The Wild Girls (9 page)

Who needs lions?

Many authors (including myself) have imitated your shape-shifting dream-altered world in
The Lathe of Heaven
. Was this idea original to you or did you swipe it from someone else?

A lot of stuff in
Lathe
is (obviously) influenced by and homage to Phil Dick. But the idea of dreams that alter reality seems to me a worldwide commonplace of magical thinking. Am I wrong? Did I make it up? Doctor, am I all right?

What’s an ansible? Is it like a Kindle? Where can I get one?

Anarres.

You didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the TV series based on your
Earthsea
novels. Why not?

It wasn’t a series, and it wasn’t Earthsea, and can I go have a drink now?

You once described the downtime between novels as like waiting patiently at the edge of the woods for a deer to walk by. Are you a bow hunter?

Of the mind.

“Travel is bad for fiction but good for poetry.” Huh?

Just reporting my own experience as a writer.

I share your modest enthusiasm for Austen’s
Mansfield Park
. I didn’t like the movie, though. Do you like any of the recent Jane movies?

Oh, as movies, sure. Not as Austen. There is no way I can dislike Alan whatshisname with the voice like a cello.

What’s your house like? Does your writing room have a view?

Nice, comfortable.

My study looks straight out at a volcano which blew off its top two thousand feet thirty years ago. I got to watch.

Perhaps your most famous and influential novel is
The Left Hand of Darkness
. What’s it about?

People tell me what my books are about.

One problem writers have with utopias is that nothing bad can happen. You don’t seem to have this problem. Is this a function of literary technique or philosophy?

Both. Places where nothing bad happens and nobody behaves badly are improbable, and unpromising for narrative.

You mentioned as your favorite repeated readings Dickens, Tolstoy, Austen, etc. Are there any Americans you go back to? Any SF or fantasy?

Let me off this question. I read too much.

What kind of car do you drive? (I ask this of everyone.)

Ha ha. I don’t.

Charles is currently driving a Honda CR-V with about 120,000 on it. My favorite car we ever had was a red 1968 VW bus.

We all know better than to rate our contemporaries. But I would love to know your take on the late Walter M. Miller Jr., since he seemed to share your deep and radically humane conservatism.

He was a very, very good writer who I feel lucky to have read early on, so I could learn about the scope of SF from him.

The Ekumen and Earthsea series almost seem like bookends, one SF and one Fantasy. Where would you put
Lavinia
on the shelf between?

My writing is all over the map; bookends won’t work. Even shelves won’t work.
Lavinia
is what it is.

Lavinia
shows a great love for Rome, or at least pre-Roman virtues. That seems contrarian for a staunch progressive. Or is it?

I am not a progressive. I think the idea of progress an invidious and generally harmful mistake. I am interested in change, which is an entirely different matter.

I like stiff, stuffy, earnest, serious, conscientious, responsible people, like Mr. Darcy and the Romans.

How’s your Latin?

Mediocris.

Dragons are good in Earthsea
.
Or are they?

No. Nor bad. Other. Wild.

What have you got against Google?

Just its mistaken idea that it can ignore copyright and still do no harm.

In
Always Coming Home
the future looks a lot like the past. What are the Kesh trying to tell us?

What past does that future look like? I don’t know anybody like the Kesh anywhere anywhen.

The countryside, of course, is the Napa Valley before (or after) agribusiness ruined it, but gee, we have to take our paradises where we find them.

The Dispossessed
is about an anarchist utopia, at least in part. So is
Always Coming Home
. Would you describe yourself as an anarchist (politically)?

Politically, no; I vote, I’m a Democrat. But I find pacificist anarchist thought fascinating, stimulating, endlessly fruitful.

In your acknowledgements to
Lavinia
, you praise your editor Mike Kandel. Is this the same Kandel who writes hilariously weird SF?

He has translated Stanislaw Lem and others, marvelously. If he’s written SF himself he’s successfully hidden it from me. I wouldn’t put it past him. Michael? What have I been missing?

I’m working on the cover copy for this book right now. Is it OK if I call your piece on modesty “the single greatest thing ever written on the subject”?

I think “the single finest, most perceptive, most gut-wrenchingly incandescent fucking piece of prose ever not written by somebody called Jonathan something” might be more precise.

Ezra Pound described poetry as “news that stays news.” How do you see it? What poets do you read most often these days?

Lately I’ve been getting news again from old Robinson Jeffers. It isn’t cheery but it’s reliable.

In
The Lathe of Heaven
, the first SF novel to take on (or even mention) global warming, the only big cities in Oregon are John Day and French Glen. Where the hell is French Glen?

Did I spell it that way? It’s one word: Frenchglen. It’s in Harney County, in farthest southeast Oregon; pop. about twenty-five.

Do you ever get bad reviews? Was one ever helpful?

Yes. No.

This is my
Jeopardy
item. The category is Mainstream Fiction. The answer is “One would hope.” You provide the question.

Erm?

One more, please. The category is Sitting Presidents. The answer is “One would hope not.”

I’m really pretty good at Ghosts and Hangman.

What’s your favorite gadget?

My MacBook Pro.

What’s your writing discipline? Has it changed as you’ve gotten older? More successful?

I never had any discipline, I just really wanted to write when I wanted to write. So I can’t say that it has gotten any more successful.

What’s your favorite city and don’t say Portland because it isn’t really a city at all.

All right then, snob. Frenchglen.

My favorite writer (next to you, of course), R. A. Lafferty, once said that no writer has anything to say before age forty. He also once said that no writer has anything to say after forty. Do you agree?

I would never disagree with R. A. Lafferty.

In your pictures you seem to be laughing a lot. What’s so funny?

Cf. A. E. Housman: “Mithridates, he died old.”

Will you sign my baseball? It’s for my daughter.

If you will sign my fencing foil.

Major works only, principal U.S. editions only

Novels of the Ekumen:

The Telling.
Harcourt, 2000; Gollancz, 2001.

The Word for World Is Forest
. Putnam, 1976; Berkley, 1976.

The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
. Harper & Row, 1974; Avon, 1975.

The Left Hand of Darkness
. Walker, 1969; Ace, 1969; Harper & Row, 1980.

City of Illusions
. Ace, 1967; Harper & Row, 1978.

Planet of Exile
. Ace, 1966; Harper & Row, 1978.

Rocannon’s World
. Ace, 1966; Harper & Row, 1977.

(These three reissued in one volume as
Worlds of Exile and Illusion
, Tor, 1998.)

The Books of Earthsea:

The Other Wind
. Harcourt, 2001.

Tales from Earthsea
. Harcourt, 2001.

Tehanu
. Atheneum,1990; Bantam, 1991.

The Farthest Shore
. Atheneum, 1972; Bantam, 1975.

The Tombs of Atuan
. Atheneum, 1970; Bantam, 1975.

A Wizard of Earthsea
. Parnassus/Houghton Mifflin, 1968; Ace, 1970; Atheneum, 1991.

The Annals of the Western Shore:

Gifts
. Harcourt, 2004.

Voices
. Harcourt, 2006.

Powers
. Harcourt, 2007.

Other Novels:

Lavinia
. Harcourt, 2008.

Always Coming Home
. Harper & Row, 1985; Bantam, 1987; U.C. Press, 2000.

The Eye of the Heron
. Harper & Row, 1983; Bantam, 1983.

The Beginning Place
. Harper & Row, 1980; Bantam,1981.

Malafrena
. Putnam, 1979; Berkely, 1980.

Very Far Away from Anywhere Else
. Atheneum, 1976; Bantam, 1978.

The Lathe of Heaven
. Scribners, 1971; Avon, 1972; Scribners, 2008.

Changing Planes
. Harcourt, 2003; Mythopoeic Society Award nomination, 2004.

The Birthday of the World
. HarperCollins, 2002.

Unlocking the Air.
Harper Collins, 1996.

Four Ways to Forgiveness
. Harper Prism, 1995; pb, 1996.

A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
. Harper Prism,1994; pb, 1995.

Searoad
. HarperCollins, 1991; pb, 1992.

Buffalo Gals
. Capra,1987; NAL 1988.

The Compass Rose
. Underwood-Miller, 1982; Harper & Row, 1982; Bantam, 1983.

Orsinian Tales
. Harper & Row, 1976; Bantam, 1977.

The Wind’s Twelve Quarters
. Harper & Row, 1975; Bantam, 1976.

Incredible Good Fortune
. Shambhala, 2006.

Sixty Odd
. Shambhala, 1999.

Going out with Peacocks
. HarperCollins, 1994.

Blue Moon over Thurman Street
(with Roger Dorband). NewSage, 1993.

Wild Oats and Fireweed
. Harper & Row, 1988.

Hard Words
. Harper & Row, 1981.

Wild Angels
. Capra, 1974.

Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral
. University of New Mexico Press, 2003.

Kalpa Imperial
. (Angelica Gorodischer). Small Beer Press, 2003.

The Twins, The Dream/Las Gemelas, El Sueno
(with Diana Bellessi). Arte Publico Press, 1997; Ed. Norma, 1998.

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: Book About The Way and the Power of the Way
. Shambhala, 1997, 2009. New edition includes two CDs. Music by Todd Barton.

Cheek by Jowl
. Aqueduct, 2009.

The Wave in the Mind.
Shambhala, 2004.

Steering the Craft.
Eighth Mountain, 1998.

The Language of the Night
(revised ed.). HarperCollins, 1992.

Dancing at the Edge of the World
. Grove, 1989.

The Catwings Books (illus. S. D. Schindler), 1988–1999:

Catwings
. Orchard.

Catwings Return
. Orchard.

Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings
. Orchard.

Jane on Her Own
. Orchard.

Other Books for Children:

Cat Dreams
(illus. S. D. Schindler). Scholastic, 2010.

Tom Mouse
(illus. J. Downing). Roaring Brook, 2002.

A Ride on the Red Mare’s Back
(illus. J. Downing). Orchard, 1992. pb, 1993.

Fish Soup
(illus. P. Wynne). Atheneum, 1992.

Fire and Stone
(illus. L. Marshall). Atheneum, 1989.

A Visit from Dr. Katz
(illus. A. Barrow). Atheneum, 1988.

Solomon Leviathan
(illus. A. Austin). Philomel, 1988.

Cobbler’s Rune
(illus. A. Austin). Cheap Street, 1983.

Leese Webster
(illus. James Brunsman). Atheneum, 1979.

The Norton Book of Science Fiction
(with Brian Attebery and Karen Fowler). Norton, 1993.

Edges
. With Virginia Kidd. Pocket Books, 1980.

Interfaces
. With Virginia Kidd. Grosset & Dunlap/Ace, 1980.

Nebula Award Stories XI.
Harper & Row, 1977.

King Dog
. Capra, 1985.

The Art of Bunditsu
. Ygor & Buntho Make Books Press, 1993.

Findings
. Ox Head, 1992.

No Boats
. Ygor & Buntho Make Books Press, 1992.

A Winter Solstice Ritual for the Pacific Northwest
(with Vonda N. McIntyre). Ygor & Buntho Make Books Press, 1991.

In the Red Zone
(with Henk Pander). Lord John, 1983.

Tillai and Tylissos
(with Theodora Kroeber). Red Bull, 1979.

Walking in Cornwall
. n.p. 1976. Reprinted, Crescent Moon, 2008.

The Water Is Wide
. Pendragon Press, 1976.

U
RSULA
K. L
E
G
UIN WAS BORN A
Kroeber in Berkeley, California. Her mother was a psychologist and writer; her father was the chair of University of California–Berkeley’s Anthropology Department. “My father studied real cultures and I make them up,” she once said. “In a way, the same thing.”

After attending Radcliffe and Columbia (MA, French Literature) she studied in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship, where she met and married historian Charles Le Guin.

They returned to the United States on the
Queen Mary
. After a few years of teaching, she began to write fiction.

Since her first published stories in the 1960s, Le Guin has been a major force in science fiction and fantasy.
The Left Hand of Darkness
, exploring a culture without gender, placed her at the center of the political/feminist/literary movement elevating SF to a new maturity. Her Earthsea fantasies and her somber SF novels of the interstellar Ekumen have influenced, illuminated, and entertained readers worldwide for almost fifty years. She has also written poetry and essays on social and literary themes.