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 This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: “Flying Rabbits,” which begins with Atwood’s early rabbit superhero creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes,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.
eMusic Review 0
12.06.11
Margaret Atwood, In Other Worlds
2011 | Label: Random House Audio
A peek into the creative landscape of one of our greatest writers
Margaret Atwood’s In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination may be a departure for those expecting fiction along the lines of her Booker Prize winning novel The Blind Assassin, her dystopian masterpiece The Handmaid’s Tale, or her brilliant future-as-genetic-engineering-nightmare diptych Oryx & Crake and Year of the Flood. Combining memoiristic essay with reviews and lectures, as well as several short sci fi-ish pieces, In Other Worlds is best heard as a peek into the creative landscape of one of our greatest writers.
Longtime readers may be able to guess at the breadth and depth of Atwood’s frames of reference. Somewhat predictable influences include Victorian novels, nature writing, the language and feminist literature. However, it might be unexpected to hear that such a “serious” author would also harbor a love of classic B movies, comic books of the 1930s and ’40s (especially those featuring female superheroes), and proto-sci fi-ers H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.
We often expect today’s great male writers to have read and absorbed Stan Lee and Mad magazine along with Hemingway and Melville. Similarly, we might expect our female writers to have absorbed — even channeled — Jane Austen and Vogue (along with Hemingway and Melville). So to hear about Atwood spending her WWII Canadian childhood drawing superhero bunnies in capes, and following her brother’s hand-drawn maps of their island home…It’s not surprising so much as it is gratifying.