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 Worlds is a must.