Atwood’s stories defy the sci-fi tag; she prefers to call them speculative fiction. « My books build on ideas and concepts that already exist, » she says. Her new novel, The Heart Goes Last, is true to form: tapping into her signature knack for combining disturbingly realistic futures with dark comedy. Atwood’s stories defy the sci-fi tag; […]
Atwood's stories defy the sci-fi tag; she prefers to call them speculative fiction. "My books build on ideas and concepts that already exist," she says. Her new novel, The Heart Goes Last, is true to form: tapping into her signature knack for combining disturbingly realistic futures with dark comedy. Atwood's stories defy the sci-fi tag; she prefers to call them speculative fiction. "My books build on ideas and concepts that already exist," she says. Her new novel, The Heart Goes Last, is true to form: tapping into her signature knack for combining disturbingly realistic futures with dark comedy - in this case, a love story gone wrong in a lawless America. "My stories all have a comic twist," she says, "but they wouldn't be as funny if they were real." Here, the 75-year-old literary giant talks about sex robots, comics and the future of books. You often write about real scientific concepts. Which topics fascinate you now? Margaret Atwood: In the new book it's sex robotics. Those are making great strides. They do really have ones with warm body temperature in Japan and there's a creepy site with a video that has a robot girl saying things like "touch me, touch me now". They're a bit like Barbies, the ones that can talk. Even back in the 50s there was a doll called Chatty Cathy. So this is the advanced version of those. The Heart Goes Last started out as a digital serial for storytelling platform Byliner. How did you find writing for that form versus a novel? It's a lot of pressure; you have to write quickly. I did four stories over eight months. But I don't change my style or what I write. When I turned it into a novel I had to remove repetition - you need it when you're writing in serial form, because you have to remind readers what happened. Dickens wrote in serial form. That's why the pacing is the way it is - each chapter ends on a cliffhanger. Did you find having real-time feedback from readers during the writing process useful? I got a lot of feedback, but it didn't impact the final novel in any way. You see the same with [George RR Martin's] Game of Thrones. No one knows the end, not even the writers of the TV show, because he hasn't published the last book yet. You've embraced social media more than many authors. How did you get started? I'd say I've explored technologies, not embraced them.Se connecter
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