in the most recent new york review of books, diane johnson (author of le divorce etc, masterpiece of the "i was a crack ho...in provence!" genre) praises margaret atwood's dystopian fiction for its astonishing prescience, adducing the following example:

The action in The Handmaid's Tale takes place in Harvard Yard, where men are executed and and their bodies draped on the walls; the recent arrest of Henry Louis Gates might have given Atwood an I-told-you-so moment about the approach of the punitive forces.