In other worlds : SF and the human imagination / Margaret Atwood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Atwood, Margaret, 1939-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Atwood, Margaret, 1939---Knowledge and learning--Literature.

Atwood, Margaret.

Atwood, Margaret, 1939-.

Literature.

Atwood, Margaret, 1939---Knowledge and learning--Science fiction.

Science fiction.

Science fiction--History and criticism.

Science fiction--Authorship.

Physical Description:

x, 255 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, [2011]

Summary:

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 This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early rabbit superhero creations and goes on to speculate about masks, capes,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

Contents:

In other worlds : SF and the human imagination. Flying rabbits : denizens of distant space

Burning bushes : why heaven and hell went to Planet X

Dire cartographies : the roads to Utopia

Other deliberations. An introductory note

Woman on the edge of time by Marge Piercy

H. Rider Haggard's She

The queen of quinkdom : The birthday of the world and other stories by Ursula K.Le Guin

Arguing against ice cream : Enough : staying human in an engineered age by Bill McKibben

George Orwell : some personal connections

Ten ways of looking at The island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro

After the last battle : Visa for Avalon by Bryher

Brave new world by Aldous Huxley

Of the madness of mad scientists : Jonathan Swift's Grand Academy

Five tributes. An introductory note

Cryogenics : a symposium

Cold-blooded

Homelanding

Time capsule found on the dead planet

"The peach women of Aa'a" from The Blind Assassin

Appendices. An open letter from Margaret Atwood to the Judson Independent School District

Weird tales covers of the 1930s.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780385533966

0385533969

OCLC:

699764090