Margaret Atwood, on sff

It's a little old -- 2005 -- but I had not come across it before and it is still relevant and true except for one line, about which more later.

Margaret Atwood, generally considered Canada's greatest living writer, writes extremely intelligently about everything she writes about, and this cogitation on the purpose of science fiction, published in The Guardian, is no exception. Sample quote:

Literature is an uttering, or outering, of the human imagination. It lets the shadowy forms of thought and feeling - heaven, hell, monsters, angels and all - out into the light, where we can take a good look at them and perhaps come to a better understanding of who we are and what we want, and what the limits to those wants may be.

Read the whole thing.

The line I have the quibble with, in 2010, emphasis mine:

Now we're close to being in control of everything except earthquakes and the weather.

With the avalanche of evidence in the intervening years, I would think she has recognized the reality of artificial climate change at this point.