The Heart Goes Last

Speculative fiction is an umbrella term for a genre of literature that explores alternative realities and pushes the boundaries of imagination. Speculative fiction encompasses a wide range of more specific genres, including science fiction, fantasy, and dystopian fiction. At the heart of speculative fiction lies the art of speculation, as authors imagine worlds that are distinct from our own while often drawing upon elements of our existing reality.

Over the course of her career, Margaret Atwood has gone on record numerous times to explain that she sees her work as speculative fiction rather than science fiction. While much of the distinction is semantic and communicates more about her opinions over how literary critics should approach her work, it nonetheless reveals something important about her intent when writing the types of novels for which she has become widely known. Her primary reason for preferring the label speculative fiction over science fiction is that she sees science fiction as being concerned with things that are not possible yet (such as intergalactic space travel), whereas speculative fiction takes place on Earth and is about things that either could happen or have already happened. Speculative fiction takes observations about real-world happenings and extrapolates them to their most terrifying, but logical, conclusion.

This is evident throughout The Heart Goes Last. The financial crash that precipitates all the action is implied to have similar causes—yet even more devastating consequences—to the 2007-2008 financial crises. The anxieties about wealth inequality, home ownership, and financial precarity all reflect real-world concerns in which an increasingly small number of billionaires have more wealth than the majority of the world combined. The representation of corporate greed and the exploration of how unethical investor groups can be when it comes to demanding constantly growing profits is based on contemporary corporate culture. Finally, the idea that a prison-town could not only be sustainable, but enormously profitable, builds on the existence of the prison-industrial complex. By projecting contemporary issues into a near future, she is able to simultaneously explore these issues in a way that feels surreal while providing a warning of what is to come if things continue as they are.