Table of Contents

Part 1 Talks and essays: the space crone; is gender necessary? redux; moral and ethical implications of family planning; it was a dark and stormy night; working on "The Lathe"; some thoughts on narrative; world-making; Macchu Picchu; place names; the princess; a non-Euclidean view of California as a cold place to be; facing it; reciprocity of prose and poetry; a left-handed commencement address; along the platte; whose lathe?; the woman without answers; the second report of the shipwrecked; foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb; room 9, car 1430; Theodora; science fiction and the future; the only good author?; Bryn Mawr commencement address; women/wilderness; the carrier bag theory of fiction; heroes; prospects for women in writing; text, silence, performance; who is responsible?; conflict; "where do you get your ideas from?"; over the hills and a great way off; the fisherwoman's daughter. Part 2 Reviews: "The Dark Tower", C.S.Lewis; " Close Encounters", "Star Wars", and the "Tertium Quid"; "Shikasta", Doris Lessing; "Kalila and Dimna", retold by Ramsey Wood; "Unfinished Business", Maggie Scarf; "The Book of the Dun Cow", Walter Wargerin Jr.; "Freddy's Book" and "Vlemk", John Gardner; "The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five", Doris Lessing; "Italian Folktales", Italo Calvino; "Peake's Progress", Mervyn Peake; "The Sentimental Agents", Doris Lessing; "Difficult Loves", Italo Calvino; "Forsaking Kingdoms": Five Poets; "The Mythology of North America", John Bierhorst; "Outside the Gates", Molly Gloss; "Silent Partners", Eugene Linden; "Golden Days", Carolyn See.

Reviews

Le Guin is one of the most important American fiction writers working today. With this anthology, which collects her essays, addresses, and reviews from the last decade, she demonstrates that she is also one of the most significant. These pieces, which include Le Guin's reflections on her own work, writing in general, women, and the world, comprise a record of recent history as experienced by one actor/observer whose social critique does not exclude self-analysis and revision. Le Guin is an irreverent demystifier of the industry currently known as ``literary criticism'' and a consummate storyteller who enlightens with her perfect weave of myth and fact, fantasy and common sense. Essential reading for anyone who imagines herself literate and/or socially concerned or who wants to learn what it means to be such. Mollie Brodsky, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Chronologically arranged, these 33 talks and essays and 17 reviews of books and films, dating from 1976 through 1987, record Le Guin's responses to ethical and political climates, the transforming effect of certain literary ideas and the changes of a supple, disciplined mind. Aiming ``to subvert as much as possible without hurting anybody's feelings,'' the noted science fiction writer eloquently discusses feminism, social responsibility, literature and travel. We read her deeply considered views on abortion, menopause, motherhood, family planning; censorship, criticism, myth in contemporary life, women writers, the reciprocity of prose and poetry, the language of power; the advantages and pleasures of travel by Amtrak; heroism in Scott and Amundsen; the ideas of Doris Lessing and Italo Calvino; and how science fiction addresses the issue of nuclear war. (Feb.)