At a time when speculative fiction seems less and less
far-fetched, Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and
singular point of view to the genre in a series of essays
that brilliantly illuminates the essential truths about the
modern world. This is an exploration of her relationship
with the literary form we have come to know as "science
fiction,” a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching
from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her
time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on
the Victorian ancestor of the form, and continuing as a
writer and reviewer. This book brings together her three
heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying
Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early rabbit superhero
creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes,
weakling alter egos, and Things with Wings; "Burning
Bushes," which follows her into Victorian otherlands and
beyond; and "Dire Cartographies," which investigates Utopias
and Dystopias. In Other Worlds also includes some of
Atwood's key reviews and thoughts about the form. Among
those writers discussed are Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard,
Ursula Le Guin, Ishiguro, Bryher, Huxley, and Jonathan
Swift. She elucidates the differences (as she sees them)
between "science fiction" proper, and "speculative fiction,"
as well as between "sword and sorcery/fantasy" and
"slipstream fiction." For all readers who have loved The
Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood,
In Other Worlds is a must.
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