欧宝娱乐

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“The imagination is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“For fantasy is true, of course. It isn鈥檛 factual, but it鈥檚 true. Children know that. Adults know it too and that鈥檚 precisely why many of them are afraid of fantasy. They know that its truth challenges, even threatens, all that is false, all that is phony, unnecessary, and trivial in the life they have let themselves be forced into living. They are afraid of dragons because they are afraid of freedom.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

“Finally, some people tell me that they avoid science fiction because it鈥檚 depressing. This is quite understandable if they happened to hit a streak of post-holocaust cautionary tales or a bunch of trendies trying to outwhine each other, or overdosed on sleaze-metal-punk-virtual-noir Capitalist Realism. But the accusation often, I think, reflects some timidity or gloom in the reader鈥檚 own mind: a distrust of change, a distrust of the imagination. A lot of people really do get scared and depressed if they have to think about anything they鈥檙e not perfectly familiar with; they鈥檙e afraid of losing control. If it isn鈥檛 about things they know all about already they won鈥檛 read it, if it鈥檚 a different color they hate it, if it isn鈥檛 McDonald鈥檚 they won鈥檛 eat at it.
They don鈥檛 want to know that the world existed before they were, is bigger than they are, and will go on without them. They do not like history. They do not like science fiction. May they eat at McDonald鈥檚 and be happy in Heaven."

Pro: "But what I like in and about science fiction includes these particular virtues: vitality, largeness, and exactness of imagination; playfulness, variety, and strength of metaphor; freedom from conventional literary expectations and mannerism; moral seriousness; wit; pizzazz; and beauty.

Let me ride a moment on that last word. The beauty of a story may be intellectual, like the beauty of a mathematical proof or a crystalline structure; it may be aesthetic, the beauty of a well-made work; it may be human, emotional, moral; it is likely to be all three. Yet science fiction critics and reviewers still often treat the story as if it were a mere exposition of ideas, as if the intellectual 鈥渕essage鈥� were all. This reductionism does a serious disservice to the sophisticated and powerful techniques and experiments of much contemporary science fiction. The writers are using language as postmodernists; the critics are decades behind, not even discussing the language, deaf to the implications of sounds, rhythms, recurrences, patterns鈥攁s if text were a mere vehicle for ideas, a kind of gelatin coating for the medicine. This is naive. And it totally misses what I love best in the best science fiction, its beauty."

"I am certainly not going to talk about the beauty of my own stories. How about if I leave that to the critics and reviewers, and I talk about the ideas? Not the messages, though. There are no messages in these stories. They are not fortune cookies. They are stories.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

“Of course I didn't read James and sit down and say, Now I'll write a story about that 鈥渓ost soul.鈥� It seldom works that simply.

I sat down and started a story, just because I felt like it, with nothing but the word 鈥淥melas鈥� in mind. It came from a road sign: Salem (Oregon) backwards. Don't you read road signs backwards? POTS. WOLS nerdlihc. Ocsicnarf Nas... Salem equals schelomo equals salaam equals Peace. Melas. O melas. Omelas. Homme helas.

鈥淲here do you get your ideas from, Ms Le Guin?鈥� From forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards, naturally. Where else?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wind's Twelve Quarters

“People who don鈥檛 read science fiction, but who have at least given it a fair shot, often say they鈥檝e found it inhuman, elitist, and escapist. Since its characters, they say, are both conventionalized and extraordinary, all geniuses, space heroes, superhackers, androgynous aliens, it evades what ordinary people really have to deal with in life, and so fails an essential function of fiction. However remote Jane Austen鈥檚 England is, the people in it are immediately relevant and revelatory鈥攔eading about them we learn about ourselves. Has science fiction anything to offer but escape from ourselves?

The cardboard-character syndrome was largely true of early science fiction, but for decades writers have been using the form to explore character and human relationships. I鈥檓 one of them. An imagined setting may be the most appropriate in which to work out certain traits and destinies. But it鈥檚 also true that a great deal of contemporary fiction isn鈥檛 a fiction of character. This end of the century isn鈥檛 an age of individuality as the Elizabethan and the Victorian ages were. Our stories, realistic or otherwise, with their unreliable narrators, dissolving points of view, multiple perceptions and perspectives, often don鈥檛 have depth of character as their central value. Science fiction, with its tremendous freedom of metaphor, has sent many writers far ahead in this exploration beyond the confines of individuality鈥擲herpas on the slopes of the postmodern.
As for elitism, the problem may be scientism: technological edge mistaken for moral superiority. The imperialism of high technocracy equals the old racist imperialism in its arrogance; to the technophile, people who aren鈥檛 in the know/in the net, who don鈥檛 have the right artifacts, don鈥檛 count. They鈥檙e proles, masses, faceless nonentities. Whether it鈥檚 fiction or history, the story isn鈥檛 about them. The story鈥檚 about the kids with the really neat, really expensive toys. So 鈥減eople鈥� comes to be operationally defined as those who have access to an extremely elaborate fast-growth industrial technology. And 鈥渢echnology鈥� itself is restricted to that type. I have heard a man say perfectly seriously that the Native Americans before the Conquest had no technology. As we know, kiln-fired pottery is a naturally occurring substance, baskets ripen in the summer, and Machu Picchu just grew there.

Limiting humanity to the producer-consumers of a complex industrial growth technology is a really weird idea, on a par with defining humanity as Greeks, or Chinese, or the upper-middle-class British. It leaves out a little too much.

All fiction, however, has to leave out most people. A fiction interested in complex technology may legitimately leave out the (shall we say) differently technologized, as a fiction about suburban adulteries may ignore the city poor, and a fiction centered on the male psyche may omit women. Such omission may, however, be read as a statement that advantage is superiority, or that the white middle class is the whole society, or that only men are worth writing about. Moral and political statements by omission are legitimated by the consciousness of making them, insofar as the writer鈥檚 culture permits that consciousness. It comes down to a matter of taking responsibility. A denial of authorial responsibility, a willed unconsciousness, is elitist, and it does impoverish much of our fiction in every genre, including realism.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

“Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust, he thought, pacing his room as the soundless, vague lightning flashed overhead. In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes. But they are of the same essence: they are the mind's indispensable relationship with other minds, with the world, and with time. Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, City of Illusions

“People who don鈥檛 read it, and even some of those who write it, like to assume or pretend that the ideas used in science fiction all rise from intimate familiarity with celestial mechanics and quantum theory, and are comprehensible only to readers who work for NASA and know how to program their VCR. This fantasy, while making the writers feel superior, gives the non-readers an excuse. I just don鈥檛 understand it, they whimper, taking refuge in the deep, comfortable, anaerobic caves of technophobia. It is of no use to tell them that very few science fiction writers understand 鈥渋t鈥� either. We, too, generally find we have twenty minutes of I Love Lucy and half a wrestling match on our videocassettes when we meant to record Masterpiece Theater.

Most of the scientific ideas in science fiction are totally accessible and indeed familiar to anybody who got through sixth grade, and in any case you aren鈥檛 going to be tested on them at the end of the book. The stuff isn鈥檛 disguised engineering lectures, after all. It isn鈥檛 that invention of a mathematical Satan, 鈥渟tory problems.鈥� It鈥檚 stories. It鈥檚 fiction that plays with certain subjects for their inherent interest, beauty, relevance to the human condition. Even in its ungainly and inaccurate name, the 鈥渟cience鈥� modifies, is in the service of, the 鈥渇iction.鈥�

For example, the main 鈥渋dea鈥� in my book The Left Hand of Darkness isn鈥檛 scientific and has nothing to do with technology. It鈥檚 a bit of physiological imagination鈥攁 body change. For the people of the invented world Gethen, individual gender doesn鈥檛 exist. They鈥檙e sexually neuter most of the time, coming into heat once a month, sometimes as a male, sometimes as a female. A Getheian can both sire and bear children. Now, whether this invention strikes one as peculiar, or perverse, or fascinating, it certainly doesn鈥檛 require a great scientific intellect to grasp it, or to follow its implications as they鈥檙e played out in the novel.

Another element in the same book is the climate of the planet, which is deep in an ice age. A simple idea: It鈥檚 cold; it鈥檚 very cold; it鈥檚 always cold. Ramifications, complexities, and resonance come with the detail of imagining.
The Left Hand of Darkness differs from a realistic novel only in asking the reader to accept, pro tem, certain limited and specific changes in narrative reality. Instead of being on Earth during an interglacial period among two-sexed people, (as in, say, Pride and Prejudice, or any realistic novel you like), we鈥檙e on Gethen during a period of glaciation among androgynes. It鈥檚 useful to remember that both worlds are imaginary.

Science-fictional changes of parameter, though they may be both playful and decorative, are essential to the book鈥檚 nature and structure; whether they are pursued and explored chiefly for their own interest, or serve predominantly as metaphor or symbol, they鈥檙e worked out and embodied novelistically in terms of the society and the characters鈥� psychology, in description, action, emotion, implication, and imagery. The description in science fiction is likely to be somewhat 鈥渢hicker,鈥� to use Clifford Geertz鈥檚 term, than in realistic fiction, which calls on an assumed common experience. The description in science fiction is likely to be somewhat 鈥渢hicker,鈥� to use Clifford Geertz鈥檚 term, than in realistic fiction, which calls on an assumed common experience. All fiction offers us a world we can鈥檛 otherwise reach, whether because it鈥檚 in the past, or in far or imaginary places, or describes experiences we haven鈥檛 had, or leads us into minds different from our own. To some people this change of worlds, this unfamiliarity, is an insurmountable barrier; to others, an adventure and a pleasure.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

“I don鈥檛 accept the judgment that in using images and metaphors of other worlds, space travel, the future, imagined technologies, societies, or beings, science fiction escapes from having human relevance to our lives. Those images and metaphors used by a serious writer are images and metaphors of our lives, legitimately novelistic, symbolic ways of saying what cannot otherwise be said about us, our being and choices, here and now. What science fiction does is enlarge the here and now.

What do you find interesting? To some people only other people are interesting. Some people really don鈥檛 care about trees or fish or stars or how engines work or why the sky is blue; they鈥檙e exclusively human-centered, often with the encouragement of their religion; and they aren鈥檛 going to like either science or science fiction. Like all the sciences except anthropology, psychology, and medicine, science fiction is not exclusively human-centered. It includes other beings, other aspects of being. It may be about relationships between people鈥攖he great subject of realist fiction鈥攂ut it may be about the relationship between a person and something else, another kind of being, an idea, a machine, an experience, a society.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea