text: So, as I said, the important point is, as a fiction writer, you choose if your anti-environmental/profiteering/totalitarian villain will be an outer space mining company, or a dinosaur genetic engineer industrialist, or a radical Christian, or a radical Muslim. 
  
  And look, you are the second person on this board who has raised the ridiculous notion that oh, well, way back then, no one was concerned about Islamist threats. Hello? As I already said, Clancy's book came out around the same time as Atwood's, so clearly some were concerned. But even if they weren't, who cares? You even used the word "absurd" - are you KIDDING me? The Manchurian Candidate and Mars Attacks and Being There, they all managed to be hits at times when takeovers of Washington by simple-minded English gardeners, by green song-averse Martians and by Chinese puppet-masters was hardly high on peoples' lists of everyday worries!!!
  
  There IS a double standard in the arts community - my thesis is nicely intact, thanks!