In Other Worlds

‘Margaret Atwood is a writer of metaphysical wit, who can always twist our preconceptions . . . She is genuinely inventive, and her quirky and satirical wit does not limit or define her‘ Sunday Telegraph In Other Worlds is Margaret Atwood‘s account of her lifelong relationship with the literary form we have come to know as ‘science fiction‘, from her days as a child reader, through her time at Harvard, where she studied the Victorian ancestors of the form, and later as a writer and reviewer. In this volume she brings together three Ellmann lectures, including ‘Dire Cartographies‘ which investigates Utopias and Dystopias, and touches on Atwood‘s own ventures into those constructions. In further essays Atwood explores and elucidates the differences - as she sees them - between ‘science fiction‘ proper, and ‘speculative fiction‘. For readers who loved The Handmaid‘s Tale, Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, In Other Worlds is a must. ‘Eminently readable and accessible . . . The lectures are insightful and cogently argued with a neat comic turn of phrase . . . Her enthusiasm and level of intellectual engagement are second to none‘ James Lovegrove, Financial Times