'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,

Comments

[weaverandom]

Goddamn I love Le Guin.

[lilyfarfalla]

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]

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.