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Canadian author Margaret Atwood is one of the world’s most celebrated living writers. Among her many books are a handful that some might call science fiction, notably The Handmaid’s Tale, about a future America ruled by religious fundamentalists, and the Oryx and Crake trilogy, about a mad scientist who attempts to replace humanity with a genetically engineered race of his own creation. Atwood has sometimes provoked the ire of science fiction fans by declining to label these works as “science fiction.”
“It’s a matter of truth in labeling,” says Margaret Atwood in this week’s episode of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I like there to be some resemblance between what is promised on the outside and what you get on the inside, and if it says ‘science fiction,’ I want there to be something that doesn’t already exist.”
For her own books, she prefers the term “speculative fiction,” which she defines as stories set on Earth and employing elements that already exist in some form, like genetic engineering, as opposed to more wildly hypothetical science fiction ideas like time travel, faster-than-light drives, and transporters. The problem is that science fiction writers have long used “speculative fiction” as an umbrella term for a wide range of non-realistic stories. Atwood and her friend Ursula K. Le Guin have engaged in a long-running debate over such differences in terminology.
“We did in fact do an on-stage conversation,” says Atwood, “when I published In Other Worlds, and in the preface to that book you can find that matter discussed. She was a naughty Ursula.”
Listen to our complete interview with Margaret Atwood in Episode 94 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above), in which she explains how to invent your own religion, reveals which dystopian future she fears most, and describes how her novel MaddAddam inspired the real-life video game Intestinal Parasites. Then stick around after the interview as bestselling authors Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell join hosts John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley for a panel discussion on political agendas in science fiction.
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