Despite enjoying a "lifelong relationship" with SF  she admits to a student fondness for B movies of the "lowest possible brow level" and as a child had her own cast of flying superhero rabbits  Atwood experienced a slight queasiness when she plunged into the genre with The Handmaid's Tale. SF aficionados of a Sheldon Cooper stripe will be annoyed at the notion that their beloved parallel universes need justifying in any way, but although Atwood dismisses "bug-eyed monster-bestrewn space operas", her obvious affection for Superman minimises offence. Amid typically elegant and witty essays on Ursula K Le Guin, George Orwell and H Rider Haggard, she also includes a letter to the Judson Independent School District, which attempted to ban The Handmaid's Tale. "I put nothing into my book that human beings have not already done," she writes. Like a giant-brained Martian with a probe, she tests the boundaries and definitions of the genre, arguing that the coordinates for "Planet X" are nearer than we might think.