Margaret Atwood doesn’t like hearing her novels called science fiction. . . . [But] her brusque dismissal of the term science fiction to describe the results seems odd, especially when seen in light of her remarks about another, earlier book, one which was hugely influential on both Oryx and Crake and its follow-up, 2009’s The Year of the Flood: H.G. Wells’s 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau.