Imagining a dry Australian dystopia that feels uncomfortably real We’re sorry, this service is currently unavailable. Please try again later. Dismiss Normal text size Advertisement “I am not a prophet,” author Margaret Atwood once said of the horrors inflicted on women in her dark dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Everything depicted had already happened, she insisted. That’s the essence of the best speculative writing: there’s more truth than fiction in these possible futures. Rachel Perks is absolutely on the same page. The recipient of Malthouse Theatre’s inaugural Playwriting Innovation Award and writer of Ground Control and