'hobbits and quasars' would be a great autobiography name

[fahye]

I've only just started Ursula Le Guin's book of essays on fantasy & science fiction, The Language of the Night, and I can already tell I will be stopping every few pages to write down a quote. This one pleased me enormously:

I have wondered if there isn't some real connection between a certain kind of scientific-mindedness (the explorative, synthesizing kind) and fantasy-mindedness. Perhaps "science fiction" really isn't such a bad name for our genre after all. Those who dislike fantasy are very often equally bored or repelled by science. They don't like either hobbits, or quasars; they don't feel at home with them; they don't want complexities, remoteness. If there is any such connection, I'll bet that it is basically an aesthetic one.

- from 'A Citizen of Mondath'

Comments

[weaverandom.livejournal.com]

Goddamn I love Le Guin.

[lilyfarfalla.livejournal.com]

Oh, I so love her! I myself find reading her books rather slow going, if only because I have to stop and contemplate the turn of phrase or thought in every other sentence. This is a lovely quotation too.

[nextian.livejournal.com]

She's so wonderful. I do believe that -- at least insofar as my science mind is the same as my linguistics mind is the same as my world-building mind, and I love that flavor of fantasy -- I think there's also a different kind of fantasy that doesn't draw on hobbits or quasars and just allows for nonsensical/escapist romps (like some elements [not the math puzzle ones!] of Alice in Wonderland) and that doesn't appeal to me much either. It's why only about half of Stanislaw Lem is readable for me.