From her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time at Harvard, where she studied the Victorian ancestors of the form and later as a writer and reviewer, Margaret Atwood has always been fascinated with science fiction.

Here she brings together three Ellmann lectures: 'Flying Rabbits' begins with her early rabbit superhero creations and goes on to speculate about masks, capes, weakling alter egos and Things with Wings; 'Burning Bushes' travels into Victorian otherlands and beyond; and 'Dire Cartographies' investigates Utopias and Dystopias, including Atwood's own ventures into those constructions.

In further essays Atwood explores and critiques the form and elucidates the differences - as she sees them - between 'science fiction' proper and 'speculative fiction', not to mention 'sword and sorcery', 'fantasy' and 'slipstream fiction.'

IN OTHER WORDS is a must-read.