In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination

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 illuminate essential truths of the modern world.

This book is an exploration of Atwood’s relationship with the literary form we have come to know as “science fiction.” Beginning with her days as a child reader in the 1940s and stretching into her time as a graduate student at Harvard and as a writer and reviewer, Atwood’s relationship with science fiction narratives has been lifelong. In Other Worlds combines her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010—“Flying Rabbits,” “Burning Bushes,” and “Dire Cartographies,” with some of her key reviews of works by important writers in the genre, including Marge Piercy, Rider Haggard, Ursula LeGuin, Kazuo Ishiguro, Bryher, Huxley, and Jonathan Swift.