Saturday, June 2, 2012

Alaska cedar: Ursula K. LeGuin's "Always Coming Home" (1985) and vision of human's use of technology

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ylZ7kMaUMx8/0.jpg


Ursula K. LeGuin's "Always Coming Home" (1985) expresses a vision of human's use of technology 400 years in the future (the book is an ethnographic science fiction taking place in the future, after the oceans have risen due to global warming, in what's now possibly Napa valley in California) as being part of a kind of very human, human nature, both peaceful and warlike.

The New York Times' book review (the reference to Delany's review is here - http://scottmacleod.com/daltonbiblio.htm) at the time of publication, 1985, called this novella, poetry, language invention, - and all of this accompanied by an audio cassette of the music (by Todd Barton) of the people of the valley of the Kesh, - 'lyrical and luminous.' :) It's a beautiful book about the culture of the Kesh people, and a major work of the imagination.


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For related explorations, check out the 'Ethnographic Fiction,' wiki, subject page at WUaS - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Ethnographic_Fiction ... as well as the MIT course there.


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... just got Le Guin's "The Lathe of Heaven" (1971) yesterday from a used book seller, (and Reed chemistry major from around 1961), on the Reed College Student Union steps ... "I imagine it so ..."


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... Le Guin has lived in Portland, Oregon, for decades ...





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