Indeed. And the worshippers = power trope is used in both, & many other works besides.

Less so than Media, or Technical Boy, who both have orders of magnitude more worshippers than any particular sports star.

The entire story is about the cultural clash between the old gods & the new gods, so yeah.

Anansi is a god, y'know. And it's not like slavery never existed before America decided it'd be just peachy to own people too.

You seem to be another person in the comments here who is probably wasting their time watching this show. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I suspect you haven't read any of Gaiman's books.

Yow. This might not be the show for you; you need to be pretty on the ball to keep up. Plus, you probably need to be familiar with some of the major mythologies.

God damn, they are fucking nailing the story. I've been putting off watching ep 2; both because I've been busy, but also I've been scared that they'll fuck it up. But they didn't. Major props, Mr Fuller, & everyone involved.

This isn't a book that makes me recoil at the thought of things that go on in it because I've seen these things around me in the real world.

Perhaps you'd find it more horrifying if you were a woman. The fact that Offred has to go numb & knuckle under to survive is half the reason that society is a nightmare. And the fact that this particular dystopia is a real thing that exists in far too much of the world right now, & so is horribly plausible, is the…

I know what you mean, but it feels so incongruous to me, like doing a WW2 story & having some black Nazi officers, for example.

Interesting points. I'll keep an eye out while I'm watching the show, & maybe comment again when I can do so in context. :)

And I've read it about three times myself, so what? The whole point is not to spoil the story for people who've never read it.

I'm glad you brought that up, because that's how I remembered race coming up in the book. And let's face it, American fundy nutbags are racist as all hell; you can be 100% sure that if they took over, they'd either enslave &/or massacre non-whites.

Huh? The only similarity was that they were both about oppressive dystopias.

It's been 20+ years since I read the book, so I may be wrong, but as I recall it, non-whites were killed or thrown out of Gilead very early on. (I haven't watched any of the TV adaptation yet, BTW.)

Or, y'know, you could've used the spoiler tags, just to be considerate of the people who haven't read the book. Hell, you still can - you can go back & edit your spoileriffic comment if you want to.

WTF? It's a massive spoiler!

Hard to say. Your choice is between coming to either the show or the book with fresh eyes, because you can't do both. Either way, I think you'll have a good time.

It's important to bear in mind just much most tech people suck at politics. Within their limits, these guys are doing what you think they should, they're just are just really slow on the uptake. (Note that I include myself in this; I didn't start getting at all competent until I was on my 40s, & I still sometimes miss…

Me too. I was really disappointed that she didn't become a regular character.