In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination Audiobook

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 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  This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures from 2010: "Flying Rabbits," which begins with Atwood's early  rabbit superhero creations, and goes on to speculate about masks, capes,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.  In Other Worlds also includes 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 sorcery/fantasy" and "slipstream fiction." For all readers who have loved The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood, In Other Worlds is a must.

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"As my crush on Margaret Atwood deepens, I found a book full of her reflections on the sci-fi/speculative fiction genre irresistible! We're given three sections here; the first contains Atwood's recollections of her progressive interest in all things other-worldly up to the publishing of The Year of the Flood, moving on to a collections of essays and introductions she's written for various SF and technology focused books, and ending with a few flash fictiony pieces the dabble in SF tropes. It was terrific getting inside of Atwood's mind as her thoughts on SF develop. I especially enjoyed her thoughts on, broadly speaking, what makes humans human, with their ability to abstract and project their thoughts and feelings outward and eventually upward. The essays that make up the bulk of the book varied in excellence, but this may be in large part due to my affinity for certain reviewed texts (much love for Brave New World and The Island of Dr. Moreau) and ignorance of others (She and anything written by Ursla Le Guin, to whom the book is dedicated). If nothing else, however, I've got a few more titles to add to my 'to read' shelf. The (extremely) short short stories at the end seemed tacked on almost as an afterthought and even though their presence is explained, I still feel as though they were extremely lacking. Familiar SF scenarios are portrayed in familiar SF ways and nothing of Atwood's true talent shines through in any of them, save for an excerpt from her longer work The Blind Assassian, which promptly made it to the aforementioned 'to read' list. All in all, if you have any interest in Atwood as a writer, you'd be doing yourself a favor to pick this collection up. Her ideas and observations are enough to keep anyone coming back for more."

— Dina (4 out of 5 stars)