Ursula K. Le Guin on reading, art, and the Web

You can look at pictures or listen to music or read a book on your computer, but these artifacts are made accessible by the Web, not created by it and not intrinsic to it. Ursula K. Le Guin, "Staying Awake: Notes on the alleged decline of reading," Harper's, January 2008, pp. 33-38. Quote is from p. 37.

Thanks for reading this, which, originally, did not come from the WWW.

Ursula K. Le Guin's newest book

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the great authors currently writing in English. She uses words well, without being showy, or long-winded. She is interested in the craft of writing. She creates splendid characters. She imagines "what if?" situations, and writes about important themes. She is responsible for the invention of the concept of a communication device, the ansible, that is now commonly used in science fiction writing.

Le Guin was interviewed on National Public Radio's All Things Considered on April 26. The interview includes a brief reading from her book, Lavinia, by the author. It also describes the book, which is based on work by the ancient poet, Virgil. Le Guin said that the book is, in part, about the dreadfulness of war. The link to the interview goes to a page which includes an excerpt from the book. (Lavinia was published on April 21.)

Although written about the past, I am guessing that the book will be fantastic, in some ways.

Thanks for reading. Listen to Le Guin.

Firestar, by Michael Flynn

Yesterday's post was on Eifelheim, by Michael Flynn. I enjoyed the book a lot, so decided to read another by Flynn. The only other book he has written, available through our local library, is Firestar (Tor Books, 1996). So I checked it out, and started to read.

The book lacks some of the most appealing features of Eifelheim. There are no aliens, it's set in the present, and there didn't seem to be any major theological issues.

Reading on, I found theological issues, all right, but not cosmic questions -- more important ones. Some of the characters struggled with ambition, and its consequences. As Matthew 16:26 puts it: For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? (ESV)

The book is about a program to put humans on asteroids. The guiding force behind this program is Mariesa van Huyten, a young heiress who is also intelligent, and, usually, wise. She does not use government funding, but does work with various other corporations to accomplish her goal, usually without letting their CEOs know what the ultimate goal really is. During the course of the book, she gradually sells her soul -- her idealism, her concern for others -- for a corporate and technological goal. And she knows that she has done so:

A sense that among the gains there had been losses. Hidden losses. Things she had sacrificed precisely to make those gains. Had that been what Keith had meant when he had warned her -- very nearly his last words -- that "the best things are lost in victory"? (p. 403)

It took every bit of strength in her to remind herself that Styx did not matter in the long-term scheme of things. That even she herself did not matter. Only the Goal. Always the Goal. Asteroid. Comet. It was only a matter of time. Next millennium. Next century. Next year. It did not matter. "You shall know neither the day nor the hour." Earth had to be ready. Don't let the Goal eat you up, Belinda had warned her. (p. 410)

Toward the end of the book, another warning from Belinda: ". . . Too many megawatt lasers or impulse engines . . . or asteroids . . . can distract you from the important things. . . ." (p. 520, ellipses in original)

Since the book appears to be the first of four related novels, perhaps she will re-gain her soul later. Keith is her CFO, until his death by heart attack, and the only person in the book who is unambiguously good.

Mariesa doesn't really perform any overt evil acts, or order anyone else to do so, and some rather nasty acts are done by others to her, or to her companies. But the goal consumes her so much that she uses others merely as a means to an end. As one of Ursula K. Le Guin's characters put it, in an honored science fiction work:

". . . However, the mission I am on overrides all personal debts and loyalties."
"If so," said the stranger with fierce certainty, "it is an immoral mission." The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) p. 104.

One aspect of Firestar that I didn't expect is that one of Mariesa's corporations is educational -- it makes money, or at least keeps even, by taking over failing school systems. The book includes some understanding of what teaching is about, and its problems, hardly standard science fiction fare. Some of the students from one of these schools have various important roles later in the book. One of these is the Styx mentioned in the second quote above. Belinda, mentioned in two of the quotes, is director of the educational corporation. She may be good through and through, but we don't see enough of her to know.

Another important character seems, in a way, to regain his soul. He apparently gives up a cherished ambition out of love for his wife.

I don't wish to give away any more of the plot.

Thanks for reading.

Quotations from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness

One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies, given time . . . The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) p. 31.

". . . the mission I am on overrides all personal debts and loyalties."
"If so," said the stranger with fierce certainty, "it is an immoral mission." The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) p. 104.

To oppose something is to maintain it. The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) p. 146.

Thanks for reading.

Ursula K. Le Guin on the centrality of uncertainty

"The unknown," said Faxe's soft voice in the forest, "the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religion. No Handdara, no Yomesh, no hearthgods, nothing. But also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion. . . . Tell me, Genry, what is known? What is sure, predictable, inevitable -- the one certain thing you know concerning your future, and mine?" "That we shall die." "Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer . . . the only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next." The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) p. 72. Ellipses in original. Faxe, the Weaver of Otherhord Fastness, to Genly Ai, the envoy of the Ekumen to Gethen.

Science in Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness

I have recently posted (see here and here) on Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 novel, The Left Hand of Darkness (LHD). I wish to continue this series, by musing briefly on the science in this work.

LHD is science fiction, in that Le Guin attempts to extrapolate from the science of today to the science of the future, on other worlds. It is hardly original with me to note that the products of magic and science might be difficult or impossible to distinguish (imagine Frodo trying to understand a cell phone). But there are no wizards in LHD. (Le Guin does have such in her fantastic Earthsea -- see here for one of my posts on that fictional world.)

Although she didn't invent the ansible for LHD -- she had already written about it, and, since she imagined it, so have others -- this device to communicate instantaneously across immense distances plays a role in the book.

The Gethenians are said to be the result of genetic engineering, carried out by the Hainish, a long time before the time of the action in LHD.

Le Guin, as usual, pays attention to the ecology of Gethen, and includes descriptions of how the climate might have influenced the biology. She also has a character say that the rapid adaptation of machines by humans on earth had a significant cost, a cost which the slow development of Gethenian industry has avoided.

Le Guin also pays some attention to psychological or neurological science. Telepathy is one of the abilities of Genly Ai, the Envoy to Gethen, and he is able to teach Estraven to develop this ability to some extent. The most remarkable mind power of the Gethenians is their ability to Foretell the future. They do this by combining minds, in a more or less controlled way, although there seems to be some art in the practice, not just science.

There is mention of various inventions, including electric automobiles, guns, radio, and the Chabe stove, a remarkable device that weighs a few pounds, yet can heat and light a room for months. Le Guin doesn't explain how this device might work, unfortunately.

Thanks for reading.

Some quotes on joy: Tolkien, Lewis, and Le Guin

Pippin glanced in some wonder at the face now close beside his own, for the sound of that laugh had been gay and merry. Yet in the wizard's face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963, p. 30.

From letter 89 by Tolkien:
"... I coined the word 'eucatastrophe': the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of truth.... It perceives-- if the story has literary 'truth'...--that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest 'eucatastrophe' possible in the greatest fairy story-- and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love..."

All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
~C.S. Lewis, Letters, (Letter of November 5, 1959)

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.'
~C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, Chapter 9 (1946)

Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) p. 228.

Religion in Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness

In a previous post, I mused about Ursula K. Le Guin's great novel, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) (LHD). Here's more.

Le Guin says that she is a Taoist. I don't know any more about Taoism that I can find in the page that the previous sentence links to, which is the Wikipedia article on the subject. I am guessing that, when Le Guin says this, she is speaking more of her philosophy than of her religion, although the two are often intimately intertwined, at least in Christianity and materialism.

There are two religions in LHD. One of these is the Yomeshta cult, which seems to be the official religion of Orgereyn, one of the two countries on the planet Gethen in which the action of the book takes place. The other country, Karhide, is described, by Estraven, the most important Gethenian character, as not a kingdom, but a family quarrel. It is subdivided into many small principalities, villages, and households. The people have many beliefs. Some are Yomeshta. Some follow the way of the Handdara. This lifestyle is the most interesting to Le Guin, and to her readers. Karhide is more interesting than Orgeryn.

The Handdara is a religion without institution, without hierarchy, without vows, without creed; I am still unable to say whether it has a God or not. The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1969) p. 57. Genly Ai, the Envoy, a native of earth, describing his findings, after a few years spent on Gethen.

"Well, in the Handdara . . . you know, there's no theory, no dogma. . . ." The Left Hand of Darkness, p. 222. Estraven, a Gethenian who follows the Handdara way, to Genly Ai. First ellipsis in original.

The interesting parts of the Handdara way include their disciplines. Adherents practice controlled starvation, in part as a way of surviving this harsh environment when little or no food is available. They can go into dothe, a state allowing for prolonged exertion, and physical feats. For example, Estraven carries Genly Ai, who is heavier than he, a long distance through the snow. After dothe, the practitioner must have an extended rest period. The Handdara are also able to foretell. A group of them, led by a Weaver, and including at least one member who is coming into sexual readiness (which is cyclical among most Gethenians), one pervert -- person who is permanently sexually ready, and "zanies" (psychotics) are able to answer specific questions about the future. This ritual is performed at physical risk to the participants, and only if the person who wants an answer pays an acceptable price. Often the answer does not tell what the questioner wanted to know -- in one case, a Gethenian asked when he would die, and he was told, in effect, on the 22nd, but not which month or year. According to the Handdara, the Yomesh cult is the result of a Gethenian forcing a Weaver and associates to answer a question, "What is the meaning of life?" which implies that the answer was not valid.

As for Genly Ai, there is little to indicate his religion, except that, once, when Estraven recites a poem with these lines:
Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.

Genly Ai sketches the yin and yang symbol, which is sometimes associated with Taoism, and asks Estraven if he is familiar with it (p. 222). The Gethenian is not.

Thanks for reading.

Seeker, by Jack McDevitt

"Margolia is a world of gleaming cities and impossible architecture. Its citizens enjoy a life of absolute leisure. (How they'd stand it isn't explained.)" Jack McDevitt, Seeker. New York: Ace, 2006, p. 108.

Seeker won the Nebula award for 2006. I try to read all the Nebula award books. As usual, I'll try to avoid giving away the plot, but muse a bit about some aspects of the book.

This is McDevitt's web page. It includes chapter 14 of the book.

The front cover quotes Stephen King, on McDevitt: "The logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke." In other words, King believes that the most important part of McDevitt's stories is the science. I generally prefer Ursula K. Le Guin's writing, where the most important part of the stories is the people. Clarke invented the synchronous orbiting relay satellite, fictionally. However, let's not forget that Le Guin, in spite of her concern for her characters, invented the ansible, also fictionally. Both are concerned with communication. McDevitt's people are OK. They are more than just cardboard. The protagonist in Seeker is Chase Kolpath, a former space pilot. She is now the assistant to Alex Benedict, who finds, or trades, valuable artifacts. I haven't read the previous books in this series, A Talent for War and Polaris, but I believe the first of these is written as a memoir by Alex. The second and third are written as if by Chase. She is more than a Watson to Alex's Holmes -- she has many of the adventures, and some of the ideas.

There are lots of possible artifacts in Chase's world, since it's about 9,000 years in our future, and humans are living on hundreds of planets. Rimway is the name of her planet. It has almost no crime. Criminals have their brains wiped -- their personality is mostly destroyed, and they are given, as it were, another start in life. Most everyone has an AI, an artificial intelligence, to deal with routine matters, even some non-routine ones. Simulated people take many of the service roles, such as restaurant waiters.

One question I always have, when entering such a world, is "how does the author treat religion?" McDevitt almost totally ignores it, but does include this:
It was a religious ceremony. A priest requested the blessings of the Almighty on the happy couple, and led them in their vows. The best man produced the ring, Adam slipped it on her finger, she waltzed into his arms, and they kissed. p. 77.

Who is getting married isn't important here. McDevitt does assume that there will be some religion, probably Christianity, even in the far future, and that it will have some importance in the lives of at least some people. That's more than many science fiction authors have done.

The quote also shows a weakness in McDevitt's work. Much of what people do and are, their customs and habits, read as if they haven't changed in hundreds of lightyears and thousands of years. That strikes me as very unrealistic. Surely the marriage ceremony would have changed a lot in that time! I know -- if McDevitt had changed everything as much as it's probably going to change, the plot would have gotten lost in all of those societal changes. And it's unrealistic to expect any author to be able to extrapolate changes in every aspect of how we eat, entertain ourselves, how we are named, etc., into the future.

God also appears in this famous quote (famous in the sense that it has been remembered for millennia, in McDevitt's fictional world):
We are leaving this world forever, and we intend to go so far that not even God will be able to find us. p. 133.

One technological extrapolation is avatars -- it is possible to take what is known about someone, even someone long dead, and produce a projected 3-D view of that person. The projection is able to converse, with ideas more or less like the original person would have, depending on how much is known about the original.

How do we treat the relics of our past? We plunder them, we hoard them, we exhibit them in museums, we profit from them, we show them off without understanding them, we casually trash them. That is a central theme of this book, and it is well worth thinking about.

McDevitt is a good read. I had a hard time putting the book down by the time I got to about page 250 (out of 373). There were two previous Chase Kolpath books, A Talent for War and Polaris. I hope to read them.

Thanks for reading.

Top 50 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books

The Science Fiction book club has published a list of the "Top 50 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books." The list covers 1953 - 2002.

I have a few comments:

No such list can be without controversy.

I recall reading about half of these, some more clearly than others. I have read a few of them several times.

My own list would have included some different items, including The Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis; something by Jack Vance, I guess The Dying Earth, although The Dragon Masters or The Last Castle would also be good candidates; The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, and Watership Down, by Richard Adams. C. S. Lewis isn't on the list, but I guess he shouldn't be, as most of his Narnia books were published before the period indicated, and, much as I like his space trilogy and Till We Have Faces, I can see that they haven't influenced others who write in the field, or the fantastic reading public, as much as, say, the books of Robert Heinlein or Arthur C. Clarke.

In my opinion, Tolkien and Le Guin are the most important authors of fantastic literature in English, the former early in the period covered, Le Guin for the last 35 years, to the present. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy is number 1 (His The Silmarillion is number 41) Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea is number 5 on the list (There are other Earthsea books, and some short stories, in addition.).

Many of these books have strong ethical, religious or moral implications. Tolkien was a Christian. Willis (who didn't make the list) may be. There is a Catholic priest in her The Doomsday Book who is a very sympathetic character, and most of her books include references to going to church. Miller's Canticle for Leibowitz is about the morals of nuclear war. Cordwainer Smith and Gene Wolfe include Christian symbolism in their works. Le Guin is a Taoist, and there are Taoist implications in her works. Ender's Game (by a Latter-Day Saint, Orson Scott Card) and The Forever War deal, in part, with the morality of war. (There are, I'm sure, other Christian writers represented, as well as those of writers of other faiths, and atheists and agnostics. For more on the religious affiliations of 70 of the most important authors in fantastic literature, see here.)

A person who wants to read the most important fantastic literature in English could do a lot worse than read this list. Everyone should read Tolkien. For someone who wants to taste the rich world of fantastic literature, I'd say that these five are the best: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, Cordwainer Smith's Rediscovery of Man, and Larry Niven's Ringworld. Of these, Ringworld is the "hardest" science fiction, with science being critical to the plot and setting, and character less so (although not absent) and Rediscovery perhaps the most fantastic -- Smith is presenting visions in these short stories, not real possibilities. Once more, although I agree that the Earthsea books are great, in my opinion, Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, which should have been on the list, is the more profound book. It is written intelligently, in structure and theme. The characters, almost all of them humanoid aliens, are multi-dimensional. The book deals with the themes of communication and fellowship, and of sexual identity, in a way that has seldom been matched in literature of any genre. (It isn't pornographic, in case anyone wonders. It just questions the whole question of sexual identity, in a way that can only be done in fantastic literature.) It's also about a cold planet, and it's a nice book to read if you are reading in a warm place, if the weather is cold. (Here's the Wikipedia article on the book. Here's a helpful study guide, although it doesn't spell the name of Le Guin's planet correctly. Sci-Fi Weekly gave the book an A+ review, and describes it a "a good story well told." Here's a lengthy analysis and discussion of the book, and its sexual implications, including an interview with Le Guin. Some reviewers disagree about the book's excellence, of course.)

I posted a series, some time ago, on features of Watership Down, Le Guin's Earthsea books, which are represented on the list, and on Tolkien. Those posts are here, here, here and here. Under Some of the feeds I subscribe to, on the right, you will see two group blogs devoted to Christian fantastic fiction, namely Speculative Faith and The Lost Genre Guild, and a personal blog, Claw of the Conciliator, which occasionally deals with that topic. So do I.

Thanks for reading.

The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin

I found (thanks to a Google alert) a web page which is a study guide to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. The study guide seems to cover the work quite well, and also gives quite a bit of background, such as a discussion of feminism. Just one quibble -- the author doesn't spell Le Guin correctly! (Feminism isn't a major theme of this book.)

The Dispossessed (New York: Avon, 1974) should be one of the works that lives on long after Le Guin is dead. Although Le Guin says that she is a Taoist, not a Christian, I found one aspect of the book inspiring. I was teaching physics while on sabbatical, and was having a struggle. (I'm not a card-carrying physicist, although I like it, and the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools was satisfied that my credentials in the field qualified me to teach it, at two colleges. My doctorate was in genetics and zoology.) Shevek, the hero of the book (and a male) decided that what he had visited another planet for wasn't what some of the people there wanted him to do, but that he was there to "do physics." (p. 222) I took it that I had visited another college to do physics, too, and, God being my helper, I would and did.

In that same book, and in that same chapter, Le Guin's hero sets to work and does physics, and invents the ansible, a device for instantaneous communication across light-years of distance. (You have to get an ansible to that far location before you can use it to communicate from there, of course.) Le Guin had already used the ansible in some other fiction. A number of other science fiction authors have used the device, even the name, since Le Guin introduced it, including Orson Scott Card.

When Shevek realizes what he has done, he thinks: "And it is strange, exceedingly strange, to know that one's life has been fulfilled." (p. 226)

Shevek did physics in spite of politics and other pressures.

The book is by no means a physics text. Le Guin uses it to examine the meaning and necessity of government, as well as human relationships, and a political movement, anarchy, which attempts to have no government, no hierarchy. There are symbols, such as walls, and two planets, with vastly different physical conditions, and vastly different political structures, all of which make the book interesting on a number of levels. There are literary devices. But, aside from that, it's a good story, well written, about a good man.

* * * * *

On February 7th, 2008, I added links to some Wikipedia articles. I also posted on The Left Hand of Darkness, another of Le Guin's novels.

I've been reading some Ursula K. Le Guin

For not the first time, I've been reading some Ursula K. Le Guin. See here, here, here, here, and, perhaps most importantly, here for some of my previous posts on her work. In the last post mentioned, I refer to Le Guin as "arguably, the most important U. S. fantastic writer of the twentieth century." I'm not the only person with that opinion. She is still writing. She says that she is a Taoist. Her work is well crafted, imaginative, and often deals with fundamental social issues.

One of her most important works was The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) one of the few books to win both the Hugo (voted on by science fiction fans) and Nebula (voted on by science fiction writers) awards. It is a great read, and one of the reasons is the biology Le Guin invented for the Gethenians. They look human, but differ in a most fundamental way -- they are neuter (somer) most of the time, and when they become sexual (kemmer) they may become either sex, and there's no way to predict which one. One of the most memorable phrases in the book is "The King was pregnant." There are few permanent monogamous relationships on Gethen. Most people visit the kemmerhouse when in kemmer, there to meet someone who is the opposite sex in this cycle.

I recently read "Coming of Age in Karhide: Sov Thade Tage em Ereb of Rer in Karhide, on Gethen," pp. 284 - 308, in Year's Best SF (New York:Harper Collins Eos, 2002) edited by David G. Hartwell. (Original copyright 1995, in New Legends.) The story, published over a quarter of a century after Left Hand, explains some aspects of their biology that weren't explained in Left Hand, namely how the Gethenians go through puberty and menopause (?). They can end up as externally either male or female, after their sexual cycles are through. She explains a little of how the kemmerhouse works. There is a doorkeeper, who is someone in permanent kemmer. The family escorts the adolescent to the kemmerhouse for the first experience. Accounts a little of the initial sexual experience.

I also read Le Guin's Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (New York: HarperPerennial, 1997) which I had never heard of, probably because it is, ostensibly, not fantastic literature. The book is an anthology of 18 of Le Guin's short fiction, published originally in a variety of locations, including Harper's and The New Yorker. I used the best quote from the book in yesterday's post. That passage came from "Ether, OR," a story about a small town in Le Guin's home state, Oregon, which changes location unpredictably, within the state. As the title suggests, it's an a story about ambiguity, and not just that of location. It is also told from several points of view, showing how the same events and situations can appear differently to different people. Le Guin is good at changing point of view. She did that brilliantly in Left Hand.

Here's perhaps the second best quotation from the book.

There are other stories. She goes back to the Krasnoy of Malafrena, a fictional city in a fictional country in Eastern Europe, in one of them. In another, she describes a unique twist on the story of Sleeping Beauty. In another, a girl grows to over forty feet tall. All in all, it's vintage Le Guin.

Thanks for reading.

On growing old

Growing old isn't always so great. Even in a society that, unlike ours, honored the aged, the psalmist said this:
Psalm 71:1 In you, O Lord, do I take refuge;
let me never be put to shame!

9 Do not cast me off in the time of old age;
forsake me not when my strength is spent. (ESV)

Apparently he saw that his "time of old age" might be a time of trouble, when he would need God more and more.

As one of Ursula K. Le Guin's fictional characters put it:
But now I have my own question. I never asked questions, I was so busy answering them, but am sixty years old this winter and think I should have time for a question. But it's hard to ask. Here it is. It's like all the time I was working keeping house and raising the kids and making love and earning our keep I thought there was going to come a time or there would be some place where all of it came together. Like it was words I was saying, all my life, all the kinds of work, just a word here and a word there, but finally all the words would make a sentence, and I could read the sentence. I would have made my soul and know what it was for.
But I have made my soul and I don't know what to do with it. Who wants it? I have lived sixty years. All I'll do from now on is the same as what I have done only less of it, while I get weaker and sicker and smaller all the time, shrinking and shrinking around myself, and die. No matter what I did, or made, or know. "Ether, OR," pp. 95-123, in Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (New York: Harper Perennial, 1997). Quote is from p. 108. Originally published in Asimov's, 1995.

To put it more succinctly, but less elegantly, "What has my life been worth?"

James tells us that our lives will be short, and the effect of our life will be temporary:
James 4:13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— 14 yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. 17 So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. (ESV)

No one, no matter what her age, is guaranteed tomorrow. So how shall we live? James tells us, at least partly, in the above passage: Do what is right. That's the best way to live a life worth living, a life that will make a difference, a life that doesn't get smaller and smaller all the time.

* * * * *

(Added after original post) C. S. Lewis wrote, in The Silver Chair, that there are no accidents. My on-line Bible reading for today, June 10, 2006, included the following:

Proverbs 16:31 Gray hair is a crown of glory;
it is gained in a righteous life. (ESV)

Changing Planes, by Ursula K. Le Guin

If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane trip. But what if there's five hours between your arrival and your connecting flight, or your plane is late arriving and you've missed your connection, or the connecting flight is late, or the staff of another airline are striking for a wage-benefit package and the government has not yet ordered out the National Guard to control this threat to international capitalism so your airline staff is trying to handle twice as many people as usual, or there are tornadoes or thunderstorms or blizzards or little important bits of the plane missing or any of the thousand other reasons (never under any circumstances the fault of the airlines, and rarely explained at the time) why those who go places on airplanes sit and sit and sit and sit in airports, not going anywhere?
In this, probably its true aspect, the airport is not a prelude to travel, not a place of transition: it is a stop. A blockage. A constipation. The airport is where you can't go anywhere else. A nonplace in which time does not pass and there is no hope of any meaningful existence. A terminus: the end. The airport offers nothing to any human being except access to the interval between planes. Ursula K. Le Guin, "Sita Dulip's Method," pp. 1-6, in her Changing Planes, New York: Ace, 2005. Quote is from p. 2.

From this memorable paragraph, one of many in this collection of short stories by Le Guin, she sets up her strategy for the book. She supposes that Sita Dulip discovered how to change planes, or change planets, while waiting in an airport. That is, she was somehow, because of the discomfort in the airport, and her desire to be away from it, instantly transported to an alternate world. Others eventually discovered her method, and some could use it in places other than airports. Using this fictional device, Le Guin examines a number of fictional worlds, each with its own peculiarities, each teaching us something about our own world.

She writes about many things. About corporations, and their evils. About hierarchies, and having kings and queens, about ordinary and exceptional things. About whether being conscious of one's self is a good thing or not. About the terrible things that war does. She is always a good writer, and always leaves you with insights you haven't had before, or with old insights put in a new way, such as:
I am no judge of danger. Only the brave can be that. Thrills and chills which to some people are the spice of life take the flavor right out of mine. . . . Cowardice of this degree is, I know, uncommon. Many people would have to hang by their teeth from a frayed cord suspended by a paper clip from a leaking hot air balloon over the Grand Canyon in order to feel what I feel standing on the third step of a stepladder trying to put millet in the bird feeder. And they'd find the terror exhilarating and take up skydiving as soon as their broken pelvis mended. Whereas I descend slowly from the stepladder, clutching at the porch rail, and swear I'll never go above six inches again. Ursula K. Le Guin, "Confusions of Uñi," pp. 223-239. Quote is from p. 225.

For another blogger's brief, but perceptive, take on this book, see here.

Quotations on images and art

1 Corinthians 13:12 For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known. (ASV)

Art, like sex, cannot be carried on indefinitely solo; after all they have the same mutual enemy, sterility. Ursula K. Le Guin, "A Citizen of Mondath," pp. 25-30 in Susan Wood, ed., The Language of the Night (New York: Putnam, 1979), p. 27

I have no photograph of her that's any good. I cannot even see her face distinctly in my imagination. Yet the odd face of some stranger seen in a crowd this morning may come before me in vivid perfection the moment I close my eyes tonight. No doubt, the explanation is simple enough. We have seen the faces of those we know best so variously, from so many angles, in so many lights, with so many expressions--waking, sleeping, laughing, crying, eating, talking, thinking--that all the impressions crowd into our memory together and cancel out into a mere blur. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed. New York: Bantam Books, 1976. pp. 16-17.

The Wave in the Mind by Ursula K. Le Guin

In this book, several short essays by Le Guin are presented, most of them for the first time in formal print.

She covers many topics. One of them is the process of writing. Le Guin, arguably the most important writer of fantastic fiction in North America in the last half of the twentieth century, and continuing into the twenty-first, knows a lot about writing, and has taught it in many writers' workshops. To summarize too briefly, her advice on writing is twofold. First, be true to your story, because story is important. Second, listen to the constructive criticism of others.

Some of the other topics include:
an attack on Edward O. Wilson, author of Sociobiology, principally for being too simplistic in his understanding of such fields as sociology and anthropology. (Le Guin's father was an important anthropologist.)
some of what her early life was like.
a few drawings--she's pretty good.
an attack on Tolstoy for the famous sentence that begins his Anna Karenina, something like (depending on the translation) "All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
rhythm in writing and reading, even of prose.
her appreciation of Peter Jackson's first Tolkien film, and her understanding of why the pace, etc., must be different from books, in film. (Le Guin has been publicly unhappy about a film version of some of her own work, for valid reasons. At least two of her works have been filmed.)
a brief analysis of the work of the late Cordwainer Smith, who happens to be one of my own favorite fantasy authors.

She argues for the importance of fantastic literature:

Fantasy is, after all, the oldest kind of narrative fiction, and the most universal. . . .
Fantasies are often set in ordinary life, but the material of fantasy is a more permanent, universal reality than the social customs realism deals with. The substance of fantasy is psychic stuff, human constants: situations and imageries we recognise without having to learn or know anything at all about New York now, or London in 1850, or China three thousand years ago. Ursula K. Le Guin, "Things not Actually Present: On The Book of Fantasy and J. L. Borges," in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination. Boston: Shambhala, 2004. pp. 38-45. Quote is from pp. 43. Originally appeared as the introduction to The Book of Fantasy, Viking, 1988.

Le Guin quotes Virginia Woolf for the source of her title: "A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it . . . " (Le Guin, p. 280)

* * * *

Note added on November 2nd: I should have included this link to the Project Gutenberg Anna Karenina text.

Ursula K. Le Guin: Language of the Night

Susan Wood did a great service to literature by editing a compilation of miscellaneous writing by Ursula K. Le Guin. Her compilation is The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1979). It includes roughly two dozen speeches, introductions to books, and essays. The book doesn't appear to be in print, but used copies are available from standard sources, at reasonable prices. See here, here and here for some previous posts on Le Guin.

This is not the place to describe the importance of Ms. Le Guin in depth. I'll let this source summarize: "Ursula K. Le Guin has won many Nebula and Hugo Awards, as well as a National Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Newbery Honor and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement."

The lady can write. She is a master of prose, using words, and punctuation, and point of view, and the other tools available, carefully and well, without letting them get in the way of what she is trying to say.

These are some of the highlights of The Language of the Night:
1) She ably defends the legitimacy of good fantastic literature as literature, not trash. (She also skewers trashy fantastic literature effectively)
2) She mentions authors of fantastic fiction who have influenced her. These include Cordwainer Smith, Philip K. Dick, and Tolkien. (Smith and Tolkien I have read. I have, probably to my shame, never really read Dick.)
3) She writes about why we read:

We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel--or have done and thought and felt; or might do and think and feel--is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. A person who had never known another human being could not be introspective any more than a terrier can, or a horse; he might (improbably) keep himself alive, but he could not know anything about himself, no matter how long he lived with himself. And a person who had never listened to nor read a tale or myth or parable or story, would remain ignorant of his own emotional and
spiritual heights and depths, would not know quite fully what it is to be human.

For the story--from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace--is one of the basic tools invented by the mind of man, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, butthere have been no societies that did not tell stories. p. 31. (published first in "Prophets and Mirrors: Science Fiction as a Way of Seeing," in The Living Light, Fall 1970)

4) She writes about how and why she has written as she has.
5) She deals with the problem of evil. (Le Guin is a Taoist, and apparently believes that everyone is a mixture of good and evil. She is certainly sympathetic to Christians, including Tolkien and Cordwainer Smith.)
6) She comments on an important essay by Virginia Woolf, on character in fiction, and concludes that, if fantastic fiction isn't about character, it isn't worth much.
7) She argues that science fiction is not really predictive:

This book is not extrapolative. If you like you can read it, and a lot of other science fiction, as a thought-experiment. . . . In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to the modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end; thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be very large indeed.

The purpose of a thought-experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future--indeed Schrödinger's most famous thought-experiment goes to show that the "future," on the quantum level, cannot be predicted--but to describe reality, the present world.

Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. p. 156. Originally published in the 1976 edition of The Left Hand of Darkness.

(More on Schrödinger. For more on his perhaps the most famous -- and misinterpreted -- thought-experiment ever, see here. I'm not sure Le Guin interpreted it correctly, either!)
8) She describes first seeing the 3 volumes of The Lord of the Rings in a university library, and seeing them again and again, and, finally, checking the first one out, and reading the entire trilogy in three days! She says that she has re-read them many times.
9) She writes about writer's workshops.

This lady has been a writer's (and reader's) writer, and even the introductions to her books are gems.

Frodo, Ged and Hazel: Flowers and Plants

As mentioned in previous posts, The Ring trilogy by Tolkien, the Earthsea books by Le Guin, and Watership Down by Richard Adams are my favorite works of fantastic literature. I pointed out that all three authors present amazing details in their sub-creations. In this post, I discuss some of what they do with flowering plants.

Tolkien wrote this, probably his most flower-strewn passage (but not the only one):

When his eyes were in turn uncovered, Frodo looked up and caught his breath. They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Spring-time in the Elder days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. . . . At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees.

'Behold! You are come to Cerin Amroth,' said Haldir, 'For this is the heart of the ancient realm as it was long ago, and here is the mound of Amroth, where in happier days his high house was built. Here ever bloom the winter flowers in the unfading grass: the yellow elanor, and the pale niphredil. - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1963, pp. 364-5. The remaining eight members of the Fellowship have come to the realm of Galadriel, after the fall of Gandalf in Moria, and are being escorted by Haldir, an elf in her service.

In case anyone needs reminding, grass and most trees are flowering plants.

Adams can be flowery, too. Here's an example:

June was moving toward July and high summer. Hedgerows and verges were at their rankest and thickest. The rabbits sheltered in dim green sun-flecked caves of grass, flowering marjoram and cow parsley; peered round spotted hairy-stemmed clumps of viper's bugloss, blooming red and bllue above their heads; pushed between towering stalks of yellow mullein. Sometimes they scuttled along open turf, colored like a tapestry meadow with self-heal, centaury and tormentil. . . .

Some time before ni-Frith, in the heat of the day, Silver paused in a little patch of thorn. There was no breeze and the air was full of the sweet, chrysanthemum-like smell of the flowering composite of dry uplands--corn chamomile, yarrow and tansy. -Richard Adams, Watership Down. New York: Avon Books, 1972. p. 273.

Le Guin's prose is less flowery, in the usual sense of that word, but she does, indeed, pay attention to plants:

He came to the path that led to the Immanent Grove, a path that led always straight and direct no matter how time and the world bent awry about it, and following it came soon into the shadow of the trees.

The trunks of some of these were vast. Seeing them one could believe at last that the Grove never moved; they were like immemorial towers grey with years; their roots were like the roots of mountains. Yet these, the most ancient, were some of them thin of leaf, with branches that had died. They were not immortal. Among the giants grew sapling trees, tall and vigorous with bright crowns of foliage, and seedlings, slight leafy wands no taller than a girl.

The ground beneath the trees was soft, rich with the rotten leaves of all the years. Ferns and small woodland plants grew in it, but there was no kind of tree but the one, which had no name in the Hardic tongue of Earthsea. Under the branches the air smelled earthy and fresh, and had a taste in the mouth like live spring water.

In a glade which had been made years before by the falling of an enormous tree, Ged met the Master Patterner, who lived within the Grove and seldom or never came forth from it. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore, New York: Bantam Books, 1972, p. 10.

At the edge of the Grove, where the leaves of the great trees reached out over ordinary ground, he sat with his back against a mighty root, his staff across his knees. He shut his eyes as if resting, and sent a sending of his spirit over the hills and fields of Roke, northward, to the sea-assaulted cape where the Isolate Tower stands.

"Kurremkarmerruk," he said in spirit, and the Master Namer looked up from the thick book of names of roots and herbs and leaves and seeds and petals that he was reading to his pupils and said, "I am here, my lord."

Then he listened, a big thin old man, white-haired under his dark hood; and the students at their writing-tables in the tower room looked up at him and glanced at one another.

"I will come," Kurremkarmerruk said, and bent his head to his book again, saying, "Now the petal of the flower of moly hath a name, which is iebera, and so also the sepal, which is partonath; and the stem and leaf and root hath each his name . . ."

But under his tree the Archmage Ged, who knew all the names of moly, withdrew his sending and, stretching out his legs more comfortably and keeping his eyes shut, presently fell asleep in the leaf-spotted sunlight. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore, New York: Bantam Books, 1972, p. 12.

Tolkien and Le Guin not only mention flowering plants, but each makes a specific area, remarkable for its plants, to be in some sense the center of their fantastic sub-creation. The hill of Cerin Amroth is the heart of elvendom. It was there that Aragorn first saw Arwen. It will be there that Arwen lies down alone when Aragorn has passed away. The Immanent Grove is the center of Roke Island, which is, in turn, the center of meaning of Earthsea.

Previous posts in this series were on April 11th and 18th, 2005, and also on May 2nd.

Thanks for reading!

Frodo, Ged and Hazel: sub-creations

Tolkien called good writing of fantastic literature, or "Fairy-stories," sub-creation. He meant that there is a real creation, but that writers also have the power to create within that creation, in their imagination, and that of their readers. Here is a good short introduction to Tolkien's ideas, and to the themes I touch on in this post.

The three works I am considering in this series (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, by Tolkien, The Earthsea trilogy, by Le Guin, and Watership Down, by Adams --see here and here for previous posts) are all works of sub-creation. Why do I say so? All three have a plot, and characters, like most books. They also have a setting. The setting of all three is deep. Tolkien's was the product of decades of imagining, and writing. His son, Christopher, edited several books worth of material, much of it setting for the Rings trilogy. Le Guin's setting includes references to legends, or maybe history, of Earthsea from long before the time of Ged. Adam's setting includes legends of El-ahrairah, the trickster rabbit. All three works include maps, and they are almost required, for a good understanding of the plot.

All three works include an invented language. Tolkien includes parts of several such. The most obvious example is the inscription on the ring. A linguist, he had worked out many details of these languages. Earthsea had a "language of the making," spoken by dragons and wizards. Wizards in training learned the names of all sorts of plants, and their parts, and of many other things, in this language. A few fragments occur in the books. There are also suggestions of at least two languages spoken by humans. Rabbits speak lapine, and there are some fragments. Apparently each animal species has its own language, but there is a common lingua franca, as Adams calls it, so that seagulls and rats have some communication with rabbits.

All three works have a natural history. There are stars, and trees, and flowers, and healing plants, in Tolkien's world. There are rivers. In Earthsea, there are stars and named constellations (see below). There is the otak, a small mammal. There are birds and domestic animals. There are trees. The Immanent Grove is, in a sense, the heart of Earthsea, and it is a place where you can watch a spider spin a web. Adam's world has, especially, plants. Most of the rabbits are named for some plant. Adams frequently describes the rabbits' surroundings, with special attention paid to the plants and the birds.

All three sub-creations have some sort of spirit world, parallel to the world the characters usually inhabit. In Tolkien, the ringwraiths inhabit this spirit world. So does Gandalf. So does Glorfindel. So does Sauron. Frodo himself, and Sam, enter that world when they put on the Ring. In Earthsea, there is a world of the dead, but the wizards, including Ged, can go there, while still alive, and return.

He lay dying. But the death of a great mage, who has many times in his life walked on the dry steep hillsides of death's kingdom, is a strange matter: for the dying man goes not blindly, but surely, knowing the way. When Nemmerle looked up through the leaves of the tree, those with him did not know if he watched the stars of summer fading in daybreak, or those other stars, which never set above the hills that see no dawn. (A Wizard of Earthsea, New York: Ace, 1968, p. 78)

Ged, himself, goes to the world of the dead, early in his life as a wizard:

Summoning his power all at once and with no thought for himself, he sent his spirit out after the child's spirit, to bring it back home. . . . Then he saw the little boy running fast and far ahead of him down a dark slope, the side of some vast hill. There was no sound. The stars above the hill were no stars his eyes had ever seen. Yet he know the constellations by name: the Sheaf, the Door, the One Who Turns, the Tree. They were those stars that do not set, that are not paled by the coming of any day. He had followed the dying child too far. (A Wizard of Earthsea, New York: Ace, 1968, p. 96)

In the final book, Ged has to enter the world of the dead, with a young companion, to heal a breach in the fabric of the world. They succeed, and come back to the world of the living, where their bodies have remained.

In Watership Down, Fiver enters an alternate world, and returns with guidance for Hazel, his brother, and their companions:

"Hrairoo," said Hazel one evening, "what would we have done without you? We'd none of us be here, would we?"
"You're sure we are here?" answered Fiver.
"That's too mysterious for me," replied Hazel. "What do you mean?"
"Well, there's another place--another country, isn't there? We go there when we sleep; at other times, too; and when we die. El-ahrairah comes and goes between the two as he wants, I suppose, but I could never quite make that out, from the tales. Some rabbits will tell you it's all easy there, compared with the waking dangers that they understand. But I think that only shows they don't know much about it. It's a wild place, and very unsafe. And where are we really--there or here?"
"Our bodies stay here--that's good enough for me. . . "
-Richard Adams, Watership Down. New York: Avon Books, 1972. pp. 258-9

As C. S. Lewis once said, there is good death in the Ring books. Boromir dies, trying to protect Merry and Pippin, and having repented of his lust for the Ring. Théoden dies, having restored the honor of his house by destroying the Lord of the Nazgûl. Gandalf dies, so that the Fellowship can escape Moria (He returns again). In Earthsea, death is not exactly good, but it is a necessary part of life. The plot of the third book revolves around rejection of death, which, in Earthsea, leads to a life of less than wholeness. In Watership Down, Hazel dies a good death, after leading his followers to safety, and living a long life.

The rich settings of these works by Tolkien, Le Guin and Adams add much to the appeal of the stories. They are not just a narrative. They are narratives set in complex and wonderful sub-creations.

This is the fourth, and last, post in the series. The first post is here, and the second is here.

Thanks for reading.

Frodo, Ged and Hazel: Movies & Gender

This is the second installment of a series on three works of fantastic literature. The first is here.

I was going to say something like "The fact that all three of these stories were made into movies proves their greatness," but, on reflection, it doesn't. Some pretty dumb stuff gets made into movies, and, unfortunately, some pretty good stuff gets made into dumb movies.

I don't think I have anything intelligent to add to all that has been said about the Lord of the Rings movies, directed by Peter Jackson.

The Earthsea trilogy was made into a miniseries for the SciFi TV Channel, which aired a few months ago. Ursula K. Le Guin, the author, complained about the treatment of race in this production, and about the production in general. I posted some gripes myself, after watching the series.

There have been cartoon treatments of of Watership Down. One was a movie feature. There was also a TV series. I saw the feature. It was about as well made as you would expect a cartoon about lots of rabbits would have been made. Not great, but OK. A web site, here, is supposed to have information on the movie, but there is something wrong with the URL currently. Since the page is dated April 18th, 2005, I'm guessing it will be repaired shortly.

I haven't read The Seven Basic Plots, by Christopher Booker, but a review explicitly puts The Lord of the Rings and Watership Down into one of the seven plots, namely The Quest.

All three of these characters are male. Hazel, at least, was almost required to be male, as Adams is attempting to portray animal behavior realistically (aside from the intelligence, and ability to communicate). In many species of mammals, females generally remain with the parental territory, but males emigrate. The same is not true of Frodo and Ged. With Tolkien, no doubt he was following most medieval literature--the heroes were male, and Tolkien was an expert in medieval literature, and, in a sense, was trying to create his own. Le Guin's choice of a gender for wizards, including Ged, was not so constrained, as she was writing fantasy not about animals with known behavior patterns, or in a genre already in existence, unless fantasy about other worlds is such. Le Guin certainly was no stranger to exploring gender. Perhaps her most influential work, besides the Earthsea books, is the Left Hand of Darkness. In that book, the humanoids on Gethen can take on either sex, more or less at random, each reproductive cycle, which, of course, has profound consequences, and makes for some interesting sentences, such as "The King was pregnant." In writings set in Earthsea, written after the trilogy, she does introduce a female wizard.

There are strong female characters in all three stories, especially Arha/Tenar in the second Earthsea book, where she is the main character, with Ged secondary to her.

The third installment in this series is here, and the final one is here.

Thanks for reading.