nihil adeo necesse est ante hominum oculos proponere ut certas quasdam res, quas esse neque demonstrari neque probari potest, quae contra eo ipso, quod pii diligentesque viri illas quasi ut entia tractant, enti nascendique facultati paululum appropinquant

Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, and critic whose work blends fiction, feminism, ecology, and political satire.

She prefers the term “speculative fiction,” emphasizing that her inventions  are extrapolations of existing technologies and social trends.

Atwood’s fiction often features archivists, witnesses, and survivors — characters who record or reinterpret the collapse of social orders.

Recurring themes: power, surveillance, reproductive rights, environmental destruction, mythmaking, and the blurred line between utopia and dystopia.

Atwood is also an inventor and activist, engaging with climate issues, civil liberties, and the politics of storytelling itself.

one of the most important anglosaxxon intellectuals of 1st half of 20th century

first schooling by his own mother Julia (departure letter: "Judge not too much and love more"), later Eton, Oxford etc.

first very much empiricist & rationalist (grandson of Thomas Huxley, influence of Lord Russell & Whitehead)

later turn towards spirituality, mysticism (influence of Vedanta - Ramakrishna & Krishmamurti lineages)

in last decade of his life one of the biggest proponents of usage of entheogenic & psychedelic substances for welfare of mankind

died on the same day as JFK and C.S.Lewis; last instruction to his 2nd wife Laura: "LSD 100µg intramuscular.”

asides Shelley, Verne and Gernsback considered to be one of 19th parents of "science-fiction" genre

a “social scientist in fiction”: stories as thought experiments about planned futures and world government.

A Modern Utopia (1905): a parallel Earth with a liberal World State, free movement, “Order of Samurai” ...

The Shape of Things to Come (1933): “history from the future” where global war leads to a technocratic “Air Dictatorship” unifying the planet.

1938 CBS inscenation of "War of the Worlds" causes panic

Ambivalence: Wells’ utopias blend emancipation (education, science, world peace) with problematic ideas (eugenics, paternalism, colonialism, dog-free societies).

Legacy: Wells’ world-state imaginaries anticipate later notions of the UN, technocracy, the “world brain,” and global planning.