't imagine something like Gilead springing into being overnight, but that's forgetting the fact that Gilead doesn't just come out of nowhere, or happen overnight. The foundations were being laid when everyone was too preoccupied with their lives or with entertainment to really notice the gradual changes going on, being imposed upon them. Then, when there's a crisis, the new authorities make sure to explain that everything is going back to normal soon. Such a dynamic is well depicted in Lutes's Berlin series of graphic novels depicting the final years of the Weimar Republic. I really liked the future historians' symposium commenting on the rest of the book. It felt very LeGuin-esque. I found it interesting that Atwood took some inspiration from the theocratic turn of the Iranian Revolution; I don't think i've seen that discussed in any reviews of the book or the show. I picked up Handmaid's Tale because the sequel came out, but reading it again, I can't think of how much room there is for a follow-on. Maybe if it were about Moira, or Offred's Mother, in the Colonies.