“Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet” (2009) by Margaret Atwood is a short story warning about the dangers of climate change and the influence of greed on society. Atwood wrote the story as part of the “10:10” campaign, an initiative by Britain'sThe Guardian newspaper to promote efforts for fighting climate change. Though “Time Capsule” is technically a short story, it doesn’t follow a traditional narrative structure, feeling like a cross between a short story and a poem. Atwood’s premise is that a found relic outlines the history of a planet’s progression from religious expression to money worship and then to death by way of climate change. Like much of Atwood’s writing, the story has many elements of speculative dystopian fiction with a heavy focus on socio-political issues.

Atwood is one of the most popular writers of the past 50 years, so anything she publishes garners significant attention; however, this short story is not one of her more well-known works.

Author Biography

Margaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Atwood spent most of her early life in nature and didn’t attend school full-time until she was 12. She developed a love of reading and writing at an early age, and she pursued these passions at Victoria College in Toronto and later at Radcliffe College at Harvard, where she earned her master’s degree.

After graduating from college, while working as a professor of English, Atwood wrote poetry and fiction, publishing her first novel, The Edible Woman, in 1969. Atwood published many books over the next decade. Her 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale obtained significant recognition and fame. This feminist speculative fiction novel has become one of the most famous books of the 20th century and was eventually adapted into a television series on Hulu.

All of Atwood subsequent novels have received critical acclaim and high sales. The most acclaimed book of her later career is The Blind Assassin (2000), a work of historical fiction set in 20th century Canada. In 2018, Atwood published a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, titled The Testaments, which also received considerable critical acclaim.

As of 2022, Atwood continues to publish and is active in various political causes, including the feminist movement, environmentalism, animal rights, and free speech advocacy. Atwood is Canada’s most famous living author. Her work has inspired people across the world, as has her fierce advocacy for women’s rights, individuality, environmental conservation, and free speech. The Handmaid’s Tale has become a cultural phenomenon, and imagery from the novel has become a staple at political demonstrations and in pop culture.

Story Text

Atwood, Margaret. “Time Capsule Found on the Dead Planet.” 2009. The Guardian.

Summary

“Time Capsule” has five sections, called “ages.” They are narrated for the most part from a first-person plural perspective—a collective “we” responsible for the actions the story relates. The last age changes to a first-person singular—the voice of the last person left alive.

In the first age, people created gods. Imagery associated with the gods alludes to a number of historical and mythological subjects from actual human history. The gods provided people with a welcoming Earth full of animals, plants, water, and children. In this age, the world was hospitable, and those who lived there saw themselves as one with the planet.

In the second age, people created money. Money functioned in similar ways to the gods, formed from precious metals and having special powers. Images of nature on money soon became all that was left of the gods. Although no one could not eat money or get warmth from it, money could turn into other things as if by magic. It was said that a large amount of money could give someone the ability to fly.

In the third age, money became an omnipotent god. It created good and evil— times of plenty and times of scarcity, feelings of happiness and misery. Now, instead of featuring images of famous people and elements of nature, the two faces of money became “greed and hunger” (Paragraph 4). Money built huge glass buildings and developed an insatiable appetite, eating up forests, crops, children, and cities. Still, people believed that possessing money was a sign of divine grace.

In the fourth age, people created deserts of sand, toxic land, and cement out of a desire for more money. Despite the wars and natural disasters the deserts brought, people would not stop making them. Eventually, the creation of these deserts led to the death of all natural things, and the earth became a wasteland. Despite this, humans rationalized the destruction as an aesthetic and sacred choice.

The narrator ends with a direct appeal to any alien civilization that has stumbled upon the “cylinder of brass” (Paragraph 7) on which the previous passages have been recorded—the narrator, the last person alive, is making this document on the “last day” before all life on the planet is gone. The narrator asks the alien reader to pray for a civilization that once also believed they could fly.