An internet rant is a beautiful thing. Because, why even be online, with all the anonymity that brings, and even attempt to contain all that angst. It's why we have comments on everything from blogs to Youtube to news stories. People need to complain! We have things on our chest and we've got to get them off...and our significant others are just plain tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.
In light of this, I decided to institute a new feature on the blog where I can bring up whatever's on my mind, be it terrible book covers, titles, ideas, bloggers (okay, probably just Pat), you name it and have some fun with it.
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Margaret Atwood's newest book, called
In Other Worlds, is about, well I'll just let you read the blurb:
In Other Worlds: Science Fiction and the Human Imagination is Margaret Atwood’s account of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as science fiction. This relationship 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 explored the Victorian ancestors of the form, and continuing with her work as a writer and reviewer. This book brings together her three heretofore unpublished Ellmann Lectures of 2010—“Flying Rabbits,” which begins with Atwood’s early rabbit superhero creations and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling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 other-lands and beyond; and “Dire Cartographies,” which investigates utopias and dystopias. In Other Worlds also includes some of Atwood’s key reviews and musings about the form, including her elucidation of the differences (as she sees them) between “science fiction” proper and “speculative fiction,” as well as “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—not to mention Atwood’s 100,000-plus Twitter followers— In Other Worlds is a must.
First, she's offended by having her work called "science fiction" (it's "speculative" fiction") and now it was just a misunderstanding since she's such a big fan that was she was really offended at was the incorrect use of terms. I call BS. (
This article discusses what I'm talking about to some extent.)
Please just be honest with us - you don't want to fall into "that" category which has such a stigma. We all know the truth.
I've heard nothing but good things about her work, but things like this just make hard. Is this not a good enough reason to refuse to read her books?
