Uh, so what happened exactly....

So upon reading the beginning of The Handmaid's Tale, I found the switches between the present and the past of the narrator's life to be at first confusing since they were not clear cues that separated them but once I got used to them, I found them confusing in a completely different way. I started to think about how the society possibly could’ve changed as drastically as it had in such a short time. The degree that it had changed in itself is astounding considering it evolved from a modern US society to well, that at least within a couple of decades since the narrator was at least in here late teens while in the old society and now couldn’t be much over 30 at the oldest given her current descriptions. I guess that is the deal with most sci fi books though, they seem to ask what would happen if (insert extremely odd happenstance here) happened. I guess I'll have to wait to find out what happened