Ursula K. Le Guin has died

The New York Times, National Public Radio, and other news outlets are reporting the death of Ursula K. Le Guin, an author, mostly of fantastic literature, at the age of 88. She passed away on January 22, 2018, in Portland, Oregon, her long-time home.

Le Guin wrote carefully and well, and with a deep understanding of the human condition. Her parents were anthropologists, and the background of some of her novels reflected that -- different societies and races were portrayed in credible ways. The most different society is that of Gethen, where the inhabitants are mostly non-sexual, externally or in thought, for most of the time, but enter a sexual phase, where they can be either male or female, every few weeks. Gethen is also remarkable because it is so cold most of the time. The people have adapted to this in various ways. See here and here for my posts on the novel about Gethen, The Left Hand of Darkness. The Tombs of Atuan presented a religion, and its practices and those who led in worship, in a credible way. That book is part of a trilogy, with A Wizard of Earthsea and The Farthest Shore as the first and third books. The books have one character, Ged, who matures and changes roles as the stories progress. The trilogy, about the wizards, and the planet with so many islands, and with dragons, was extended later.

Le Guin's The Dispossessed was about two different societies, and their political and economic systems, seemingly very different. See here for my post on that novel.

The books cited above won numerous awards, which were well-deserved. Le Guin was also outspoken about fantastic literature, arguing that it really is literature, and that it is, or at least can be, important.

Le Guin was, as far as I know, a Taoist.

I shall miss expecting new works from her. May she rest in peace, really.

Thanks for reading. Read Le Guin.

Sunspots 445

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:


Literature: “But what the best fantasy does, in my opinion, is to transform it into something truer, and more real, than it was to begin with.” Ashlee Willis, Speculative Faith blog.

Politics: A Pennsylvania newspaper, which called Lincoln's Gettysburg Address "silly," 150 years ago, took it all back.

National Public Radio, optimistic as ever, reports that some states are trying to end extreme partisanship (both sides of it) by changing the way primaries are conducted, or changing the way congressional districts are drawn. I hope so.

Science: NBC News, and other news outlets, tell us about the oldest living animal -- now dead, and killed by scientists -- a clam.

Wired reports on yet another theory of what causes consciousness.

NPR reports on gut bacteria again. This time, it's about how they may influence how we think. Possibly some mental illnesses could be treated by infusing bacteria from a "normal" person into the gut of the sufferers. Amazing, but very preliminary.

Sports: Sports Illustrated says that Michael Jordan, perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, has selected his most memorable dunk.



Image source (public domain)

Will fiction last forever? A series by E. Stephen Burnett

I have subscribed to the "Speculative Faith" blog for several years. One of the reasons is the writing of frequent contributor E. Stephen Burnett (I don't know anything about him, except what I read in the blog.)

He has recently finished a series on the question of whether fiction will last forever. In other words, will there be made-up stories in heaven. You've probably never thought about that, but you probably should.

Here's a brief sample: "But could some genius author create a new genre that doesn’t require traditional villains or opposing causes, which is still just as entertaining and honoring to the God who had long since defeated all real-life villains?"

Thanks for reading. Read Burnett. Please.

E. Stephen Burnett on "safe" stories, and on story pointing us to God.

E. Stephen Burnett is always good reading. In this post at Speculative Faith, he says a couple of things that I would like to say myself, but he says better.

They are these:

Christians shouldn't confine themselves to reading, or watching, only "safe" stories. (This is not to say that we shouldn't be discriminating -- he's not advocating, for example, watching a movie which glorifies senseless violence against women.)

And the second main point is that reading, watching, or listening to good stories, or good art of all kinds, can give us an experience that brings us closer to God. See here for visual representation of Philippians 4:8, which bears on that point.

I've made Burnett's main points, but he makes them better, with discussion and illustration, and he has another point to make, too.

Thanks for reading!

Lloyd Alexander interviewed

Q: Why do you write fantasy?
A: Because, paradoxically, fantasy is a good way to show the world as it is. Fantasy can show us the truth about human relationships and moral dilemmas because it works on our emotions on a deeper, symbolic level than realistic fiction. - Lloyd Alexander, author of the Prydain books, and many other works of fantastic fiction, mainly for young people, being interviewed by Leonard S. Marcus, in Marcus's The Wand in the Wind: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy. (Cambridge, MA: Candlewick Press, 2006) Interview is on pages 5-17. Quote is from page 13. Alexander died in 2007. He won the Newbery award, and the National Book Award.

I also learned, from this interview, that Alexander, born in Philadelphia, saw Wales during duty in World War II, and that this influenced his work on the Prydain books. Additionally, he told Marcus that he deliberately tried to write something different from these five books, rather than something like them.

Thanks for reading. Read Alexander.

P. S. Happy Birthday, Lewis Carroll!

G. K. Chesterton on the importance of fantasy for children

From G. K. Chesterton, "The Red Angel," essay XVII in Tremendous Trifles (Public domain, 1909. My source is Project Gutenberg. The book may be found here.):

I find that there really are human beings who think fairy tales bad for children. . . .

If you keep bogies and goblins away from children they would make them up for themselves. . . . One small child can imagine monsters too big and black to get into any picture, and give them names too unearthly and cacophonous to have occurred in the cries of any lunatic. The child, to begin with, commonly likes horrors, and he continues to indulge in them even when he does not like them.

. . . The timidity of the child or the savage is entirely reasonable; they are alarmed at this world, because this world is a very alarming place. They dislike being alone because it is verily and indeed an awful idea to be alone. Barbarians fear the unknown for the same reason that Agnostics worship it -- because it is a fact. Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.

Thanks for reading. Read Chesterton.

Fantastic literature as a preferred medium for presenting Christian truth?

In a previous post, I considered aspects of Christianity in fantastic literature. I said that I did not think that fantastic literature was any more suitable than any other kind of literature for presenting fiction with a Christian world-view. However, in this post, I muse on the possibility that some Christian truths may be better presented in fantastic literature than in any other kind of fiction, and ask you, the reader, to respond, with other examples.

I believe that fantastic literature is an excellent place to portray an unfallen planet, inhabited by one or more unfallen rational, sentient species. C. S. Lewis did this superbly, in my opinion, in his Out of the Silent Planet (Malacandra had three such species). James Blish also considered this, from a different standpoint, in his A Case of Conscience.

Lilith, by George MacDonald, considers submission in ways that I am not sure would be possible in more realistic fiction.

Susan Palwick considers the matter of seeing Christ in other people in her The Necessary Beggar. The fantastic nature of the story makes this possible in a unique way -- the ghost of an alien speaks to a fundamentalist preacher and his faith is renewed.

I have discussed the question of vengeance in the works of Jack Vance, not because Vance writes from a Christian world-view -- he doesn't -- but because Vance uses fantasy to portray vengeance in many different ways.

Are there Christian truths that would lend themselves especially to portrayal in fantastic fiction? Are there authors who have used fantastic fiction especially well to consider some Christian truth? Let me know what you think, please.

Thanks for reading.

The limits of human imagination

In my last post from George MacDonald's Diary of an Old Soul, this passage was included:

3. And in the perfect time, O perfect God,
When we are in our home, our natal home,
When joy shall carry every sacred load,
And from its life and peace no heart shall roam,
What if thou make us able to make like thee--
To light with moons, to clothe with greenery,
To hang gold sunsets o'er a rose and purple sea!

What if, indeed, we are able to create like God? Is that possible? Wow. Not in this life, I'd say, or not very much.

One of the places where you might expect to find signs of God-like creativity is in fantastic literature. (There are other places, of course) But I can't think of many examples of real creativity there. C. S. Lewis did produce seroni, hrossa, and pfiffltriggi on Malacandra. But he probably didn't do a much better job than anyone else has in creating a really original, yet credible, sentient species. The hrossa were sort of seals with human intelligence, which isn't a huge extrapolation, or a tremendous feat of creativity. (Other authors have been even less creative, of course!) A few authors have actually thought about sunsets. Jack Vance used the different colors that might be found on other planets, with more than one sun, in one of his novels. In Lilith, MacDonald wrote: "When I came to myself, the creature was hovering over my head, radiating the whole chord of light, with multitudinous gradations and some kinds of colour I had never before seen." (1895, public domain, chapter x) Probably other authors have imagined other colors, too.

There are other examples, some very old, like Baba Yaga's hut on chicken legs, or fire-breathing flying reptiles with great intelligence (aka dragons) and some very new, like the title of The Speed of Dark. All of them, I think, are better than any that I have thought of. My imagination is so limited. But so is that of the best of us, compared to God.

What's the best example of human creativity in fantastic literature?

From Pilgrim's Progress: Using fiction to impart truth

{5} 'Well, yet I am not fully satisfied, That this your book will stand, when soundly tried.' Why, what's the matter? 'It is dark.' What though? 'But it is feigned.' What of that? I trow? Some men, by feigned words, as dark as mine, Make truth to spangle and its rays to shine.

'But they want solidness.' Speak, man, thy mind. 'They drown the weak; metaphors make us blind.'

Solidity, indeed, becomes the pen Of him that writeth things divine to men; But must I needs want solidness, because By metaphors I speak? Were not God's laws, His gospel laws, in olden times held forth By types, shadows, and metaphors? Yet loth Will any sober man be to find fault With them, lest he be found for to assault The highest wisdom. No, he rather stoops, And seeks to find out what by pins and loops, By calves and sheep, by heifers and by rams, By birds and herbs, and by the blood of lambs, God speaketh to him; and happy is he That finds the light and grace that in them be. John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress (1678, public domain. One version gives paragraph numbers.) Here Bunyan is answering possible objections to the way he has written, in "The Author's Apology for His Book." As the Wikipedia article on Bunyan says, the book is "arguably the most famous published Christian allegory."

Thanks for reading.

I'm thankful for fantastic literature

I'm thankful for fantastic literature. I enjoy it. It speaks to me. It speaks to other people, too:

Best of all, fantasy novels are almost always about great heroes, which I see as illustrative of our Lord, the greatest hero of all. Courage, confidence, humility, self-sacrifice, virtue, perseverance, love—the qualities of a hero reflect our Lord’s character. They are also the qualities to which we ourselves should all aspire since we have been designed by God to be heroes just like Him in the unseen battle in which we fight. Especially significant to me is the fact that being a hero always exacts a price. Karen Hancock, "Why I Read Fantasy," Speculative Faith Blog, November 1, 2006.

As is my custom, I searched the Bible for an answer and found that Jesus taught using stories—but not just any old stories. Some clearly contained elements of fantasy. I read about a camel passing through the eye of a needle, an impossible event without God's miraculous intervention. Much of the story of the rich man and Lazarus couldn't possibly happen in the world Jesus' hearers knew, for they had never seen the afterlife dimension that Jesus described. These stories fall squarely into the realm of fantasy—stories that can't happen in our world without some kind of supernatural cause, in these cases, God's power.

And Jesus made fantasy stories come true. He made a coin appear in the mouth of a fish. A fig tree withered at His command. He calmed a storm with a spoken word. He walked on water. Without His power, none of these events could ever occur. They are fantasy stories brought to life. And each one taught us a lesson we will never forget. Why? Because fantasy brands images on our minds that cannot be erased. As we recall the images, we remember the lessons behind the amazing pictures. Fantasy creates indelible portraits of God's wondrous truths.

Jesus knew how our minds work, so he taught using fantasy elements in His stories. With such a powerful, authoritative fantasy trail-blazer leading the way, it seemed clear that I should simply follow. Bryan Davis, "Why Fantasy, Part 1" Speculative Faith Blog, Aug 23, 2006

Fantastic literature caught my imagination early. I fell down the rabbit hole with Alice. I wandered Barsoom, which we call Mars, with John Carter. I found authors who have stuck with me, and I with them. I discovered The Fellowship of the Ring in the stacks of the library of what is now the University of Wisconsin, Superior, while I was a student, working in that library. The Narnia books, by C. S. Lewis, discovered me, while I was a graduate student, wandering around the library of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, looking for something to read. (One of those books told me that there aren't any accidents.)

I was entertained, certainly. I escaped, for sure. But I have also learned about heroism, and endurance, and battling evil, and the perils of tinkering with what you shouldn't. I learned that there is another reality, more real than what appears to our eyes. I learned something of the power of the imagination. I learned, from some of my favorite authors, about human limits, too. Even Tolkien and Lewis seemed to leave some gaps in their imagined worlds. Only One author can create a consistent universe that really works.

I am thankful for fantastic literature, and for being made in the image of a God who imagines all possible things, so that I, too, can use my imagination, and profit from the imaginations of others.

Here is the last post of four, about my three favorite works of fantastic literature.

I am thankful for Rebecca, who suggested that November be a month of blogger gratitude emphasis. I previously posted musings about my gratitude for Carbon atoms, and for the electromagnetic spectrum, and for cell division, and, subsequently, about carbohydrates.

Thanks for reading.

Thoughts On Fairy Tales (by others)

A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips at every wholesome flower, and spoils not one. The true fairytale is, to my mind, very like the sonata. We all know that a sonata means something; and where there is the faculty of talking with suitable vagueness, and choosing metaphor sufficiently loose, mind may approach mind, in the interpretation of a sonata, with the result of a more or less contenting consciousness of sympathy. But if two or three men sat down to write each what the sonata meant to him, what approximation to definite idea would be the result? Little enough--and that little more than needful. We should find it had roused related, if not identical, feelings, but probably not one common thought. Has the sonata therefore failed? Had it undertaken to convey, or ought it to be expected to impart anything defined, anything notionally recognizable? George MacDonald, "The Fantastic Imagination," in his A Dish of Orts, 1893

The definition of a fairy-story -- what it is, or what it should be -- does not, then, depend on any definition or historical account of elf or fairy, but upon the nature of Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country. I will not attempt to define that, nor to describe it directly. It cannot be done. Faërie cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible. It has many ingredients, but analysis will not necessarily discover the secret of the whole. J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-stories," in Tree and Leaf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965, pp. 3 - 73. Quote is from p. 10.

C. S. Lewis made a literary distinction between fantasy as magical happenings and fantasy as wish fulfillment. ''Lay the fairy tale side by side with the school story. . . . We long to go through the looking glass, to reach fairyland. We also long to be the immensely popular and successful schoolboy or schoolgirl.'' Lewis concludes that stories that satisfy the desire for magic are healthy for the imagination and the spirit, while stories that pander to the desire to be Head Boy or sports star are dangerous ''flattery to the ego'' and leave readers ''undivinely discontented.'' Gregory Maguire, review of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J. K. Rowling. New York Times, September 5, 1999. The quote of Lewis is from his "On Three Ways of Writing For Children."