Science-fiction fantasy (dragons are common, the gizmos are less plausible and may include wands)

"Science fiction" is the box in which her work is usually placed, but it's an awkward box: it bulges with the discards from elsewhere. Into it have been crammed all those stories that don't for comfortably into the family room of the socially realistic novel or the more formal parlour of historical fiction, or other compartmentalized (sic) genres: westerns, gothics, horrors, gothic romances, and the novels of war, crime and spies. Its subdivisions include science fiction proper (gizmo-riddled and theory-based space travel, time travel, or cybertravel to other worlds, with aliens frequent); science-fiction fantasy (dragons are common, the gizmos are less plausible and may include wands); and speculative fiction (human society and its possible future form, which are either much better than what we have now or much worse). However the membranes separating these subdivisions are permeable, and osmotic flow from the one to another is the norm.

M. Atwood, In other worlds: SF and the human imagination (2011), 115

Don't ride a bicycle. They'll think you're a communist and run you off the road

Tuscaloosa and Alabama provided another kind of flavour - that of a democracy, but one with quite a few constraining social customs and attitudes. ("Don't ride a bicycle," I was told. "They'll think you're a communist and run you off the road.")

M. Atwood, In other worlds: SF and the human imagination (2011), 87

There aren't many tunes you can hum in the shower.

As a story, the scientific mythos is not very comforting. Probably that's why it hasn't become wildly popular: we humans prefer stories that have a central role in them for us, that preserve some of our dignity, and that implies there might be help at hand if we really need some. The scientific version of our existence on this planet may well be physically true, but we don't like it much. It isn't cuddly. There aren't many tunes you can hum in the shower.

M. Atwood, In other worlds: SF and the human imagination (2011), 55

Forced to choose between one irascible, unpredictable tyrant and another

Laura, on the other hand, had taken to religion in a serious way during Mr. Erskine's tenure: she was still frightened of God, bur forced to choose between one irascible, unpredictable tyrant and another, she'd chosen the one that was bigger, and also farther away.

M. Atwood, The Blind Assassin (2000), 202

God must have heard this sort of thing before

Then the school chaplain offered a prayer, lecturing God on the many unprecedented challenges that face today's young people. God must have heard this sort of thing before, he's probably as bored with it as the rest of us.

M. Atwood, The Blind Assassin (2000), 47