In Other Worlds is not a scholarly study or literary history of science fiction but, rather, a series of interventions by Margaret Atwood into a genre some of her work stands in ambivalent relation to. It is composed of two, dialectical parts. The first, “In Other Worlds—SF and the Human Imagination,” presents three “Ellman Lectures” that Atwood gave at Emory University in fall 2010 on the interconnected topics of genre, fantasy, science fiction, storytelling, and the imagination: “Flying Rabbits: Denizens of Distant Spaces,” “Burning Bushes: Why Heaven and Hell Went to Planet X,” and “Dire Cartographies: The Roads to Ustopia.” The second, which includes two sections, “Other Deliberations” and “Five Tributes,” collects miscellaneous writings on science and speculative fiction, including reviews, introductions, radio talks, and a handful of fictional “mini-SF pieces.”
Atwood's opening gambit is a response to a critique from fellow writer Ursula K. Le Guin, who in a...
