In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

Authors

Margaret Atwood

Files

Document Type

Book

Description

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 This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early rabbit superhero creations and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling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."

Publication Date

10-11-2011

Publisher

McClelland & Stewart

City

Toronto

Award

2020 and 2021 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award

Disciplines

Arts and Humanities | Creative Writing | Fiction

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

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