Ursula K. Le Guin was recently honored with one of the first retrospective James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Awards for her groundbreaking novel The Left Hand of Darkness. She accepted this award in May of 1996 at Wiscon 20, the only science fiction convention devoted to feminist issues, held every year in Madison, Wisconsin. (Le Guin was also the convention’s guest of honor, and those fortunate enough to attend Wiscon were delighted and entertained by her speech about “Geriatrica,” that land to which those of us who live long enough will inevitably be deported.) Among her many other honors are five Nebula Awards, five Hugo Awards, a National Book Award, The Pilgrim Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes her as “one of the most important writers within the field... More attention has been paid to her by the academic community than to any other modern sf writer.” Her books include The Lathe of Heaven, Malafrena, The Dispossessed, Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, Always Coming Home, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Four Ways to Forgiveness, and her four Earthsea novels (A Wizard of Earth-sea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, and Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea).
About her novelette “Solitude,” which won a 1995 Nebula Award, she writes:
“ ‘Solitude’ is one of a bunch of stories I have been writing which I call in my own mind Swiving Through the Cosmos, or Galactic Nookie-Nookie, because they all seem to have to do with love, sex, that sort of stuff. ‘Solitude’ comes at this interesting subject from a very odd angle,
and there is very little nookie-nookie in the story, I’m sorry to say. What the story seems to be working on is how a society that had really fallen apart, keeping only the most minimal social and community bonds, would handle sex and male-female relationships and bringing up the kids. It was fun to write because I am an introvert, and this is a planet full of introverts.”
An addition to “POVERTY: The Second Report on Eleven-Soro” by Mobile Entselenne’temharyonoterregwis Leaf, by her daughter, Serenity.
My mother, a field ethnologist, took the difficulty of learning anything about the people of Eleven-Soro as a personal challenge. The fact that she used her children to meet that challenge might be seen as selfishness or as selflessness. Now that I have read her report I know that she finally thought she had done wrong. Knowing what it cost her, I wish she knew my gratitude to her for allowing me to grow up as a person.
Shortly after a robot probe reported people of the Hainish Descent on the eleventh planet of the Soro system, she joined the orbital crew as back-up for the three First Observers down onplanet. She had spent four years in the tree-cities of nearby Huthu. My brother In Joy Born was eight years old and I was five; she wanted a year or two of ship duty so we could spend some time in a Hainish-style school. My brother had enjoyed the rainforests of Huthu very much, but though he could brachiate he could barely read, and we were all bright blue with skin-fungus. While Borny learned to read and I learned to wear clothes and we all had antifungus treatments, my mother became as intrigued by Eleven-Soro as the Observers were frustrated by it.
All this is in her report, but I will say it as I learned it from her, which helps me remember and understand. The language had been recorded by the probe and the Observers had spent a year learning it. The many dialectical variations excused their accents and errors, and they reported that language was not a problem. Yet there was a communication problem. The two men found themselves isolated, faced with suspicion or hostility, unable to form any connection with the native men, all of whom lived in solitary houses as hermits or in pairs. Finding communities of adolescent males, they tried to make contact with them, but when they entered the territory of such a group the boys either fled or rushed desperately at them trying to kill them. The women, who lived in what they called “dispersed villages,” drove them away with volleys of stones as soon as they came anywhere near the houses. “I believe,” one of them reported, “that the only community activity of the Sorovians is throwing rocks at men.”
Neither of them succeeded in having a conversation of more than three exchanges with a man. One of them mated with a woman who came by his camp; he reported that though she made unmistakable and insistent advances, she seemed disturbed by his attempts to converse, refused to answer his questions, and left him, he said, “as soon as she got what she came for.”
The woman Observer was allowed to settle in an unused house in a “village” (auntring) of seven houses. She made excellent observations of daily life, insofar as she could see any of it, and had several conversations with adult women and many with children; but she found that she was never asked into another woman’s house, nor expected to help or ask for help in any work. Conversation concerning normal activities was unwelcome to the other women; the children, her only informants, called her Aunt Crazy-Jabber. Her aberrant behavior caused increasing distrust and dislike among the women, and they began to keep their children away from her. She left. “There’s no way,” she told my mother, “for an adult to learn anything. They don’t ask questions, they don’t answer questions. Whatever they learn, they learn when they’re children.”
Aha! said my mother to herself, looking at Borny and me. And she requested a family transfer to Eleven-Soro with Observer status. The Stabiles interviewed her extensively by ansible, and talked with Borny and even with me—I don’t remember it, but she told me I told the Stabiles all about my new stockings—and agreed to her request. The ship was to stay in close orbit, with the previous Observers in the crew, and she was to keep radio contact with it,
daily if possible.
I have a dim memory of the tree-city, and of playing with what must have been a kitten or a ghole-kit on the ship; but my first clear memories are of our house in the auntring. It is half underground, half aboveground, with wattle-and-daub walls. Mother and I are standing outside it in the warm sunshine. Between us is a big mudpuddle, into which Borny pours water from a basket; then he runs off to the creek to get more water. I muddle the mud with my hands, deliciously, till it is thick and smooth. I pick up a big double handful and slap it onto the walls where the sticks show through. Mother says, “That’s good! That’s right!” in our new language, and I realize that this is work, and I am doing it. I am repairing the house. I am making it right, doing it right. I am a competent person.
I have never doubted that, so long as I lived there.
We are inside the house at night, and Borny is talking to the ship on the radio, because he misses talking the old language, and anyway he is supposed to tell them stuff. Mother is making a basket and swearing at the split reeds. I am singing a song to drown out Borny so nobody in the auntring hears him talking funny, and anyway I like singing. I learned this song this afternoon in Hyuru’s house. I play every day with Hyuru. “Be aware, listen, listen, be aware,” I sing. When Mother stops swearing she listens, and then she turns on the recorder. There is a little fire still left from cooking dinner, which was lovely pigi root, I never get tired of pigi. It is dark and warm and smells of pigi and of burning duhur, which is a strong, sacred smell to drive out magic and bad feelings, and as I sing “Listen, be aware,” I get sleepier and sleepier and lean against Mother, who is dark and warm and smells like Mother, strong and sacred, full of good feelings.
Our daily life in the auntring was repetitive. On the ship, later, I learned that people who live in artificially complicated situations call such a life “simple.” I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, who found life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave out the details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit.