Author Margaret Atwood shows 60 Minutes the folders of research and news clippings she collected to substantiate her plots. She writes by a strict rule: if it didn’t happen, somewhere, at some time, it doesn’t make it into the pages of her fiction. She showed 60 Minutes an article that helped inspire her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale.” It reads: “Women forced to have babies… Persistent non-pregnancy will be considered a crime against the state.” In Atwood’s dystopian book, a dwindling number of fer

“It’s not due to me or the excellence of the book. It’s partly in the twists and turns of history,” says Margaret Atwood, speaking about the success of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Published in 1985, the novel has sold more than 10 million copies and spawned an Emmy Award-winning Hulu series. It depicts a near-future America overtaken by religious dictatorship, where a dwindling number of fertile women are forced to cloak themselves in red and bear children for the elite. For many readers, “The Handma