The author attends a conference on gene editing in Paris and muses on the varied scientific, professional, religious, governmental, military, corporate, and advocacy-based participants invited to formulate public policy recommendations. Where, he wonders, are the cultural perspectives that could illuminate ethical issues in all their depth and complexity?

This chapter defines a new genre of biodystopian fiction characterized by the internalization of dystopia in every cell of the subject’s body. Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, Philip Kerr’s A Philosophical Investigation, and Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy are only a few of the recent novels that construct nightmare societies shaped by the consequences of unethical uses of genetics. These fictions portray the consequences of illegal experimentation on human subjects, designer babies, monocrop agriculture, direct-to-consumer gene editing, bioterrorism, genetically engineered pandemics, posthuman clones, and a world overrun with transgenic animals. Extrapolating from current developments in genetics, these novels contrast starkly with the optimistic prophecies of prominent scientists who suggest that advances in behavioral genetics will reduce racism, the stigmatization of people with undesirable characteristics, and other forms of discrimination.

This chapter considers the central place of dystopia in Atwood’s work since 2000 in its discussion of the MaddAddam trilogy, The Heart Goes Last, and The Testaments. The focus is on the contrasts between the trilogy with its epic dimensions of postapocalyptic speculation and the two later dystopias that return to the network of human relations in situations close to our contemporary world. Analysis of the trilogy traces its narrative arc across three volumes from global disaster to futuristic vision, while The Heart Goes Last is darkly comic social satire addressing anxieties around threats to human freedom in the age of corporate capitalism, high-tech surveillance, and biomedical experiments. In The Testaments Atwood reclaims her story in real time with its update of Gilead, focusing on patriarchal tyranny and women’s strategies of resistance, ending with a glimmer of hope. An emphasis on Atwood’s storytelling with its genre-crossing strategies establishes connections between these dystopias, identifying the distinctive Atwood idiom.

This chapter focuses on Atwood as a Canadian writer and the evolution of her global persona as an international literary celebrity, major thinker, and public spokesperson on global issues of environmentalism and ethical questions related to biotechnology and human rights. Illustrated by its generous inclusion of quotations from Atwood herself, the chapter traces her career development in three stages: “Mapping Her Canada” concentrates on when Atwood addresses fellow Canadians with her early poetry collections, notably Survival and Surfacing; “Interpreting Canada Abroad” reads Canadian themes through an increasingly internationalist lens, featuring The Handmaid’s Tale, The Journals of Susanna Moodie, three short story collections, Kanadian Kultcher Komics, and children’s stories; “Canada in the World” moves between Toronto in her three 1990s historical novels to her postapocalyptic dystopia, the MaddAddam trilogy, returning to Canada with Stone Mattress and Hag-Seed, then back to the United States with The Testaments.

This chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of Atwood’s ongoing environmental concerns over five decades and her increasingly urgent warnings, referencing her fiction, nonfictional prose, and recent interviews. Framed by extensive discussions of contemporary writings on the deep ecology and radical environmentalism that have influenced Atwood’s thinking, the chapter includes brief critical analyses of Surfacing, Life Before Man, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Payback, with its main focus on the MaddAddam trilogy. In an extended analysis of Atwood’s speculative fiction across the three volumes, Bouson addresses multiple topics relating to environmentalism and bioengineering: “The Perils of the Anthropocene Age: Humanity’s Ecocidal Exploitation of Nature,” “Green Religion and Green Anarchism,” “Crake as Eco-terrorist and Radical Environmentalist,” which features a critical discussion of his Crakers, and “Deep Ecology and Ecospiritualism.” The chapter argues that Atwood leaves the question of future human survival open to speculation.