I had not heard of Ursula K Le Guin before I picked up this issue of Fifth Estate; that was last month and I've read five of her books since then. This issue is dedicated to this prolific science fiction writer who has used the genre to communicate hundreds of alternate worlds, each reflecting a bit of ourselves back to us while opening us up to the space of possibility.
Le Guin, who is now 80, discusses her own work amidst a bevy of articles admiring and examining her novels in the context of neoliberalism, feminism and gender diversity.
Le Guin, in her excerpted essay "A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be", discusses utopia; she articulates the trouble with utopia as partially an excess of "yang," the energy associated in Chinese philosophy with a "bright male energy." She poses the possibility of "yin utopias" which might not be utopias at all in the way we traditionally understand them, as they are not overly concerned with perfection, control or progress.
She says, instead: "To attain the constant, to end in order, we must return, go round, go inward, go yinward. What would a yin utopia be? It would be dark, wet, obscure, weak, yielding, passive, participatory, circular, cyclical, peaceful, nurturant, retreating, retracting, and cold...If utopia is a place that does not exist, then surely (as Lao Tzu would say) the way to get there is by the way that is not a way. And in the same vein, the nature of the utopia I am trying to describe is such that if it is to come, it must exist already."
$2.00
