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Mailing Date:
28 August 2001

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THE NEWSPAPER OF THE SCIENCE FICTION FIELD


Ursula K. Le Guin: A Return to Earthsea September 2001

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the most respected and acclaimed authors of SF and fantasy, with 5 Hugos, 5 Nebulas, a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and many other awards to her credit. She was one of the earliest SF authors to gain literary recognition outside the genre, and to be embraced by the academic community.

Many of her books lie in two ongoing series. The science fiction "Hainish" series, set in a future universe spanning 2500 years, includes classic novels The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974), short works such as "The Word for World Is Forest" (1972), and last year's Locus Award-winning novel The Telling. (In this series she coined the word "ansible" for a faster-than-light communication device, a word that has become part of the SFnal lexicon.)

Her fantasy "Earthsea" series began with a trilogy, The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore (1968-1972), followed 18 years later by Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990), and then (despite that volume's subtitle) two more books this year: Tales of Earthsea and The Other Wind (forthcoming Sept. 2001).

Other works include the Philip K. Dickian novel The Lathe of Heaven (1971); multimedia novel Always Coming Home (1985) with music and poetry; and numerous collections of stories, poems, and essays. She lives in Portland, Oregon.


Photo by Beth Gwinn

Fan/Tribute sites:
Ursula K. Le Guin
Unofficial Page
Le Guin's World

Other:
Salon interview
Encyclopedia of SF entry

Search Amazon.com
for books by Ursula K. Le Guin



Excerpts from the interview:

‘‘I thought Tehanu was the last book of ‘Earthsea.’ My two protagonists were well along in their 50s or so, and had already got married. Things seemed to have been wound up. But there were obvious big holes, like: who is the child, Tehanu? (Or what is she?) I thought they were questions I couldn’t answer, that were best left to the reader’s imagination. I thought this must be the end. Was I wrong? Yes. Tehanu is obviously more than just an abused child, because the dragon treats her as daughter and she can speak dragon, the old language. And then I got interested in why Earthsea is the way it is. Why aren’t there any women in the school? Why has wizardry been gendered the way it is? There’s an interplay which I’m getting more aware of as I get older: the writer as reader. You’ve got to be able to do that. So I started ‘researching’ the history. I went into the archives—which are all in my head, of course! ’’

*

‘‘My books are character-driven. I don’t have plots; I have situations, I have stories. I’m a good storyteller. But plot! When I read a mystery, I can’t even follow the plot. I say, ‘Just tell me what happened and who did it! I don’t understand all these intricate convolutions.’ A real plot writer, like Dickens, I’m awed by. How did he do it? How did he remember? With The Other Wind, I had characters I needed to follow, and I let them lead me. In most science fiction, there’s a more rational process going on—in fact, it’s one of the most intellectual kinds of writing there is, and that’s part of the beauty of it. But it still doesn’t have to be very heavily plotted, as long as you understand what your subject is and can tell a story about it. Story is so strong, we all just instinctively follow. That’s what story is for: to try to explain the labyrinth we’re in, to guide us through somehow.’’

*

‘‘Commercial fantasy? It fills a place that romance doesn’t, because romance is so fixated on sexuality. The romances I like are the nursy-novels, which tell you a good deal about life for a nurse in a big hospital. But a lot of romances are just emotional orgies. Commercial fantasy supplies the same reassurance as romance does, and a lot of the same familiar themes, but at least there is some imagination, at least it’s a slightly different world.’’

*

‘‘I’ve never been very good at analyzing my own processes as a writer. I think I have considerable resistance to just that. So long as I can just do it... It’s like a refrigerator. I really don’t know how the freezer works, but so long as it does, I’m not asking. I’m a little reluctant to dig too hard into my own processes; I just enjoy using them. The capacity to write is what I enjoy most, and always have. I do not understand writers who say. ‘Oh, it’s a pain, a pain, and a strain, and I hate doing it, and I’ll do anything to avoid it!’ Well, of course it’s hard work. I would say writing, composing, is the hardest work I’ve ever done except for maybe having a baby. Composition uses all of you. It doesn’t get harder, it doesn’t get easier—it’s just very hard work. When I’m doing it, I’m in a kind of trance state where I really couldn’t tell you who Ursula is, because I’m just doing the story. But all the same, it’s what I most want to do. Everybody has lazy times when they don’t want to do hard work. It isn’t ‘fun.’ The fun part of writing for me is when the composition is done and I’ve revised it and I’ve got it pretty near right. Then you can start twiddling and polishing—get every single little word just right, all that little end work. That’s like a crossword. It eats you up, and you can do it forever! In fact, I’ve learned to stop fiddling and twiddling. The book is never finished till the writer stops writing it. I’ve read overpolished fiction, and it’s kind of a bore. Fiction needs a certain roughness.’’

The full interview, and bibliographic profile, is published in the September 2001 issue of Locus Magazine.



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