The New York Review of Science Fiction

Issue 346 (April 2018) Table of Contents

• Sandra J. Lindow: The Dance of Nonviolent Subversion in Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle
• Mark Scroggins: The Nonfiction Michael Moorcock
• The Broken Hours by Jacqueline Baker, reviewed by Pete Rawlik
• Brian Stableford: Rockets in Early French Science Fiction
• Mike Barrett: Captive Inspiration: The Supernatural Tales of A.N.L. Munby
• A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison by Nat Segaloff, reviewed by Darrell Schweitzer
• Editorial: Loss

NYRSF 346 Editorial: Loss

First, I have the honor of introducing our Ursula K. Le Guin issue and Sandra Lindow’s comprehensive examination of the Library of America’s Hainish Novels and Stories omnibus, a monumental book for a monumental career.

But Le Guin was more than a monument. I never had the pleasure of meeting her, but she was deeply entangled in the sf community, an inspiration and more importantly a friend to so many, and even family to a few. Our publishers—Gavin Grant and Kelly Link—named their daughter “Ursula” out of love for Ms. Le Guin. For all of us she was a landmark; for many of us, she was an integral part of life.

We will feel her loss. Mercifully, we have all her work to guide us back to her.

A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison by Nat Segaloff, reviewed by Darrell Schweitzer

Framingham, Massachusetts: NESFA Press, 2017: $35.00 hc; 416 pages

Oh, look, a book about Harlan. A very entertaining, even moving book about Harlan.

If I have to explain who “Harlan” is, this book is probably not for you. If you have never read his work, you will not have the associations in your head for this book to really resonate. But if you are of a certain age and you have been reading science fiction all your life, then he has been a presence in your life even if you’ve never met him or heard him speak. If you have attended conventions and interacted with him, if only as a member of his audience, this very lively book is going to mean a great deal. It is not a regular biography, but it’s what we’ve got, and it’s full of Harlan Ellison Stories.

Mike Barrett: Captive Inspiration: The Supernatural Tales of A.N.L. Munby

A number of literary works have been produced by writers during periods of incarceration. These include such classics as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, and Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Other authors of “prison literature” include Oscar Wilde, Sir Walter Raleigh, Napoleon Bonaparte, Fyodor Dostoevsky, O. Henry, and E.E. Cummings, and in more recent times Martin Luther King Jr. with Letter from Birmingham City Jail, and Nelson Mandela, whose Conversations With Myself was compiled while he was imprisoned on Robben Island. One of the most remarkable of all these books was Missing Soluch by the Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, who, lacking pen or paper, fashioned this 400-page novel entirely in his head, copying it down from memory after his release in 1979.

Sandra J. Lindow: The Dance of Nonviolent Subversion in Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle

Since the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Ursula K. Le Guin has been one of the most influential voices in science fiction. In her unflinching condemnation of binary thinking and the various prejudices that inform social culture and politics, she has changed how we read science fiction as well as how we see ourselves. Although the sf/f community has long recognized Le Guin’s genius through Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, recently she has been receiving considerable additional recognition across the mainstream. In 2014, Le Guin was named the 27th recipient of the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In February 2017, Le Guin was voted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honor society of the country’s 250 leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Correspondingly, the canonization of her work has begun through high-quality, authoritative, clothbound editions published by the Library of America (LOA) as part of a series that celebrates America’s most influential writers. These editions are intended to last due to a painstaking print process that requires printing with the grain to keep the Smyth-sewn binding from cracking and allow the books to lie completely flat. Beginning with The Complete Orsinia (2016) and more recently a two-volume boxed set of her Hainish Novels and Stories (2017), the LOA invites readers to explore her rich, living legacy. Le Guin took an active hand in preparing the texts for these volumes. Brian Attebery, the editor, previously worked with Le Guin on the Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960–1990 (1993).