The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy
Le Guin on why fantasy is not escapism and why Americans are afraid of dragons, sharp about her field and sharper about the critics who condescended to it.
Le Guin’s essays on why fantasy is not escapism, why Americans are afraid of dragons, and what the imagination is actually for. Written across the 1970s, sharp about her own field and sharper still about the critics who condescended to it. She is also unsparing about her own early work, revisiting the gender politics of Earthsea with the same scrutiny she turns on everyone else.
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Maria Popova
That is what Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018) explores in a fragment of her wholly fantastic 1979 essay collection The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy (public library), which also gave us her abiding wisdom on the meaning of life.
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