In other worlds : SF and the human imagination /
Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and singular point of view to the genre of speculative fiction in a series of essays that 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 ficti...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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New York :
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday,
c2011.
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| Summary: | Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and singular point of view to the genre of speculative fiction in a series of essays that 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 This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits, " which begins with Atwood's early rabbit superhero creations and goes on to speculate about masks, capes,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. Includes also 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 sorcsorcery/fantasy" and "slipstream fiction." |
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| Physical Description: | 255 p. ; 22 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |
| ISBN: | 9780385533966 (alk. paper) |