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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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(siren blaring)

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(muffled voice
speaking on PA system)

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(tense music)

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- [Alien] Attention.

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People of Earth, this is
a voice speaking to you

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from thousands of miles
beyond your planet.

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(people screaming)

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- [Ursula] Fantasy
and science fiction,

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when I began writing, were,
particularly in America,

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strictly genre.

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The magazines were
pulp magazines.

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It had no respect
from the critics.

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- What Ursula was
having to navigate

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was the societal prejudices
against science fiction,

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against the fantastic and
against children's fiction.

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All of these things
were marginalized.

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- People would think ray
guns and silly things.

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This can't be serious.

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- A genre label can be a
very useful tool for a critic

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who wants to dismiss a writer

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or not take a writer seriously.

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- The critics had dismissed
science fiction and fantasy

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as essentially worthless
and I knew better.

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I knew that my work
was not second rate,

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that it was of literary value.

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I'd like us not to be
resigned but to be rebellious.

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I want to see science fiction
step over the old walls

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and head right
into the next wall

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and start to break it down, too.

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Imaginative fiction,
it trains people

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to be aware that there are
other ways to do things

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and other ways to be,
that there is not just one

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civilization and it is good and
it is the way we have to be.

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I think it trains
the imagination.

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(exciting orchestral music)

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(train chugging)

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- [Charles] Okay,
we're almost there.

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- [Ursula] Si.

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- [Charles] Now, you're
going in the back door.

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- Yeah, that's right.

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(attendees applauding)

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Thank you, Powell's,
dear Powell's.

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It's so nice always
to come back here.

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There are an awful lot of
books about writing here

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and they tend to be
very full of rules,

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do this, don't do that.

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I don't talk about rules
because I have come to believe

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that every story must make

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its own rules and obey them.

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(light lively music)

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- Ursula, she was
going to be a writer.

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That's what she needed to do.

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That was what life was for her.

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We started at Radcliffe
in the fall of 1947.

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Ursula had a kind of
earthy manner of speech

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which was very refreshing.

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And not so common
in that environment.

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She could also be a
little frightening

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because it was this
very sharp, keen mind.

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And very strong feelings
about what she cared about.

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- People always say,

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"When did you decide you
wanted to be a writer?"

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And I never wanted
to be a writer.

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I just wrote.

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It's what I did.

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It's the way my being was.

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- She didn't see herself as
a science fiction writer.

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She wanted to write
imaginatively about
what interested her.

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- She worked on the
literary magazine

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for a little while at Radcliffe

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but they wouldn't
publish any of her stuff.

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The important writers of the
moment were these very macho,

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very masculine writers.

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I think everyone was still under
the influence of Hemingway.

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It was all realism,
it was all male

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and she went looking for a space

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that she could make her own.

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(cheerful music)

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I think the first couple years
in Portland, it was just,

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you know how it is when
you have little kids.

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You really don't do
much of anything else

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except the kids but she
managed to work all the time.

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- My mother was very disciplined
about her writing schedule

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so she would help us get out
of the house in the morning,

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then write in the morning

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then do housework
in the afternoon.

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- She had her study and
she would go in there

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and shut the door.

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- They knew not to bother
mama when she was working.

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I knew not to bother her
when she was working too.

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- [Ursula] Charles would read it

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and maybe my mother
would read it

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and then I'd send
it to the editor

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and then the editor
would reject it.

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I don't know how many times
I was told I write well

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but we don't know quite
what you're doing.

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I was beginning to feel
a little desperate,

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like if I can't publish anything

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except an occasional poem in
a tiny, tiny poetry magazine,

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what am I doing?

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Am I kidding myself?

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I did keep methodically
sending them out.

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One of them got accepted by a
pulp science fiction magazine

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and they paid $30.

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Back then, that was
really important to us,

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we were just getting by.

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It definitely encouraged
me to look more seriously

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at fantasy and science fiction

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as a definition of the kind
of thing I was writing,

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which was never really
mainstream realism.

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There was always something
a little off-key about it.

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- The more they sold,
the more she wrote

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and she was kind
of experimenting

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with interplanetary
travel and world building.

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She turned out to be an
excellent world builder.

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- My editor Don
Wollheim at Ace Books

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was also the first
person to publish

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Ursula's science fiction.

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At around 1965 or '66, I
had come into the office

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at Ace Books and Don said,

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"Oh, we're publishing
a new writer.

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"I think she's
really very good,"

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and he handed me
Rocannon's World

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which was her first novel.

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- Ursula's early work
it's fertile in detail.

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They are written
by a young person

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with a young person's vivacity.

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Let's give this a go and
let's have some flying cats

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and big teeth.

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- I confess I was not
blown away by them

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but I did think something
is going on here.

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- These early novels are still
written from the perspective

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of kind of heroic men.

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That was what science
fiction was like at the time

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and Le Guin wasn't stepping
outside that quite yet.

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Even though they
do have that flavor

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of kind of just action
adventure in space,

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you can already see her
developing a lot of the themes

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that she becomes
known for later on

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where she has these
truly alien characters,

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futures and alternate worlds.

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- It's really well
realized stuff

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and it's better than
a lot of writers' best

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but she was on quite a steep

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near vertical
trajectory, artistically.

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- I had written a
couple of short stories

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that took place on these islands

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where there were
wizards and dragons.

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In 1968, when the
publisher, Parnassus Books,

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came to me and said, "Would
you write a young adult novel?"

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These islands grew and boom,

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this is a whole
archipelago of islands

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and now, I draw the map

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and I would name the rivers and
the mountains and the cities

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but I didn't know
anything about them

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until I went there
with my characters.

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(light mellow music)

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As a boy, our hero
was called Sparrowhawk

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because the wild hawks would
come when he called them

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but his true and
secret name is Ged.

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Ged sails to Roke Island,
the Isle of the Wise,

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hidden in the heart
of the archipelago.

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From all over Earthsea,
young men come to Roke

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to learn the art of magic,
the craft of wizardry.

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This was not, at that
time, a well-known concept,

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the idea of a wizard school.

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- I don't think Harry Potter

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could have existed without
Earthsea having existed.

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That was the original,
the finest and the best.

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- In winter, he was
sent across Roke Island

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to the farthest northmost cape,

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where stands the Isolate Tower.

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There, by himself, lived the
Master Namer Kurremkarmerruk

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sat on a high seat,
writing down lists of names

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that must be learned before
the ink faded at midnight,

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leaving the parchment
blank again.

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He might say, he who
would be seamaster

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must know the true name of
every drop of water in the sea.

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Magic exists in most societies
in one way or another.

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And one of the forms it
exists in a lot of places

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is if you know a
thing's true name,

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you have power over the
thing or the person.

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And of course, it's irresistible
because I'm a writer.

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I use words and knowing the
names of things is, I do magic.

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I do make up things that didn't
exist before by naming them.

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I call it Earthsea
and there it is.

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It exists.

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So I had this total parallel

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between wizards and
artists to play with.

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- I bought Wizard of
Earthsea and I was in love.

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It felt right, the idea that
naming things was magic.

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- I love how in Earthsea
the strongest magic

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00:12:02,133 --> 00:12:06,466
is made of the same thing
that the books are made of.

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It's words.

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If you are a proficiently
gifted wizard,

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you can become a
different kind of being.

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You can become a hawk or a fish.

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But be careful, if you
stay there too long,

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00:12:18,566 --> 00:12:19,633
you can't come back.

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00:12:22,266 --> 00:12:26,300
- In A Wizard of Earthsea,
Ged has to find out who he is.

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He's a kid with a tremendous
gift and he knows it.

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He knows he has a power
that most people don't have.

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When you're young you're
kinda, nothing can kill you,

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nothing can really hurt you.

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You're going to
get away with it.

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00:12:42,100 --> 00:12:44,000
He really thinks that way

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00:12:44,033 --> 00:12:46,966
until he gets nearly
killed by his own folly.

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00:12:49,899 --> 00:12:51,233
- It's an internal evil.

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It's Ged's own worst self

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that becomes the evil
presence in his life.

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00:13:13,699 --> 00:13:16,333
- Well, a lot of kids go
through something like that

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00:13:16,366 --> 00:13:18,100
and then they have to kind of
struggle on and figure out,

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00:13:18,133 --> 00:13:20,966
okay, actually, I'm not
quite who I thought I was.

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00:13:21,000 --> 00:13:23,866
Who am I?

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00:13:23,899 --> 00:13:26,333
How do I be a good person?

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00:13:27,633 --> 00:13:29,300
Seems like a real
simple question

219
00:13:30,433 --> 00:13:32,566
but most of us spend
our lives working at it

220
00:13:32,600 --> 00:13:34,466
because every time you
think you've found your way,

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the way changes.

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00:13:41,533 --> 00:13:44,100
I start pretty much with place

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00:13:44,133 --> 00:13:46,533
and then the people
grow up in the place.

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00:13:51,566 --> 00:13:54,066
Our first trip out here in '68.

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I'd just never been
in country like this

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00:13:57,066 --> 00:13:59,066
and it just knocked me over.

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00:14:00,266 --> 00:14:02,200
All I knew was that
I had to come back.

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00:14:03,366 --> 00:14:05,066
That's about as
far as I wanna go.

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00:14:06,333 --> 00:14:07,966
That is big hole in the ground.

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00:14:11,033 --> 00:14:13,400
So, when the book did
well and the publisher

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00:14:13,433 --> 00:14:17,533
asked me for another
one, I thought,

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00:14:17,566 --> 00:14:21,333
I know what the next
Earthsea story has to be.

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00:14:24,800 --> 00:14:26,766
I needed a desert for the book

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00:14:27,899 --> 00:14:30,333
and the Kargish
islands looked as if

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they might have some deserts.

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00:14:33,366 --> 00:14:36,266
It's a community of women
only, isolated in the desert.

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00:14:36,300 --> 00:14:37,100
No men.

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00:14:39,766 --> 00:14:42,600
The Kargish people
don't believe in magic.

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00:14:43,733 --> 00:14:46,400
Instead, they worship
the Nameless Ones,

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00:14:46,433 --> 00:14:48,500
the old powers of the Earth.

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00:14:51,600 --> 00:14:53,833
Our main character
is a young girl

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00:14:53,866 --> 00:14:56,200
who was taken from
her family as a baby

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00:14:56,233 --> 00:14:59,166
to serve the Powers
of the Tombs.

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00:15:00,600 --> 00:15:03,133
She doesn't remember the name
her mother gave her, Tenar.

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00:15:07,566 --> 00:15:10,500
One of the places
she alone can go

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00:15:10,533 --> 00:15:15,533
is called the Undertomb and
it leads to the labyrinth.

247
00:15:18,666 --> 00:15:22,300
In the first book, darkness
often implies evil.

248
00:15:23,766 --> 00:15:27,066
In the second book, darkness
is an equal power with light

249
00:15:28,766 --> 00:15:33,233
and the girl Tenar is the
priestess of that great power.

250
00:15:38,966 --> 00:15:41,166
She went forward
in the pitch dark,

251
00:15:41,200 --> 00:15:43,466
easy as a little
fish in dark water.

252
00:15:44,866 --> 00:15:49,100
Down the slanting passage,
a faint gray bloomed,

253
00:15:49,133 --> 00:15:52,966
the echo of an echo
of a distant light.

254
00:15:53,000 --> 00:15:55,566
She halted then very slowly,

255
00:15:55,600 --> 00:15:59,066
took the last step
and looked and saw,

256
00:16:00,133 --> 00:16:01,766
saw what she had never seen.

257
00:16:03,066 --> 00:16:06,633
The great vaulted cavern
beneath the tombstones.

258
00:16:06,666 --> 00:16:09,533
The light burned at the
end of a staff of wood,

259
00:16:09,566 --> 00:16:11,633
smokeless, unconsuming.

260
00:16:12,866 --> 00:16:16,733
She saw the face
beside the light,

261
00:16:16,766 --> 00:16:19,600
the dark face,
the face of a man.

262
00:16:34,800 --> 00:16:37,233
Tenar meets Ged
in the Undertomb.

263
00:16:38,600 --> 00:16:40,100
He knows what her real name is

264
00:16:41,100 --> 00:16:42,633
and he can give it back to her.

265
00:16:45,033 --> 00:16:48,666
And that in a sense is what
frees her, frees them both.

266
00:16:58,699 --> 00:17:01,333
That's a very
good, polite horse.

267
00:17:01,366 --> 00:17:02,899
That's a sweetie, yes it is.

268
00:17:08,100 --> 00:17:13,100
I don't live in a dreamworld,
a kind of woowoo place at all.

269
00:17:15,366 --> 00:17:17,866
I think you can see that
in my fantasy writing.

270
00:17:17,899 --> 00:17:21,233
I don't feel so much as
if I were making it up.

271
00:17:21,266 --> 00:17:23,966
I know I am but that
isn't what it feels like.

272
00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:27,566
It feels like being there and
looking around and listening.

273
00:17:31,899 --> 00:17:34,233
When you say what's the
name of that flower?

274
00:17:34,266 --> 00:17:35,233
Why do you want
to know the name?

275
00:17:35,266 --> 00:17:36,733
What does it matter?

276
00:17:36,766 --> 00:17:38,766
Somehow it connects
you to the flower.

277
00:17:40,233 --> 00:17:42,933
Even the scientists, they
do have to name the species

278
00:17:42,966 --> 00:17:44,899
and the individuals and so on.

279
00:17:46,333 --> 00:17:49,266
A lot of people think that
fantasy is just escapism

280
00:17:49,300 --> 00:17:52,033
and has nothing to do
with the real world

281
00:17:52,066 --> 00:17:53,600
and I don't feel that at all

282
00:17:55,766 --> 00:18:00,033
partly because my father was
a scientist, an anthropologist

283
00:18:00,066 --> 00:18:05,066
and I grew up with a profound
respect for and liking for

284
00:18:05,933 --> 00:18:07,699
the way scientists' minds work.

285
00:18:11,433 --> 00:18:15,000
- Alfred Kroeber was the
founder of academic anthropology

286
00:18:15,033 --> 00:18:17,533
in the early years of the
University of California

287
00:18:18,899 --> 00:18:23,233
Ursula K. Le Guin and she
always keeps the K, for Kroeber,

288
00:18:23,266 --> 00:18:26,400
was a precocious faculty brat.

289
00:18:29,233 --> 00:18:31,766
- [Ursula] There were a lot
of anthropologists around.

290
00:18:31,800 --> 00:18:33,166
It was, you know, it
was just shop talk

291
00:18:33,200 --> 00:18:34,233
and I'm listening in.

292
00:18:36,533 --> 00:18:41,066
It was such a mixture of
exciting minds and backgrounds.

293
00:18:42,233 --> 00:18:44,699
So I'm sure that did
something to my head.

294
00:18:44,733 --> 00:18:45,566
Something good.

295
00:18:49,200 --> 00:18:52,600
- Ursula was very much the
youngest, the only girl,

296
00:18:52,633 --> 00:18:57,633
always trying to get a word
in edgewise in this family.

297
00:18:58,800 --> 00:19:02,933
She really learned to
debate and to argue

298
00:19:02,966 --> 00:19:06,333
and to hold her own in a way
that was probably unusual

299
00:19:06,366 --> 00:19:09,400
for girls of her generation.

300
00:19:11,133 --> 00:19:13,699
- As soon as school
and college were out,

301
00:19:13,733 --> 00:19:18,400
we packed up and drove
the very long 60 miles

302
00:19:18,433 --> 00:19:21,433
up to the Napa Valley.

303
00:19:21,466 --> 00:19:24,600
It's 40 acres with an
old ranch house on it.

304
00:19:26,766 --> 00:19:28,066
Those hills are very wild.

305
00:19:29,466 --> 00:19:31,566
You can feel like you're
in the absolute wilderness.

306
00:19:33,466 --> 00:19:35,333
It was heaven for an introvert.

307
00:19:40,899 --> 00:19:43,533
My father would, he would
tell us Indian stories

308
00:19:43,566 --> 00:19:45,266
translating in
his head sometimes

309
00:19:45,300 --> 00:19:47,500
from the language that
he'd learned them in.

310
00:19:48,899 --> 00:19:51,433
It was what, my father spent
years of his life doing

311
00:19:51,466 --> 00:19:55,166
was going around California
on foot, by horse

312
00:19:55,200 --> 00:19:59,400
talking to survivors, to
survivors of destroyed peoples

313
00:19:59,433 --> 00:20:03,166
or almost destroyed
peoples trying to save

314
00:20:03,200 --> 00:20:05,866
what was left of their
culture from the white tide.

315
00:20:07,333 --> 00:20:10,566
Just taking down what they
would and could tell him.

316
00:20:10,600 --> 00:20:11,800
Just writing it down.

317
00:20:13,400 --> 00:20:15,033
- It probably was
the darkest chapter

318
00:20:15,066 --> 00:20:16,466
for all of Indian country.

319
00:20:17,833 --> 00:20:20,400
And I think anthropologists
were on the forefront

320
00:20:20,433 --> 00:20:23,566
of what they saw
was saving Natives.

321
00:20:24,733 --> 00:20:26,233
- [James] It was
plausible to think

322
00:20:26,266 --> 00:20:29,133
we had better record these
cultures and these languages

323
00:20:29,166 --> 00:20:32,899
because in a generation,
they wouldn't be there.

324
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:37,800
Kroeber will always
be identified

325
00:20:37,833 --> 00:20:41,566
with the best-known survivor
of the decimated populations

326
00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:46,000
of native California, a man
who came to be known as Ishi.

327
00:20:46,033 --> 00:20:48,633
- [Alfred] April 14, 1900.

328
00:20:50,066 --> 00:20:54,966
("Deer Song (Not for Dancing)")

329
00:21:00,633 --> 00:21:04,500
- [James] In 1911, the
last of his kin died

330
00:21:04,533 --> 00:21:07,066
and Ishi walked south
down toward Oroville

331
00:21:08,766 --> 00:21:11,633
and the anthropologists
in San Francisco

332
00:21:11,666 --> 00:21:13,066
heard about this wild man

333
00:21:13,100 --> 00:21:15,000
who they thought must be perhaps

334
00:21:15,033 --> 00:21:17,666
the last really
authentic uncorrupted,

335
00:21:17,699 --> 00:21:19,800
unchanged California Indian.

336
00:21:22,100 --> 00:21:26,133
- Ishi's people were
among those people who,

337
00:21:26,166 --> 00:21:28,333
you don't tell a
stranger your name.

338
00:21:28,366 --> 00:21:32,000
My father said, "What would
you like us to call you?"

339
00:21:33,333 --> 00:21:34,966
And Ishi means man.

340
00:21:36,233 --> 00:21:37,033
Male person.

341
00:21:37,966 --> 00:21:39,600
So we don't know Ishi's name.

342
00:21:39,633 --> 00:21:41,233
We'll never know his name.

343
00:21:42,866 --> 00:21:45,433
- [James] Ishi and Kroeber
had a complex friendship.

344
00:21:45,466 --> 00:21:48,266
They respected each other,
they liked each other

345
00:21:48,300 --> 00:21:50,300
and in some ways,
they needed each other

346
00:21:51,866 --> 00:21:54,266
but it was a friendship
that was crosscut

347
00:21:54,300 --> 00:21:56,933
by relations of
power and authority.

348
00:22:00,433 --> 00:22:03,100
Ishi died in 1916
of tuberculosis

349
00:22:03,133 --> 00:22:05,000
and it was traumatic
for Kroeber.

350
00:22:05,033 --> 00:22:07,066
There's I think no
question about that.

351
00:22:08,699 --> 00:22:11,633
- I had not heard the name
of Ishi when I was a child.

352
00:22:12,966 --> 00:22:15,899
That was a long ago chapter
in my father's life,

353
00:22:17,133 --> 00:22:19,000
an unhappy one.

354
00:22:19,033 --> 00:22:20,699
So I just never
heard about Ishi.

355
00:22:22,100 --> 00:22:23,866
Till all of a sudden, you
know, they were sorta saying,

356
00:22:23,899 --> 00:22:27,133
hey, Kroeber, you oughta
write about, you know,

357
00:22:27,166 --> 00:22:28,733
you're one of the last
people who knew Ishi

358
00:22:28,766 --> 00:22:30,133
and you knew him well,
you oughta write it.

359
00:22:30,166 --> 00:22:32,333
He said, "I cannot do it.

360
00:22:32,366 --> 00:22:35,300
"Ask my wife."

361
00:22:35,333 --> 00:22:39,533
My mother began to work
on the story of Ishi

362
00:22:39,566 --> 00:22:43,733
and to live through
in her imagination.

363
00:22:43,766 --> 00:22:47,600
How Ishi not only survived
in a terrible solitude

364
00:22:47,633 --> 00:22:52,366
for a while but also, then came
alone into a strange world.

365
00:22:54,566 --> 00:22:57,533
My mother was not
an anthropologist

366
00:22:57,566 --> 00:23:00,300
but she was a very good writer.

367
00:23:02,000 --> 00:23:04,866
- [Karen] The ultimate
impact was to humanize

368
00:23:04,899 --> 00:23:07,866
Ishi the man, although
somewhat romantic

369
00:23:07,899 --> 00:23:10,166
and certainly incomplete.

370
00:23:10,200 --> 00:23:15,233
Her book kept at least one
version of that story alive.

371
00:23:17,533 --> 00:23:20,733
- My mother's book
opened many people's eyes

372
00:23:20,766 --> 00:23:24,266
including my own, to
the appalling history

373
00:23:24,300 --> 00:23:26,766
of the white conquest
of California.

374
00:23:28,066 --> 00:23:29,066
Some people

375
00:23:30,933 --> 00:23:33,200
are quick to see injustice

376
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:37,866
and cruelty but I
was slow to see it.

377
00:23:40,333 --> 00:23:43,266
I had to put the
pieces together myself

378
00:23:45,066 --> 00:23:46,400
and it took a long time.

379
00:23:48,566 --> 00:23:52,966
It's kinda hard to
admit that your people

380
00:23:53,000 --> 00:23:54,533
did something awful.

381
00:23:57,000 --> 00:23:59,133
When I absorb
something like that I,

382
00:24:00,699 --> 00:24:01,733
what I do with it,

383
00:24:03,100 --> 00:24:06,466
the way I handle it is probably
to put it into a novel.

384
00:24:09,333 --> 00:24:12,766
(explosions bang)

385
00:24:12,800 --> 00:24:15,100
There were a lot of
violent struggles

386
00:24:15,133 --> 00:24:18,633
around power and domination
going on in the world

387
00:24:18,666 --> 00:24:21,233
and so also in my novels.

388
00:24:21,266 --> 00:24:25,633
But I was more interested
in exploring alternatives

389
00:24:25,666 --> 00:24:28,133
to violence and exploitation

390
00:24:29,333 --> 00:24:32,866
and this is the basic
purpose of the Ekumen,

391
00:24:32,899 --> 00:24:35,333
a peaceful consortium of worlds.

392
00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:39,233
The Ekumen was a
device that let me send

393
00:24:39,266 --> 00:24:42,433
intelligent people
all over the universe

394
00:24:42,466 --> 00:24:44,333
to find out interesting things.

395
00:24:45,633 --> 00:24:48,766
- This pan-galactic
association of worlds

396
00:24:48,800 --> 00:24:50,566
is one of Ursula's
great inventions,

397
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:53,500
one of science fiction's great
inventions as well, I think.

398
00:24:54,666 --> 00:24:58,433
- The Ekumen provides
this huge laboratory

399
00:24:58,466 --> 00:25:01,833
in which the writer
herself is the scientist

400
00:25:01,866 --> 00:25:05,866
who's conducting a kind of
experiment, a thought experiment

401
00:25:05,899 --> 00:25:07,366
on human beings and humanity

402
00:25:07,400 --> 00:25:10,200
and their other ways of
interacting with each other.

403
00:25:10,233 --> 00:25:12,933
And so, like, what if we just
change this one little thing

404
00:25:12,966 --> 00:25:14,166
and that little thing?

405
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:15,000
What would happen?

406
00:25:15,033 --> 00:25:15,966
What would it be like?

407
00:25:19,166 --> 00:25:22,666
- I wrote a book in the 60s
called Left Hand of Darkness

408
00:25:22,699 --> 00:25:24,333
where I was first asking myself,

409
00:25:24,366 --> 00:25:28,200
okay, what is the difference
between men and women?

410
00:25:29,333 --> 00:25:32,066
And the means I used
to talk about it

411
00:25:32,100 --> 00:25:35,466
was to invent a race of
people who are androgynous,

412
00:25:35,500 --> 00:25:36,633
fully androgynous.

413
00:25:37,766 --> 00:25:40,600
You only become sexually
active once a month

414
00:25:40,633 --> 00:25:42,966
and may become sexually
active as a man or as a woman.

415
00:25:43,000 --> 00:25:44,699
You don't know which.

416
00:25:44,733 --> 00:25:46,699
- And so in the course
of someone's lifetime,

417
00:25:46,733 --> 00:25:49,800
they can father a child,
they can mother a child,

418
00:25:49,833 --> 00:25:53,000
they can have lovers
of all different types,

419
00:25:56,133 --> 00:25:59,066
- [Ursula] In The Left Hand
of Darkness, we meet Genly,

420
00:25:59,100 --> 00:26:03,000
the first envoy from the
Ekumen to the planet of Winter.

421
00:26:05,500 --> 00:26:08,533
As he tries to navigate
this ice-bound world

422
00:26:08,566 --> 00:26:10,266
of genderless people,

423
00:26:11,400 --> 00:26:13,899
Genly becomes entangled
in a political web.

424
00:26:16,400 --> 00:26:19,766
He is forced to flee across a
glacier along with Estraven,

425
00:26:20,933 --> 00:26:23,166
a native of Winter who
has become his ally.

426
00:26:25,666 --> 00:26:29,166
- As they cover the miles
over the ice, they also

427
00:26:30,333 --> 00:26:33,533
close the miles
between themselves

428
00:26:33,566 --> 00:26:37,566
as individuals, as different
subspecies of homo sapiens.

429
00:26:39,400 --> 00:26:41,866
- [Ursula] After all,
he's no more an oddity,

430
00:26:41,899 --> 00:26:44,666
a sexual freak than I am.

431
00:26:44,699 --> 00:26:49,699
Up here on the ice, each
of us is singular, isolate.

432
00:26:50,566 --> 00:26:52,133
I, as cut off from those like me

433
00:26:52,166 --> 00:26:55,633
from my society and its
rules, as he from his.

434
00:26:57,233 --> 00:26:59,433
- It's not just a
geographical journey.

435
00:26:59,466 --> 00:27:04,200
It's a journey into
human cooperation,

436
00:27:04,233 --> 00:27:06,066
into a human relationship.

437
00:27:08,666 --> 00:27:11,933
- When Left Hand of
Darkness came out,

438
00:27:11,966 --> 00:27:16,966
it was perceived rightly
as having changed things,

439
00:27:17,833 --> 00:27:20,666
as being a completely new work,

440
00:27:20,699 --> 00:27:23,033
as being something that
was unlike anything else

441
00:27:23,066 --> 00:27:24,266
that had been published.

442
00:27:26,066 --> 00:27:30,933
- It was extremely popular,
especially among young readers.

443
00:27:30,966 --> 00:27:33,033
Those were the right
readers that first,

444
00:27:33,066 --> 00:27:34,633
I think, were drawn to her.

445
00:27:38,266 --> 00:27:41,133
- Nowadays, there is
a lot more interest

446
00:27:41,166 --> 00:27:44,366
in kind of gender querying
and gender fluidity.

447
00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:46,033
I wonder if it
might be difficult

448
00:27:46,066 --> 00:27:50,666
for a young reader now to
realize quite how extraordinary

449
00:27:50,699 --> 00:27:52,966
and powerful that
was when she did it.

450
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:54,466
- She's like, what about this?

451
00:27:54,500 --> 00:27:56,400
What if this was the way
it played out organically

452
00:27:56,433 --> 00:27:59,333
and everyone could just
experience and see it?

453
00:27:59,366 --> 00:28:01,733
So that was a really
formative book for me.

454
00:28:01,766 --> 00:28:03,366
- Readers and critics
have thought about

455
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:05,600
Left Hand of Darkness
as a feminist novel.

456
00:28:05,633 --> 00:28:08,500
I absolutely think
it was for its time

457
00:28:08,533 --> 00:28:10,833
but there were other writers,

458
00:28:10,866 --> 00:28:13,466
feminist science fiction
writers and critics as well,

459
00:28:13,500 --> 00:28:17,066
who were saying, you
didn't quite go far enough.

460
00:28:17,100 --> 00:28:19,200
- She got in trouble with
Left Hand of Darkness

461
00:28:19,233 --> 00:28:21,699
because when you weren't
changing into some other gender,

462
00:28:21,733 --> 00:28:22,566
you were he.

463
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:25,666
- It started getting criticism.

464
00:28:25,699 --> 00:28:28,666
Why are you forcing us to
think of a masculine default

465
00:28:28,699 --> 00:28:29,899
all the way?

466
00:28:29,933 --> 00:28:31,733
Couldn't you have done
it a different way?

467
00:28:31,766 --> 00:28:33,733
Do I think that The
Left Hand of Darkness

468
00:28:33,766 --> 00:28:35,333
that Ursula would write now

469
00:28:36,733 --> 00:28:41,300
would be The Left Hand of
Darkness that I read in 1971?

470
00:28:42,666 --> 00:28:44,933
No, obviously not.

471
00:28:44,966 --> 00:28:47,800
She has changed and
the world has changed.

472
00:28:54,033 --> 00:28:56,733
- At first, I felt a
little bit defensive

473
00:28:56,766 --> 00:28:57,966
but as I thought about it,

474
00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:00,266
I began to see that
my critics were right.

475
00:29:01,666 --> 00:29:04,666
I was coming up against
how I could write

476
00:29:04,699 --> 00:29:06,800
about gender equality.

477
00:29:06,833 --> 00:29:09,333
Just because you've written
a book about something

478
00:29:10,466 --> 00:29:12,366
doesn't mean you're
done thinking about it.

479
00:29:13,766 --> 00:29:15,866
There's always room to
keep expanding your ideas,

480
00:29:15,899 --> 00:29:17,566
to keep learning.

481
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:20,766
My job is not to arrive
at a final answer

482
00:29:20,800 --> 00:29:22,066
and just deliver it.

483
00:29:24,966 --> 00:29:29,033
I see my job as holding
doors open or opening windows

484
00:29:29,066 --> 00:29:32,433
but who comes in
and out the doors,

485
00:29:32,466 --> 00:29:33,866
what you see out the window?

486
00:29:34,866 --> 00:29:35,933
How do I know?

487
00:29:49,366 --> 00:29:50,566
- There you go.

488
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:52,699
- [Man] Thank you,
I'ma turn about.

489
00:29:52,766 --> 00:29:55,300
- Ursula LeGuin, she
doesn't set herself up

490
00:29:55,333 --> 00:29:58,866
as a giver of answers but
she is one of the very finest

491
00:29:58,899 --> 00:30:01,400
explorers of questions.

492
00:30:01,433 --> 00:30:02,666
- [John] Let's get ready.

493
00:30:02,699 --> 00:30:03,600
We're gonna start
right away, okay?

494
00:30:03,633 --> 00:30:05,666
- There's a story by Ursula

495
00:30:05,699 --> 00:30:08,500
called The Ones Who
Walk Away from Omelas

496
00:30:09,666 --> 00:30:13,066
which begins as a
thought experiment.

497
00:30:15,433 --> 00:30:19,466
She tells you that she
is going to describe

498
00:30:19,500 --> 00:30:23,266
an imaginary place,
an imaginary city

499
00:30:23,300 --> 00:30:27,100
and also tells you that
she's going to work with you

500
00:30:27,133 --> 00:30:31,533
and your imagination to make
it the most wonderful city

501
00:30:31,566 --> 00:30:33,866
you have ever imagined
or experienced.

502
00:30:35,833 --> 00:30:38,833
You are part of this, you
are creating this with her.

503
00:30:40,366 --> 00:30:44,333
And you experience
for several pages,

504
00:30:44,366 --> 00:30:47,833
this wonderful city
of noble people,

505
00:30:47,866 --> 00:30:50,166
the city of cities, Omelas.

506
00:30:51,566 --> 00:30:53,733
And then she says, and
there's one more thing.

507
00:30:55,166 --> 00:30:59,666
Somewhere in the city, there
is a cellar with a child in it

508
00:31:00,699 --> 00:31:04,866
who is being mistreated horribly

509
00:31:06,699 --> 00:31:11,366
and the joy of all
of the people depends

510
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:16,400
on this one child being
forced to suffer, degraded,

511
00:31:17,800 --> 00:31:21,100
abused and that everybody
in the city knows it.

512
00:31:22,300 --> 00:31:25,166
- The terms are
strict and absolute.

513
00:31:25,200 --> 00:31:28,333
There may not even be a kind
word spoken to the child.

514
00:31:28,366 --> 00:31:32,066
The instant the child is
let out, the city is gone.

515
00:31:32,100 --> 00:31:33,233
They're not naive.

516
00:31:33,266 --> 00:31:34,400
They're not stupid, right?

517
00:31:34,433 --> 00:31:36,300
The joy is real.

518
00:31:36,333 --> 00:31:39,300
The city is righteous

519
00:31:41,100 --> 00:31:43,033
but it also relies on
the suffering, right?

520
00:31:43,066 --> 00:31:45,566
- So basically, their
happiness comes from

521
00:31:45,600 --> 00:31:47,133
somebody else's misery?

522
00:31:47,166 --> 00:31:50,966
- [John] Yes, and it's just
one person, just one child.

523
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:52,200
- Right.
- For the entire city.

524
00:31:52,233 --> 00:31:53,500
- They don't even
need government.

525
00:31:53,533 --> 00:31:55,133
They don't need
religious institutions.

526
00:31:55,166 --> 00:31:56,400
They really need laws.

527
00:31:56,433 --> 00:31:58,800
They don't need weapons,
they don't need war.

528
00:31:58,833 --> 00:32:00,033
You know what I mean?

529
00:32:00,066 --> 00:32:01,033
It like--

530
00:32:01,066 --> 00:32:01,866
- It's a utopia.

531
00:32:01,899 --> 00:32:03,466
- It's kind of a utopia.

532
00:32:03,500 --> 00:32:05,233
Right, but it's not a utopia.

533
00:32:05,266 --> 00:32:06,466
- And it sets out and it says,

534
00:32:06,533 --> 00:32:08,033
this is a thought experiment,

535
00:32:08,066 --> 00:32:10,899
and then it goes in and
it breaks your heart

536
00:32:12,066 --> 00:32:14,899
and it leaves you with
a world that is changed.

537
00:32:16,066 --> 00:32:19,933
It leaves you shaken
if you read it right.

538
00:32:19,966 --> 00:32:21,266
- It made me feel really upset

539
00:32:21,300 --> 00:32:25,833
that this child was
being so mistreated

540
00:32:25,866 --> 00:32:28,666
because he was, or she was,

541
00:32:28,699 --> 00:32:31,766
the price of happiness
for the entire town.

542
00:32:32,966 --> 00:32:35,733
- This moral dilemma was
really compelling to me

543
00:32:35,766 --> 00:32:38,266
because it was
impossible to pick out,

544
00:32:38,300 --> 00:32:40,833
like what the right
course of action would be.

545
00:32:40,866 --> 00:32:43,566
Like there was nothing
that would be completely

546
00:32:43,600 --> 00:32:44,400
morally right.

547
00:32:44,433 --> 00:32:45,566
- This child is seen

548
00:32:47,800 --> 00:32:49,966
and some of them go
back to their lives

549
00:32:51,433 --> 00:32:54,233
and then there are the ones
who walk away from Omelas.

550
00:32:54,266 --> 00:32:55,833
- I would try and
help the child.

551
00:32:55,866 --> 00:32:58,466
I really would not care
if it would disrupt

552
00:32:58,500 --> 00:33:02,400
the whole nature of the city
'cause it's a young child,

553
00:33:02,433 --> 00:33:04,933
like, barely holding on.

554
00:33:04,966 --> 00:33:06,800
So I would do anything
to help the child.

555
00:33:06,833 --> 00:33:09,566
- I think I would
forget about the child.

556
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:12,000
I would be one of the
people who stays in the town

557
00:33:12,033 --> 00:33:13,566
and, like, puts it in
the back of my mind

558
00:33:13,600 --> 00:33:15,466
and continues to live
happily and peacefully

559
00:33:15,500 --> 00:33:17,600
because I have the
privilege to do that.

560
00:33:19,066 --> 00:33:20,899
- I would walk away.

561
00:33:20,933 --> 00:33:22,933
I think the ones who walk away,

562
00:33:22,966 --> 00:33:26,100
they can reflect on
this kid again and again

563
00:33:26,133 --> 00:33:30,200
and know that they're
not a part of it

564
00:33:30,233 --> 00:33:33,000
and they're not supporting it.

565
00:33:33,033 --> 00:33:36,833
Maybe they make their own home,
that everything's perfect.

566
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:42,200
- In Omelas I was
setting up a question

567
00:33:42,233 --> 00:33:44,466
about where they might be going,

568
00:33:44,500 --> 00:33:47,233
the ones who walk
away from injustice.

569
00:33:48,133 --> 00:33:49,666
In my novel The Dispossessed,

570
00:33:49,699 --> 00:33:52,833
I wanted to go deeper
into that question.

571
00:33:55,433 --> 00:33:58,800
This was the late 60s,
people were asking,

572
00:33:58,833 --> 00:34:01,066
what might a perfect
society look like?

573
00:34:02,300 --> 00:34:04,466
A society that was not
based on oppression.

574
00:34:06,366 --> 00:34:08,133
Thinking about that
question brought me

575
00:34:08,166 --> 00:34:10,100
to non-violent anarchism.

576
00:34:13,866 --> 00:34:16,433
I think anarchist
thinking is one of those

577
00:34:17,966 --> 00:34:19,933
profoundly radical

578
00:34:21,866 --> 00:34:25,766
ways of thinking that is very
fruitful, very generative.

579
00:34:27,533 --> 00:34:29,766
The more I read in anarchism,
the more I realized

580
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:34,633
that it was the only
major political theory

581
00:34:34,666 --> 00:34:38,166
that hadn't had a
utopia written about it.

582
00:34:38,200 --> 00:34:40,000
Well, that would be fun.

583
00:34:40,866 --> 00:34:42,300
That would be cool.

584
00:34:46,166 --> 00:34:49,500
Then I could kind of
begin figuring out

585
00:34:50,899 --> 00:34:54,300
what would a genuine, working
anarchist society be like.

586
00:34:56,366 --> 00:34:58,966
In The Dispossessed,
a revolutionary group

587
00:34:59,000 --> 00:35:02,766
has abandoned their
capitalist, Earth-like world

588
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:06,066
to create a just and free
society on their moon,

589
00:35:07,500 --> 00:35:11,533
with no gender dominance,
no coercive government,

590
00:35:11,566 --> 00:35:12,899
no private ownership.

591
00:35:15,033 --> 00:35:16,733
- I think The Dispossessed
gives us a chance

592
00:35:16,766 --> 00:35:18,266
to experience what it
would be like to live

593
00:35:18,300 --> 00:35:20,400
outside of capitalism.

594
00:35:20,433 --> 00:35:22,666
It reminds us that the
way we live right now

595
00:35:22,699 --> 00:35:25,833
is not the only possible
way for humans to live.

596
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:30,666
At first we're drawn to
the anarchist society

597
00:35:30,699 --> 00:35:32,466
but then we can see the flaws

598
00:35:32,500 --> 00:35:35,566
that keep the individual
from being entirely free.

599
00:35:37,166 --> 00:35:38,633
I think it's a
foundational book.

600
00:35:38,666 --> 00:35:40,533
Like any organizer I ever meet,

601
00:35:40,566 --> 00:35:42,533
I'm like, you have
to read this book.

602
00:35:42,566 --> 00:35:44,666
This is what we're
trying to figure out.

603
00:35:44,699 --> 00:35:46,266
- It's a flawed utopia.

604
00:35:48,133 --> 00:35:49,533
It's messy.

605
00:35:49,566 --> 00:35:52,699
The crooked timber of humanity
is still crooked there.

606
00:35:52,733 --> 00:35:56,733
- I knew from the start that
it contained its own betrayal.

607
00:35:58,933 --> 00:36:03,233
No human society can just
find perfection and sit there.

608
00:36:05,266 --> 00:36:06,666
That's not how things work.

609
00:36:08,133 --> 00:36:12,666
- Certainly, The Dispossessed
has this political foundation

610
00:36:14,466 --> 00:36:19,133
about inequality, about
class, about hierarchy.

611
00:36:19,166 --> 00:36:20,433
But if you just want that,

612
00:36:20,466 --> 00:36:22,633
then a political
tract will do the job.

613
00:36:23,800 --> 00:36:24,699
I'd read a lot of
science fiction,

614
00:36:24,733 --> 00:36:26,166
the good, the bad and the ugly

615
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:30,200
but I'd never seen the form
used that intelligently,

616
00:36:30,233 --> 00:36:31,366
that artfully.

617
00:36:32,666 --> 00:36:34,500
- [Adrienne] In the span
of just a few years,

618
00:36:34,533 --> 00:36:37,833
we see Ursula release this
torrent of major novels

619
00:36:37,866 --> 00:36:40,766
back to back, each more
original than the last.

620
00:36:40,800 --> 00:36:42,000
She's pushing the boundaries

621
00:36:42,033 --> 00:36:44,300
of what science
fiction could do.

622
00:36:44,333 --> 00:36:46,366
She kind of took the
whole scene by storm.

623
00:36:46,400 --> 00:36:48,966
(lively music)

624
00:36:53,433 --> 00:36:55,766
- [Ursula] I won both
prizes in science fiction

625
00:36:57,933 --> 00:36:59,433
and got a good deal of notice.

626
00:37:01,866 --> 00:37:05,000
I was up on a whole other
level at that point,

627
00:37:06,666 --> 00:37:10,400
which was very nice because
I was by then well in my 30s

628
00:37:10,433 --> 00:37:13,600
and kind of like it's time
I was getting somewhere.

629
00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:17,933
And as it happened, I
was hitting my stride

630
00:37:17,966 --> 00:37:20,766
at a very interesting
moment for science fiction.

631
00:37:22,366 --> 00:37:27,366
- Science fiction has always
been a very strange ragtag

632
00:37:29,366 --> 00:37:32,466
area of literature,

633
00:37:32,500 --> 00:37:37,033
with tension between what gets
called hard science fiction

634
00:37:37,066 --> 00:37:40,800
which is nuts and bolts
and soft science fiction

635
00:37:40,833 --> 00:37:43,533
in which the fiction part
is the most important part.

636
00:37:44,966 --> 00:37:49,433
In the '30s and the '40s, it
was basically nuts and bolts.

637
00:37:51,100 --> 00:37:53,733
- There was an older
generation of science fiction

638
00:37:53,766 --> 00:37:56,933
sort of led by people
like Heinlein and Asimov.

639
00:37:56,966 --> 00:37:59,800
They were expanding the
public's understanding

640
00:37:59,833 --> 00:38:01,566
of what space flight
might be like,

641
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:04,666
they were championing
science at a time

642
00:38:04,699 --> 00:38:06,400
when people were not always sure

643
00:38:06,433 --> 00:38:08,233
that science was a cool thing

644
00:38:08,266 --> 00:38:11,500
but they were not super aware

645
00:38:11,533 --> 00:38:14,133
of how culture worked

646
00:38:14,166 --> 00:38:16,366
beyond a very narrow perspective

647
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:18,600
which was their
perspective as white guys,

648
00:38:18,633 --> 00:38:20,266
many of whom had
been scientists.

649
00:38:23,200 --> 00:38:25,033
- [Ursula] And then there was us

650
00:38:25,066 --> 00:38:27,200
who were kind of being
a little bit uppity.

651
00:38:29,433 --> 00:38:31,166
Who were willing to kind
of change the terms.

652
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:32,766
A bunch of young Turks.

653
00:38:32,800 --> 00:38:34,566
We sort of came in
and shook it up.

654
00:38:35,933 --> 00:38:38,866
- You have people like Samuel
Delany, Ursula Le Guin,

655
00:38:38,899 --> 00:38:42,733
Joanna Russ, women who were
writing, people of color

656
00:38:42,766 --> 00:38:45,766
and they have different
stories to tell

657
00:38:45,800 --> 00:38:49,466
but also specifically,
bringing in areas

658
00:38:49,500 --> 00:38:51,899
of scientific and
cultural inquiry

659
00:38:51,933 --> 00:38:53,966
that hadn't really
been the purview

660
00:38:54,000 --> 00:38:55,566
of science fiction before.

661
00:38:56,766 --> 00:38:57,933
- It's during that period

662
00:38:57,966 --> 00:38:59,766
that she was starting
to do conferences

663
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:03,266
and a lot of science
fiction-related public speaking.

664
00:39:07,566 --> 00:39:11,866
She really began to
move into herself,

665
00:39:11,899 --> 00:39:16,066
to own herself as
someone who has a voice

666
00:39:16,100 --> 00:39:17,733
and the authority that
goes with that voice

667
00:39:17,766 --> 00:39:18,966
and the right to use it.

668
00:39:21,066 --> 00:39:22,699
- [Ursula] It was a ball.

669
00:39:22,733 --> 00:39:27,233
It was a very small world
and when we had a meeting,

670
00:39:27,266 --> 00:39:30,666
most of us came and everybody
was intensely interested

671
00:39:30,699 --> 00:39:33,233
in what we were doing.

672
00:39:33,266 --> 00:39:35,233
And a lot of us
were quite young.

673
00:39:35,266 --> 00:39:37,066
So, those meetings
were very lively.

674
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:41,633
- I remember she
used to smoke a pipe

675
00:39:42,866 --> 00:39:44,566
and I thought that was great.

676
00:39:46,166 --> 00:39:47,566
- [Elisabeth] There
was an opening out.

677
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:49,899
She was putting herself
into conversation

678
00:39:49,933 --> 00:39:51,933
with other writers.

679
00:39:51,966 --> 00:39:53,266
- I think it would
make sense if I went on

680
00:39:53,300 --> 00:39:55,500
and spoke as what
I am, a writer.

681
00:39:55,533 --> 00:39:56,966
A writer of science fiction.

682
00:39:57,000 --> 00:39:58,699
A woman writer of
science fiction.

683
00:39:59,833 --> 00:40:01,533
You know, I am a
very rare creature.

684
00:40:02,933 --> 00:40:05,600
My species was at first
believed to be mythological

685
00:40:05,633 --> 00:40:07,633
like the Tribble
and the unicorn.

686
00:40:07,666 --> 00:40:10,266
(attendees laughing)

687
00:40:10,300 --> 00:40:12,300
I'd been a bit of a lone wolf.

688
00:40:12,333 --> 00:40:15,266
It was kind of nice to find
that there was a real community

689
00:40:15,300 --> 00:40:17,666
of both readers and
writers in science fiction

690
00:40:17,699 --> 00:40:20,300
and that you hear
from your readers

691
00:40:20,333 --> 00:40:24,500
where so many writers don't
ever hear from their readers.

692
00:40:24,533 --> 00:40:26,766
So, that was all
kind of a discovery.

693
00:40:26,833 --> 00:40:28,100
- In The Tombs of Atuan,

694
00:40:28,133 --> 00:40:31,300
you've got a female
central character

695
00:40:31,333 --> 00:40:36,100
and yet she certainly doesn't
emerge as a liberated woman.

696
00:40:36,133 --> 00:40:39,266
- No, the Earthsea books
as feminist literature

697
00:40:39,300 --> 00:40:42,033
are a total, complete bust.

698
00:40:42,066 --> 00:40:46,266
From my own archetypes and
my own cultural upbringing,

699
00:40:46,300 --> 00:40:50,899
I couldn't go down deep and
come up with a woman wizard.

700
00:40:50,933 --> 00:40:52,300
Maybe I'll learn to eventually

701
00:40:52,333 --> 00:40:54,600
but when I wrote those,
I couldn't do it.

702
00:40:54,633 --> 00:40:55,733
I wish I could have.

703
00:40:56,600 --> 00:40:59,500
(mellow piano music)

704
00:40:59,533 --> 00:41:04,266
When I started writing,
which is in the 1940s

705
00:41:04,300 --> 00:41:07,500
and when I started publishing
which was in the 1960s,

706
00:41:07,533 --> 00:41:09,933
the sort of basic
assumption about fiction

707
00:41:09,966 --> 00:41:12,333
was that men were
at the center of it.

708
00:41:15,066 --> 00:41:19,200
In fantasy and science fiction,
the heroes were all male.

709
00:41:19,233 --> 00:41:21,533
There really were
no female heroes.

710
00:41:21,566 --> 00:41:23,000
There were female characters

711
00:41:23,033 --> 00:41:25,933
but they were secondary
characters, they were marginal.

712
00:41:25,966 --> 00:41:29,233
Sometimes, there were whole
books with no women in them.

713
00:41:30,666 --> 00:41:34,400
And that is true of the
first trilogy of Earthsea,

714
00:41:34,433 --> 00:41:38,633
even Tombs of Atuan,
which is all about women

715
00:41:38,666 --> 00:41:39,866
but look at the women.

716
00:41:41,333 --> 00:41:43,400
Tenar is supposed to
have all this power

717
00:41:43,433 --> 00:41:44,833
but what is her power?

718
00:41:44,866 --> 00:41:47,166
She controls nothing.

719
00:41:47,200 --> 00:41:51,300
The world is actually being
run by men, as it usually was.

720
00:41:52,433 --> 00:41:54,300
- You have this really
pretty masculine,

721
00:41:54,333 --> 00:41:57,833
pretty male-dominated world
in The Earthsea Trilogy.

722
00:41:57,866 --> 00:42:01,033
Just about everything in it,
including the dragons is male.

723
00:42:02,166 --> 00:42:03,566
- There's a famous
bit in the first book

724
00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:06,400
where she mentions in passing
that there's a saying,

725
00:42:06,433 --> 00:42:08,133
as weak as a woman's magic,

726
00:42:08,166 --> 00:42:10,300
and I think, it's wicked
as a woman's magic.

727
00:42:10,333 --> 00:42:12,400
And this is just sort
of thrown in there.

728
00:42:15,166 --> 00:42:17,066
- What I'd been
doing as a writer

729
00:42:17,100 --> 00:42:20,833
was being a woman pretending
to think like a man.

730
00:42:20,866 --> 00:42:23,866
I had to think now
why have I put men

731
00:42:23,899 --> 00:42:26,100
at the center of the
books almost entirely?

732
00:42:26,133 --> 00:42:29,133
And the women are either
marginal or are in some way,

733
00:42:29,166 --> 00:42:31,033
essentially
dependent on the men.

734
00:42:33,933 --> 00:42:37,933
I started to write the fourth
book in the series, Tehanu.

735
00:42:38,899 --> 00:42:41,000
And it just wouldn't go.

736
00:42:41,033 --> 00:42:44,400
I knew that Tenar
didn't stay to learn

737
00:42:44,433 --> 00:42:46,066
from the great wizard.

738
00:42:46,100 --> 00:42:47,833
I knew she'd go on
and married a farmer

739
00:42:47,866 --> 00:42:50,033
and had kids but
I didn't know why.

740
00:42:51,166 --> 00:42:53,266
It took me 17
years to figure out

741
00:42:54,433 --> 00:42:58,500
why Tenar did that and
what she was doing,

742
00:42:58,533 --> 00:43:01,533
what her way to go was.

743
00:43:01,566 --> 00:43:04,833
And during that time, that gap,

744
00:43:04,866 --> 00:43:06,533
a lot of things
happened in my life.

745
00:43:06,566 --> 00:43:09,800
A lot of things happened
in the world, naturally.

746
00:43:09,833 --> 00:43:12,433
(lively music)

747
00:43:18,266 --> 00:43:22,266
Along comes the revival
of feminism in the '70s.

748
00:43:25,733 --> 00:43:27,366
People started writing
books saying, you know,

749
00:43:27,400 --> 00:43:28,233
where are women?

750
00:43:29,666 --> 00:43:32,000
Women are marginal in
society and of course,

751
00:43:32,033 --> 00:43:33,600
also in literature.

752
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:39,166
But I was not part
of it as a movement,

753
00:43:39,200 --> 00:43:41,566
partly because as a housewife

754
00:43:41,600 --> 00:43:43,899
and mother of
three kids at home,

755
00:43:43,933 --> 00:43:48,033
I was not behaving the way
a proper feminist should.

756
00:43:48,066 --> 00:43:52,200
There was a considerable feeling
that we needed to cut loose

757
00:43:52,233 --> 00:43:55,300
from marriage from men
and from motherhood

758
00:43:55,333 --> 00:43:58,166
and there was no way
I was gonna do that.

759
00:43:59,600 --> 00:44:04,500
So, I felt a little defensive
for a long time in the '70s

760
00:44:05,699 --> 00:44:09,133
and it was kind of only
as I began getting more

761
00:44:09,166 --> 00:44:13,100
confidence in who I was I
began to feel more at home

762
00:44:13,133 --> 00:44:14,233
in it as a movement.

763
00:44:15,733 --> 00:44:17,666
Of course, I can write
novels with one hand

764
00:44:17,699 --> 00:44:18,966
and bring up three
kids with the other.

765
00:44:19,000 --> 00:44:20,466
Yeah, sure, watch me.

766
00:44:21,866 --> 00:44:24,033
There's a lot of pride
and self respect involved.

767
00:44:24,066 --> 00:44:26,233
I can do it, I
will do it, by god.

768
00:44:29,533 --> 00:44:31,466
- The modern feminist movement

769
00:44:31,500 --> 00:44:35,266
had just sort of
hit science fiction

770
00:44:35,300 --> 00:44:38,666
and some people embraced
it and some people

771
00:44:38,699 --> 00:44:41,200
were pretty upset about it.

772
00:44:41,233 --> 00:44:44,833
There was a big argument about

773
00:44:44,866 --> 00:44:47,733
whether there was room for
women in science fiction,

774
00:44:47,766 --> 00:44:51,733
they meant as readers, as
writers and as characters.

775
00:44:53,100 --> 00:44:56,600
- It was almost like taking
a cork out of a bottle

776
00:44:56,633 --> 00:44:59,500
of champagne that
you'd just shaken up.

777
00:44:59,533 --> 00:45:03,166
It was a kind of explosion
of ideas and opinions

778
00:45:03,200 --> 00:45:05,200
that had been bottled
up for a while.

779
00:45:05,233 --> 00:45:09,033
- By the way, I want to state
I think Ernest Hemingway

780
00:45:09,066 --> 00:45:11,166
was unjust and full of shit.

781
00:45:15,600 --> 00:45:18,500
So I kind of had to
rethink my entire approach

782
00:45:18,533 --> 00:45:19,500
to writing fiction.

783
00:45:21,200 --> 00:45:24,699
I learned to read
other women's writings.

784
00:45:27,800 --> 00:45:32,800
It was important to think
about privilege and power

785
00:45:33,966 --> 00:45:36,233
and domination in
terms of gender,

786
00:45:36,266 --> 00:45:38,966
which was something that
fantasy had not done.

787
00:45:42,666 --> 00:45:46,066
After letting Tenar sit on
the shelf for all those years

788
00:45:46,100 --> 00:45:48,400
because I didn't know
what to do with her,

789
00:45:49,600 --> 00:45:52,899
I found that I was ready
to go on with her story.

790
00:45:52,933 --> 00:45:56,166
And that's what finally
led me to writing Tehanu.

791
00:46:00,766 --> 00:46:03,166
All I changed is
the point of view.

792
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:05,566
All of the sudden, we
are seeing Earthsea

793
00:46:05,600 --> 00:46:08,800
not from the point of
view of the powerful

794
00:46:08,833 --> 00:46:11,033
but from the point of
view of the powerless.

795
00:46:16,733 --> 00:46:18,166
- And you read it and you go,

796
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:22,033
okay, everything that she
said in the first three books

797
00:46:22,066 --> 00:46:25,766
is true but it wasn't
the whole picture.

798
00:46:25,800 --> 00:46:28,100
- Earthsea becomes less magic.

799
00:46:28,133 --> 00:46:31,733
It becomes colder, harder,

800
00:46:31,766 --> 00:46:34,466
grittier, earthier place.

801
00:46:34,500 --> 00:46:36,400
There is child abuse there.

802
00:46:37,566 --> 00:46:40,266
It's not really feeling
like a fantasy world,

803
00:46:40,300 --> 00:46:43,466
it perhaps mirrors your
own process of growth

804
00:46:43,500 --> 00:46:45,300
as a human being.

805
00:46:45,333 --> 00:46:48,066
- We can see Le Guin growing
in front of our eyes,

806
00:46:48,100 --> 00:46:51,633
examining the constructs
of gender in Earthsea,

807
00:46:51,666 --> 00:46:53,366
the world that she
herself created.

808
00:46:54,733 --> 00:46:57,433
You can feel a kind
of simmering rage,

809
00:46:57,466 --> 00:46:59,433
a simmering rage at injustice.

810
00:47:00,833 --> 00:47:03,633
- It was a very interesting
book to write, not an easy one,

811
00:47:05,100 --> 00:47:09,566
the way I handled it upset
many of my older readers,

812
00:47:11,033 --> 00:47:15,066
particularly men because they
saw it as a feminist statement

813
00:47:15,100 --> 00:47:16,200
and they were alarmed.

814
00:47:18,400 --> 00:47:21,433
That they perceived it
as a kind of betrayal

815
00:47:21,466 --> 00:47:25,699
because my hero, Ged,
had lost his power

816
00:47:27,166 --> 00:47:29,666
and a male hero that
has lost his power

817
00:47:29,699 --> 00:47:32,566
is degraded in
some people's eyes.

818
00:47:36,133 --> 00:47:38,366
It was a radical
revision from within

819
00:47:39,433 --> 00:47:41,466
of my whole
enterprise in writing.

820
00:47:42,933 --> 00:47:45,500
And for a while, I thought it
was going to kinda silence me.

821
00:47:48,066 --> 00:47:50,433
But I think if I hadn't
gone through with it

822
00:47:50,466 --> 00:47:54,100
and learned how to write
from my own being as a woman,

823
00:47:54,133 --> 00:47:56,033
I probably would
have stopped writing.

824
00:48:12,100 --> 00:48:13,200
- Come on back at you.

825
00:48:14,766 --> 00:48:15,566
Okay.

826
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:23,233
Now, let's see if it works.

827
00:48:24,800 --> 00:48:28,166
- I didn't even know
that my father actually

828
00:48:28,200 --> 00:48:31,466
read her manuscripts
until relatively recently,

829
00:48:31,500 --> 00:48:33,666
that he's generally the
first person who reads

830
00:48:33,699 --> 00:48:35,033
whatever she writes.

831
00:48:35,066 --> 00:48:37,666
- Mostly you just
say, that's good.

832
00:48:39,100 --> 00:48:41,333
Which is what I want to hear.

833
00:48:41,366 --> 00:48:42,833
- Yeah.

834
00:48:42,866 --> 00:48:46,300
- I do remember very
animated conversations

835
00:48:46,333 --> 00:48:48,866
where we would say, don't
argue with each other

836
00:48:48,899 --> 00:48:49,966
and they would say,
we're not arguing,

837
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:51,100
we're just discussing.

838
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:54,433
- Yes, reaching for it.

839
00:48:54,466 --> 00:48:56,366
- [Theodore] About the time
we were sort of emerging

840
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:59,000
from doing our homework
and getting hungry,

841
00:48:59,033 --> 00:49:01,266
they would be sitting on
either side of the fireplace,

842
00:49:01,300 --> 00:49:03,233
as they do to this day.

843
00:49:03,266 --> 00:49:05,166
- And that will be fine too.

844
00:49:06,866 --> 00:49:10,000
- [Charles] I got a Fulbright
Scholarship to go to France.

845
00:49:10,033 --> 00:49:14,100
I was doing French history
and that's how we met

846
00:49:14,133 --> 00:49:15,300
'cause she had one too.

847
00:49:17,033 --> 00:49:18,899
I think there were
like 20 grantees

848
00:49:18,933 --> 00:49:23,600
going to France that year and
we were all put in steerage

849
00:49:24,933 --> 00:49:28,366
- And at the end
of dinner, I said,

850
00:49:28,400 --> 00:49:30,066
would anybody like
to go to the bar

851
00:49:30,100 --> 00:49:31,833
and have an after dinner drink?

852
00:49:31,866 --> 00:49:35,033
And there was this great
silence among these young kids.

853
00:49:35,066 --> 00:49:37,233
And this little
voice said, "Yes."

854
00:49:38,933 --> 00:49:41,233
- I thought she was interesting.

855
00:49:41,266 --> 00:49:42,966
She was bright and articulate.

856
00:49:43,833 --> 00:49:45,466
She seemed very sophisticated.

857
00:49:47,100 --> 00:49:48,866
She knew what to
order, I didn't.

858
00:49:51,066 --> 00:49:54,800
- He was really good
company and really handsome

859
00:49:56,966 --> 00:49:58,933
and not like anybody
else I'd ever met,

860
00:49:58,966 --> 00:50:00,333
partly because he was
Southern, I think.

861
00:50:00,366 --> 00:50:02,000
I hadn't known Southerners.

862
00:50:03,400 --> 00:50:06,699
So, I would say I was in
love by the third night out.

863
00:50:09,166 --> 00:50:11,933
And then when we came back
to Paris and got married,

864
00:50:13,266 --> 00:50:15,200
we didn't have to go
anywhere for our honeymoon.

865
00:50:15,233 --> 00:50:16,266
We were there.

866
00:50:17,966 --> 00:50:18,800
Perfect.

867
00:50:21,699 --> 00:50:25,733
- [Charles] We lived in a
little hotel that whole year.

868
00:50:25,766 --> 00:50:28,100
- [Ursula] I tell you, we were
kings and queens that year.

869
00:50:28,133 --> 00:50:30,233
- [Charles] Tell them,
so when where there.

870
00:50:33,033 --> 00:50:34,733
- We met at sea.

871
00:50:34,766 --> 00:50:36,500
We married in a
foreign language.

872
00:50:42,533 --> 00:50:45,266
What wonder if we cross
a continent on foot

873
00:50:45,300 --> 00:50:49,366
each time to find each
other at secret borders,

874
00:50:50,733 --> 00:50:54,466
bringing all of all my
streams and darknesses of gold

875
00:50:55,566 --> 00:50:57,466
and your deep
graves and islands,

876
00:50:58,899 --> 00:51:01,766
a feather, a fleck of mica,

877
00:51:02,933 --> 00:51:07,733
a willow leaf that
is our country,

878
00:51:07,766 --> 00:51:09,100
ours alone.

879
00:51:15,633 --> 00:51:18,733
(light steady music)

880
00:51:22,233 --> 00:51:24,899
My mother died in 1980.

881
00:51:24,933 --> 00:51:29,066
My children were all out
of the house by then.

882
00:51:30,833 --> 00:51:34,833
It just was time for me
to come home somehow.

883
00:51:41,033 --> 00:51:43,133
We just moved down
here in January

884
00:51:43,166 --> 00:51:44,833
and stayed a whole spring here,

885
00:51:44,866 --> 00:51:48,933
the only time I lived here
for week after week after week

886
00:51:48,966 --> 00:51:51,066
except those the
summers of my childhood.

887
00:51:58,166 --> 00:52:00,300
I had to look around
for a long time

888
00:52:00,333 --> 00:52:03,533
and circle like
a turkey vulture,

889
00:52:05,699 --> 00:52:08,366
gradually narrowing
until I realized

890
00:52:08,400 --> 00:52:12,033
what I wanted to write
about was here, my place.

891
00:52:13,600 --> 00:52:15,566
Above all places, this is mine.

892
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:17,166
This is sort of the center.

893
00:52:20,300 --> 00:52:23,733
When I'm up here, I think
about my father and my mother

894
00:52:23,766 --> 00:52:26,233
and us when we were kids.

895
00:52:26,266 --> 00:52:29,600
This place is full
of presences for me.

896
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:40,966
- [Phillips] Maybe
her magnum opus

897
00:52:40,966 --> 00:52:45,566
although it's not her easiest
book is Always Coming Home

898
00:52:45,600 --> 00:52:47,833
which is a book set in the world

899
00:52:47,866 --> 00:52:51,699
of her family's summer
house in the Napa Valley.

900
00:52:55,033 --> 00:52:58,400
- It started with the idea
of of writing a utopia

901
00:52:59,466 --> 00:53:00,899
but a different kind of utopia,

902
00:53:00,933 --> 00:53:03,933
a utopia that wasn't a kind
of political blueprint.

903
00:53:03,966 --> 00:53:07,033
It's a sort of
ecological utopia.

904
00:53:07,066 --> 00:53:10,666
It's an imagination of
this beautiful valley

905
00:53:10,699 --> 00:53:15,066
being beautifully used
by its human population.

906
00:53:16,200 --> 00:53:18,933
Pre-white California
was, to a small extent,

907
00:53:18,966 --> 00:53:20,533
a model for Always Coming Home.

908
00:53:21,633 --> 00:53:22,966
A lot of those
Californian peoples

909
00:53:23,000 --> 00:53:25,066
seemed to have been very settled

910
00:53:25,100 --> 00:53:28,500
in rather more peace and
quiet than a lot of peoples.

911
00:53:34,933 --> 00:53:37,800
It was entirely a process
of imaginative exploration.

912
00:53:39,200 --> 00:53:41,633
There was that sense of
living in two worlds,

913
00:53:41,666 --> 00:53:43,666
their voices were
around me sometimes

914
00:53:44,833 --> 00:53:47,166
and that the poems
would come as if I,

915
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:50,533
you know, I'd just write them
down as if I'd been told that.

916
00:53:50,566 --> 00:53:53,733
(mellow ambient music)

917
00:54:02,066 --> 00:54:07,066
- Always Coming Home is barely
a novel as we understand it.

918
00:54:10,233 --> 00:54:11,466
- [Ursula] It's a grab-bag.

919
00:54:11,500 --> 00:54:13,366
A bag of scraps and pieces

920
00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:15,066
and I had a kind of conviction

921
00:54:15,100 --> 00:54:18,400
that this was a good
way to write a book.

922
00:54:22,033 --> 00:54:24,533
- One of the incredibly
exciting things

923
00:54:24,566 --> 00:54:28,833
about Le Guin's fiction is that
it's radically experimental.

924
00:54:28,866 --> 00:54:30,433
She gives us all these forms,

925
00:54:30,466 --> 00:54:34,066
all these different ways of
thinking about fiction itself

926
00:54:34,100 --> 00:54:37,033
and it's a kind of freedom that
she gives to other writers.

927
00:54:37,066 --> 00:54:39,066
It's as though she says,
look, I got away with it.

928
00:54:39,100 --> 00:54:42,166
If I got away with it, maybe
you can get away with it too.

929
00:54:45,466 --> 00:54:47,666
In the '90s and in
the early noughties,

930
00:54:47,699 --> 00:54:51,200
it really felt like a new
book from her every year

931
00:54:51,233 --> 00:54:54,300
and it was like she
just was on fire again.

932
00:54:54,366 --> 00:54:56,633
We're seeing the same
themes that we know and love

933
00:54:56,666 --> 00:54:59,366
about alien worlds and
dealing with issues

934
00:54:59,400 --> 00:55:01,233
around feminist identity

935
00:55:01,266 --> 00:55:06,266
but everything is much more
shaded in gray than ever before.

936
00:55:07,366 --> 00:55:09,100
- The style becomes
more autumnal.

937
00:55:10,533 --> 00:55:14,800
The later work, it haunts
you in more subtle ways

938
00:55:14,833 --> 00:55:16,733
and more nuanced ways.

939
00:55:17,733 --> 00:55:19,899
Truth is a muddy thing now.

940
00:55:19,933 --> 00:55:21,766
What if you aren't a wizard?

941
00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:23,533
What if you can't fix
things by a spell?

942
00:55:23,566 --> 00:55:25,833
what if the only
language you've got

943
00:55:25,866 --> 00:55:30,366
is the language of compromise,
of mess, of misunderstanding?

944
00:55:30,400 --> 00:55:34,166
- The fact of the matter is
there was nobody who was moving

945
00:55:34,200 --> 00:55:38,366
as brilliantly from genre to
genre, as Ursula K. Le Guin.

946
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:42,566
- So what's happened
most recently

947
00:55:42,600 --> 00:55:47,600
is the broadening of Le Guin's
audience and readership.

948
00:55:49,699 --> 00:55:50,933
She's being recognized

949
00:55:50,966 --> 00:55:52,533
not just as one of our
great science fiction

950
00:55:52,566 --> 00:55:56,466
and fantasy writers but one
of our great American writers.

951
00:56:00,366 --> 00:56:02,866
- As a giant of literature,

952
00:56:02,899 --> 00:56:04,600
who is finally
getting recognized,

953
00:56:06,033 --> 00:56:09,400
I take enormous pleasure
in awarding the 2014 Medal

954
00:56:09,433 --> 00:56:12,899
for Distinguished Contribution
to American Letters

955
00:56:12,933 --> 00:56:14,699
to Ursula K. Le Guin.

956
00:56:14,733 --> 00:56:17,966
(attendees applauding)

957
00:56:19,366 --> 00:56:21,500
- All too often, people
who are writers and artists

958
00:56:21,533 --> 00:56:24,200
who are marginalized
and, or radical,

959
00:56:24,233 --> 00:56:27,699
are basically ignored
or mocked or denigrated

960
00:56:27,733 --> 00:56:31,000
for a long time and then
passed directly from there

961
00:56:31,033 --> 00:56:32,966
to being national treasures.

962
00:56:33,000 --> 00:56:37,666
Essentially, you go from
outsider to full domestication

963
00:56:37,699 --> 00:56:41,866
and one of the things that's
so wonderful about Le Guin

964
00:56:41,899 --> 00:56:46,899
is that she would not and
will not allow that to happen.

965
00:56:48,333 --> 00:56:52,366
- I rejoice in accepting
it for and sharing it with

966
00:56:54,233 --> 00:56:56,966
all the writers
who were excluded

967
00:56:57,000 --> 00:56:59,133
from literature for so long,

968
00:57:00,466 --> 00:57:04,066
my fellow authors of
fantasy and science fiction.

969
00:57:04,100 --> 00:57:07,033
- This is why that speech
that she gave when she won

970
00:57:07,066 --> 00:57:09,633
the, sort of,
lifetime achievement,

971
00:57:09,666 --> 00:57:11,833
welcome to the canon award,

972
00:57:11,866 --> 00:57:13,666
to give it its
invisible subtitle,

973
00:57:14,833 --> 00:57:19,066
was that it was a
perfectly courteous

974
00:57:19,100 --> 00:57:21,733
but full-on swingeing attack

975
00:57:21,766 --> 00:57:26,766
on the undermining of art
and aesthetics for profit,

976
00:57:27,633 --> 00:57:28,766
within the publishing industry.

977
00:57:30,033 --> 00:57:33,033
- Books, they're not
just commodities.

978
00:57:33,066 --> 00:57:38,066
The profit motive is often in
conflict with the aims of art.

979
00:57:40,766 --> 00:57:42,666
We live in capitalism.

980
00:57:44,433 --> 00:57:47,100
It's power seems inescapable,

981
00:57:48,433 --> 00:57:51,400
so did the divine
right of kings.

982
00:57:53,133 --> 00:57:57,800
- I was there, giving her
the medal for literature

983
00:58:00,066 --> 00:58:03,833
which was one of the
hugest honors of my life

984
00:58:03,866 --> 00:58:06,666
and then going and
sitting down and listening

985
00:58:06,699 --> 00:58:11,533
as Ursula took apart,
primarily Amazon.com,

986
00:58:11,566 --> 00:58:15,433
in front of an audience
of booksellers,

987
00:58:15,466 --> 00:58:17,500
many of whom were
there from Amazon.com

988
00:58:17,533 --> 00:58:20,899
and who were also
bankrolling the evening.

989
00:58:20,933 --> 00:58:23,233
- I was so scared before
I gave that speech.

990
00:58:23,266 --> 00:58:24,466
It was awful.

991
00:58:24,500 --> 00:58:26,433
I was not saying
what they expected

992
00:58:26,466 --> 00:58:29,200
the old lady from Oregon to say.

993
00:58:29,233 --> 00:58:31,966
I have had a long
career and a good one.

994
00:58:33,833 --> 00:58:35,000
In good company.

995
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:39,233
Now here, at the end of it,

996
00:58:40,633 --> 00:58:45,466
I really don't want to
watch American literature

997
00:58:47,066 --> 00:58:49,733
get sold down the river.

998
00:58:49,766 --> 00:58:52,000
Well, a writer can
certainly choose to simply

999
00:58:52,033 --> 00:58:53,933
serve capitalism and
put their writing

1000
00:58:53,966 --> 00:58:57,366
entirely in the service of
success and making money.

1001
00:58:58,899 --> 00:59:01,033
That's a legitimate choice

1002
00:59:01,066 --> 00:59:03,800
but it's not a choice that
all writers want to make.

1003
00:59:03,833 --> 00:59:05,100
Thank goodness.

1004
00:59:05,133 --> 00:59:07,300
Because there are more
interesting choices

1005
00:59:07,333 --> 00:59:10,466
to make that are of more
general good to more people.

1006
00:59:13,533 --> 00:59:17,699
- That took an immense
amount of guts.

1007
00:59:17,733 --> 00:59:20,500
The same amount of guts
that Ursula has shown

1008
00:59:20,533 --> 00:59:22,333
time and time again,

1009
00:59:22,366 --> 00:59:26,433
just addressing subjects
that are not to be spoken of.

1010
00:59:26,466 --> 00:59:29,066
- We don't have very many
of these in this country

1011
00:59:29,100 --> 00:59:31,066
but she is a public
intellectual.

1012
00:59:31,100 --> 00:59:33,966
She has spoken out on
behalf of artistic freedom

1013
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:35,433
for other writers.

1014
00:59:35,466 --> 00:59:39,200
She has spoken out against
systems of government

1015
00:59:39,233 --> 00:59:41,400
that repress public discourse.

1016
00:59:41,433 --> 00:59:45,966
She has been a consistent
voice for the human spirit.

1017
00:59:46,000 --> 00:59:48,800
- I guess I have a
sort of long term hope

1018
00:59:50,066 --> 00:59:52,400
and short term terror.

1019
00:59:52,433 --> 00:59:54,566
We don't have to
keep the door shut.

1020
00:59:54,566 --> 00:59:57,366
We could live in a
different way than we do.

1021
00:59:59,033 --> 01:00:04,033
- In the last 10 years,
Ursula has wielded her status,

1022
01:00:05,233 --> 01:00:07,733
which is considerable,
very, very skillfully,

1023
01:00:07,766 --> 01:00:09,333
very much like a warrior.

1024
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:15,033
One reaches a certain age
where you can just kind of

1025
01:00:16,066 --> 01:00:18,533
sit back and let 'em have it.

1026
01:00:25,100 --> 01:00:27,200
- I don't offer
any 10 easy steps

1027
01:00:27,233 --> 01:00:32,100
to fame and fortune as an author
because I know that in art,

1028
01:00:32,133 --> 01:00:34,333
there are no easy steps.

1029
01:00:34,366 --> 01:00:35,899
To learn to make something well

1030
01:00:35,933 --> 01:00:39,833
can take your whole
life and it's worth it.

1031
01:00:41,466 --> 01:00:42,966
That'll do, I think.

1032
01:00:43,000 --> 01:00:46,000
(attendees laughing)

1033
01:00:46,033 --> 01:00:47,333
So, shall we do Q and A?

1034
01:00:50,699 --> 01:00:53,966
The big thing that has
happened to both fantasy

1035
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:56,699
and science fiction
in my lifetime

1036
01:00:56,733 --> 01:01:00,200
is that they have come all the
way out of that genre closet

1037
01:01:00,233 --> 01:01:01,566
that they were forced into

1038
01:01:02,933 --> 01:01:05,000
and are recognized
as literature.

1039
01:01:08,333 --> 01:01:11,600
- You now have a
generation that grew up

1040
01:01:13,000 --> 01:01:16,000
that doesn't quite understand

1041
01:01:16,033 --> 01:01:20,166
why these artificial
divisions ever existed.

1042
01:01:21,166 --> 01:01:23,166
- Le Guin was ahead of her time

1043
01:01:23,200 --> 01:01:26,100
and we needed to
catch back up to her.

1044
01:01:27,433 --> 01:01:28,966
- The only question
that should matter is,

1045
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:30,266
is this any good or not?

1046
01:01:31,300 --> 01:01:34,266
I read A Wizard of Earthsea and,

1047
01:01:36,366 --> 01:01:38,933
just little things
rearranged in my head,

1048
01:01:38,966 --> 01:01:41,966
that's when I
powerfully, hungrily,

1049
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:43,533
more than anything
else I'd ever felt,

1050
01:01:43,566 --> 01:01:44,633
wanted to be a writer.

1051
01:01:46,699 --> 01:01:50,233
- You cannot deny Ursula
Le Guin's influence

1052
01:01:50,266 --> 01:01:53,066
on writers now of all kinds.

1053
01:01:54,899 --> 01:01:59,100
And I think that in
the final analysis

1054
01:02:00,533 --> 01:02:03,033
is much more important than
whether she was being reviewed

1055
01:02:03,066 --> 01:02:05,266
as she should have
been reviewed in 1975

1056
01:02:06,566 --> 01:02:07,966
because she was being read

1057
01:02:08,000 --> 01:02:09,600
by the people who would grow up

1058
01:02:10,933 --> 01:02:13,666
to change opinions
and change the world.

1059
01:02:16,000 --> 01:02:17,966
- It's certainly a
remarkable writer

1060
01:02:18,000 --> 01:02:20,833
who can meet you when
you're 10 years old

1061
01:02:20,866 --> 01:02:22,766
and give you something
wonderful to read

1062
01:02:22,800 --> 01:02:26,133
and still be there for you
when you're 45 years old

1063
01:02:26,166 --> 01:02:27,400
and everywhere in between.

1064
01:02:27,433 --> 01:02:29,766
I think she's one of
the greatest writers

1065
01:02:29,800 --> 01:02:33,966
that the 20th century American
literary scene produced.

1066
01:02:36,233 --> 01:02:39,666
- [David] It's like that famous
Earth shot called Earthrise

1067
01:02:39,699 --> 01:02:43,033
where we see our Earth
just rising over the moon,

1068
01:02:43,066 --> 01:02:45,633
this little, blue,
fragile circle.

1069
01:02:47,800 --> 01:02:50,066
Ursula's usage of
science fiction,

1070
01:02:50,100 --> 01:02:54,533
I feel is to make these
Earthrise photographs

1071
01:02:54,566 --> 01:02:57,699
so we can perhaps for the
first time see our world

1072
01:02:57,733 --> 01:02:59,166
from a different perspective.

1073
01:03:00,633 --> 01:03:04,033
If a world is dreamable, maybe
it can be dreamed into being.

1074
01:03:06,200 --> 01:03:09,266
(light mellow music)

1075
01:03:21,233 --> 01:03:23,466
- When I take you to the valley,

1076
01:03:23,500 --> 01:03:25,166
you'll see the blue
hills on the left

1077
01:03:25,200 --> 01:03:27,133
and the blue hills on the right,

1078
01:03:27,166 --> 01:03:29,300
the rainbow and the
vineyards under the rainbow

1079
01:03:29,333 --> 01:03:32,100
late in the rainy season
and maybe you'll say,

1080
01:03:32,133 --> 01:03:33,366
there it is, that's it.

1081
01:03:35,033 --> 01:03:36,733
But I'll say, a little farther.

1082
01:03:38,133 --> 01:03:40,566
We'll go on, I hope,
and you'll see the roofs

1083
01:03:40,600 --> 01:03:43,866
of the little towns and the
hillsides yellow with wild oats

1084
01:03:45,233 --> 01:03:47,733
and maybe you'll say, let's
stop here, this is it!

1085
01:03:50,133 --> 01:03:51,966
But I'll say, a
little farther yet.

1086
01:03:53,533 --> 01:03:56,200
We'll go on and you'll
hear the quail calling

1087
01:03:56,233 --> 01:03:58,433
on the mountain by the
springs of the river.

1088
01:04:00,266 --> 01:04:02,566
And looking back, you'll see
the river running downward

1089
01:04:02,600 --> 01:04:06,899
through the wild hills
behind, below and you'll say,

1090
01:04:06,933 --> 01:04:08,533
isn't that it, the valley?

1091
01:04:10,000 --> 01:04:12,366
And all I'll be able to say is,

1092
01:04:13,800 --> 01:04:16,933
drink this water of the
spring, rest here a while.

1093
01:04:16,966 --> 01:04:21,866
We have a long way yet to go
and I can't go without you.

1094
01:04:21,866 --> 01:04:25,000
(light mellow music)

1095
01:04:59,366 --> 01:05:02,600
(light exciting music)