Interview with Ursula K. Le Guin in Science Fiction Review, No. 25 (Bonus Issue), 1978

Ursula K. Le Guin

Periodical

Science Fiction Review, Portland, Oregon: Richard E. Geis. Issue No. 25 (Bonus Issue), May 1978. One of the most important independent critical journals of the 1970s science-fiction renaissance, here featuring a substantial, multi-page interview with Ursula K. Le Guin, at the time already recognized as “the first lady of science fiction and fantasy” and a leading feminist voice reshaping the genre. Printed on newsprint in tabloid booklet format, this issue includes interviews with George Scithers, Poul Anderson, and Jack Chalker, but it is Le Guin’s searching and often disarmingly frank conversation with Mark P. Haselkorn that stands as the issue’s centerpiece. Her comments mark a transitional moment in her career, bridging The Dispossessed (1974), The Lathe of Heaven (1971), and the manuscript stage of The Eye of the Heron (1978), offering rare insight into her evolving political, stylistic, and feminist commitments.

Across the interview, Le Guin reflects on writing as an ethical vocation, on the liberatory possibilities of speculative fiction, and on the pressures placed on women writers within a male-dominated field. She notes with characteristic clarity the unresolved tension between the intellectual seriousness demanded of science fiction and the expectations imposed on women authors: “On the feminist urge to equalize past injustices: I don’t think revenge gets anybody anywhere… It’s very hard to generalize.” Responding to questions about the “scientist on the fringe” archetype in her novels such as Shevek, Gummen, and Ged, she emphasizes the need to dissolve the imagined divide between science and art: “Perhaps you should not take my scientists too seriously… they’re quite right that a scientist and an artist are the same type of person.” When Haselkorn presses her on whether science fiction’s ethical edge might constitute a kind of activism, Le Guin is emphatic that the writer’s primary responsibility is honesty: “I don’t like preachy works… I’m just writing what’s inside.” Le Guin also offers pointed critique of the SF establishment of the 1970s, especially the sudden market expectation for “feminist anthologies”: “Now we’ll have only women writing the stories… This strikes me as very funny, and just sort of right—this is okay. Now you know what it’s like.” Her tone throughout blends humor with a lucid understanding of gender, labor, and literary politics at a moment when the New Wave and feminist SF movements were reshaping the field; her comments today serve as a historical document of an author consciously navigating, and helping to redefine, a genre in transition. Toning to newsprint, one vertical tear to front cover, small chip at lower corner; internal pages clean and fully legible with no loss to text. Overall very good condition.

Item #22925

Price: $200.00