The Null Device

Margaret Atwood on the difference between science fiction and speculative fiction:

Speculative fiction encompasses that which we could actually do. Sci-fi is that which we’re probably not going to see. We can do the lineage: Sci-fi descends from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds; speculative fiction descends from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Out of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea came Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, out of which came We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, then George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Ray Bradbury’s Fahreneheit 451 was speculative fiction, while The Martian Chronicles was not.

¶ literature margaret atwood scifi 4

Canadian author Margaret Atwood (author of the dystopian theocracy novel The Handmaid's Tale, the scifi novel Oryx and Crake and numerous quite good short stories) has devised a system for autographing fans' books over a distance. The LongPen, as she calls it, consists of a video linkup and a robot arm, operated by telepresence, which allows the author to talk to fans whilst signing their books from the comfort of her home. The device will get its public debut at the London Book Fair, with Atwood signing autographs whilst remaining in Canada, in what is being billed as the world's first transatlantic autograph.

(via Make) ¶ longpen margaret atwood tech telepresence 0