In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

In Other Worlds: Science Fiction and the Human Imagination is Margaret Atwood’s account of her rela­tionship with the literary form we have come to know as science fiction. This relationship 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 explored the Victorian ancestors of the form, and continuing with her work as a writer and reviewer.

This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures of 2010: “Flying Rabbits”, which begins with Atwood’s early rabbit superhero creations and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling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 other-lands and beyond; and “Dire Cartographies”, which investi­gates utopias and dystopias. In Other Worlds also includes some of Atwood’s key reviews and musings about the form, including her elucidation of the differences (as she sees them) between “science fiction” proper and “speculative fiction”, as well as “sword and sorcery/fantasy” and “slip­stream fiction”. For all listeners who have loved The Handmaid’s Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood - not to mention Atwood’s 100,000-plus Twitter fol­lowers - In Other Worlds is a must.