I was beginning to get the feel of the medium. In the next books I kept on pushing at my own limitations and at the limits of science fiction. That is what the practice of an art is, you keep looking for the outside edge. When you find it you make a whole, solid, real, and beautiful thing; anything less is incomplete.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night
A funny thing about the featured image for this post: if I don’t give a prompt of my own, the image generator will make one up based on what’s in the post. The generator pulled out the science fiction and pushing the edges of the imagination of Le Guin’s thought. However, because it was about science fiction, it assumed it needed a male subject! This is doubly ironic because in the book from which this quotation comes, Le Guin addresses several times the awkwardness of being a woman SF writer in a field dominated by men.
The Language of the Night was an excellent-but-dense book. A full review will be out soon.
Last week: Rick Ludwin on the secret of Seinfeld’s success.
Next week: Albrecht Dürer on extracting art.
See the index for what’s been posted and what’s to come.
I'd love to hear from you!