In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination [Paperback]

The author ofThe Handmaid’s TaleandOryx and Crakeengagingly explores her lifelong relationship to science fiction, both as a reader and as a writer.
 
At a time when the borders between literary genres are increasingly porous, Margaret Atwood maps the richly fertile crosscurrents of speculative and science fiction, slipstream, utopias and dystopias, and fantasy, and muses on their roots in the age-old human impulse to imagine new worlds. She shares the evolution of her personal fascination with this branch of literature, from her days as a child inventing a race of flying superhero rabbits, to her graduate study of the Victorian ancestors of SF to her appreciations of such influential writers as Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard, Ursula K. LeGuin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Aldous Huxley, and Jonathan Swift. As humorous and charming as it is insightful and provocative,In Other Worldsbrilliantly illuminates “the wilder storms on the wilder seas of invention.”
 

“Atwood is a perceptive and enthusiastic literary critic, dryly funny and eclectically curious.” —The San Francisco Chronicle

“Interesting, entertaining and thoughtful. . . .  Atwood fans, sci-fi fans, indeed fiction fans, have reason to rejoice.In Other Worldsis a delightful read full of Atwood’s well-honed prose and sly sense of humor.” —The Miami Herald

“Margaret Atwood is a valiant champion [of science fiction]. . . . Her prose is addictive. . . . She crafts sentences with grace and pitch-perfect highbrow humor.” —The Plain Dealer
 
“A smart and often playful book.” —Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
 
“In Other Worldsis an eminently readable and accessible clarification of [Atwood’s] relationship with SF and the SF tradition. . . . The lectures are insightful and cogently argued with a neat cols8