Summary of Margaret Atwood's Burning Questions

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 I will be giving the Kesterton Lecture at Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication. The title of my small talk is Scientific Romancing. Its cover story is that it’s about science fiction. Its subtext is probably What is fiction for. or something like that.

#2 The intersection between science and fiction is a point of interest for me. I want to understand why people write and read these types of stories, and what they’re good for.

#3 The novel has always claimed to offer a certain kind of truth about human nature, and how people really behave under observable social conditions. The genres want to entertain us rather than just rub our noses in the daily grind.

#4 The distinction between fiction and journalism is important when discussing the future. While no one can predict the future, you can dip into the present and explore the seeds of what might become the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669381358

IRB Media

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Insights on Margaret Atwood's Burning Questions

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I will be giving the Kesterton Lecture at Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication. The title of my small talk is Scientific Romancing. Its cover story is that it’s about science fiction. Its subtext is probably What is fiction for. or something like that.

#2

The intersection between science and fiction is a point of interest for me. I want to understand why people write and read these types of stories, and what they’re good for.

#3

The novel has always claimed to offer a certain kind of truth about human nature, and how people really behave under observable social conditions. The genres want to entertain us rather than just rub our noses in the daily grind.

#4

The distinction between fiction and journalism is important when discussing the future. While no one can predict the future, you can dip into the present and explore the seeds of what might become the future.

#5

Science fiction is where theological narrative goes after Paradise Lost. The genre is filled with supernatural creatures with wings and burning bushes that speak, but they are not out of place on Planet X.

#6

The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia, while Oryx and Crake is not. Oryx and Crake is an adventure-romance coupled with a Menippean satire, the literary form that deals in intellectual obsession.

#7

The intersection between science and fiction is the point of intersection between knowledge and feeling. Science is about knowledge, and fiction is about feeling. Science as a tool can be used for good or ill, just like any other tool.

#8

The human imagination drives the world. It has always driven only the human world, which was once very small in comparison to the huge and powerful natural world around it. But we’re now next door to being in control of everything except the weather.

#9

The picture of the man who looked like he was half-dead and half-alive in 1984 grabbed attention around the world. It was a young man who had died long ago, and his body had defied the general rule of ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

#10

The Franklin Expedition was a British attempt to find the Northwest Passage to the Orient and claim it for Britain. It ended in disaster, and its leader, Captain Sir John Franklin, was never found. The Arctic landscape that had subsumed him and his crew attracted many people in the nineteenth century.

#11

There have been many Franklins over the years, each suitable for the needs of the age. The first was the real Franklin, who was not a dream vision of the Romantic hero, but experienced and well-known. He knew his own active career was coming to an end, and he saw in the chance to discover the Northwest Passage the last chance for enduring fame.

#12

The law of reputations is like a bungee cord: you plunge down, you bounce up, though to diminishing depths and heights each time. In 1983, Sten Nadolny published The Discovery of Slowness, a novel that gave us a thoughtful Franklin, not exactly a hero but no villain.

#13

The book Frozen in Time is a detective story that tells the true story of the Franklin expedition. It has contributed greatly to our knowledge of a signal event in the history of northern journeying.

#14

Marilyn French’s book From Eve to Dawn is a history of women that spans from pre-history to the present day. It examines not only actions and laws, but also the thinking behind them. It’s a warning about the appalling extremes of human behavior and male