By Margaret Atwood
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(Fun fact: the main reason I joined Twitter was because Margaret Atwood had one and enjoyed using it.)
When you want to learn about a genre, you normally go towards the genre's representative books. In this case, we are talking about science fiction. Go for the popular, we have Robert A. Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick. Wanna get esoteric? Walter M. Miller, C.S. Lewis, and J.G. Ballard. How about the ladies? Margaret Atwood, Octavia E. Butler, and Ursula K. Le Guin. You have a lot to choose from.
In this case, let's go with Margaret Atwood. She has written the chilling The Handmaid's Tale, the apocalyptic tale of Oryx and Crake and its sequel The Year of the Flood. But she ain't through. She has more to say about science fiction than her novels could contain. With In Other Worlds, Atwood puts together all she learned about sci-fi and schools you good.
Entirely made up of essays, critical/analytical reviews of various sci-fi novels, and even an open letter to a school district; In Other Worlds is a multifaceted animal. The beginning of the book, primarily in the essay "Flying Rabbits: Denizens of Distant Spaces", details her fascination with world creation and mythical creatures that began as a child; how she and her brother created a duo of flying rabbits that were bent on saving the world in little capes (hell, check out the endpapers of the hardcover: the drawings [including a caped rabbit] are all hand-drawn by Atwood herself!).
Several times in the book, mainly in the second main essay, Atwood discusses walking the fine line between genre and literary fiction:
I was, in fact, leading a double life, or even a triple life: the terms highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow were much in use at that time [...] but I seemed to have a taste for all three kinds of brow; which I can't say disturbed me.
-from "Burning Bushes: Why Heaven and Hell Went to Planet X" on page 40
and also
He [Northrup Frye] had the added benefit of being a reader at all three brow levels, which pleased me a lot: it's always encouraging to be told that it is intellecutially acceptable to read the sorts of things that you like reading anyway.
-from "Burning Bushes: Why Heaven and Hell Went to Planet X" on page 46
She also talked about studying literature while enjoying B-grade sci-fi flicks, yet still enjoying each of them with equal respect (this also detailed in "Burning Bushes"). If anything, she is the example of how to appreciate all forms of literature and still write like the best of the best. It is not about sacrificing your art for the sake of accessibility, it is about being true to yourself by writing what you love. You'll be remembered for the prose, but what you love writing about will always shine through.
The section that I enjoyed best was the reviews and criticism (which is the entirety of "Other Deliberations"). From her praise and overview of George Orwell and his legendary 1984 ("George Orwell: Some Personal Connections") to the review of Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time (the titular piece), these show a remarkable look into sci-fi and how it is easily dissected like the literary novels she studied for her degrees. Even the passionate (and slightly spoiler-ish) review of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is enough to make me take interest in the book (I had zilch interest up to this point). The power of genre passion at work.
In Other Worlds is an excellent foray into the literary criticism of science fiction. Unlike her peers, who must get some kind of rise on rejecting genre fiction, Atwood acknowledges the beauties and terrors of taking on cliches and trying to turn them upside. With her worldly knowledge and love for the form, she comes across as a seasoned fan who has seen it all, but is eager for the future. An attitude that any writer, new or veteran, should learn from and adopt to.
COPYRIGHT NOTE: all bold quotes are from the novel and were written by the author herself. Those words are not my own.
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