Deported from Utopia

[mattd]

In utopia
by annalee newitz
MY OLD FRIEND Joe Sartelle (www.sartelle.org) used to ask people what their
textual preferences were. In a way, that is a far more intimate question
than the commonly heard "What is your sexual preference?" One's gender
choice in sex partners reveals almost nothing  save what kinds of bodies
you enjoy  but one's choice of texts, of stories, can summarize an entire
personality.
My greatest and earliest textual love is science fiction. Nothing has the
power to move me more than a well-crafted tale about an alien world or
future. And in times of great stress, I turn to science fiction for solace,
for alternative ways of thinking.
Last week I was lucky enough to spend some time talking about alternative
cultures with Ursula Le Guin, whose radical, speculative fiction has been
my preference since I was a kid. Her most recent novels, The Telling (2000)
and The Other Wind (2001), offer powerful stories of hope in the face of
war and terrorism on other planets. Le Guin is also the author of
celebrated works of social-protest science fiction, such as The Left Hand
of Darkness (1969), The Dispossessed (1974), and Always Coming Home (1985).
When the future feels horrifying, one wants to hear about utopia, and Le
Guin is often called a utopian writer. I wondered what a utopian would
think about America's current "war on terrorism." Laughing, Le Guin said,
"Don't call me utopian. Utopia is always something you can't get to because
it doesn't exist. I prefer to be called hopeful. We can hope that we might
get out of this mess, or that decent behavior might take place, because,
well, it does sometimes." It's hard to imagine decent behavior when Bush is
threatening violence. It feels like there are no alternatives, no other
ways the story could end.
And that's where fiction can be useful. It invites us to speculate about
other narrative options. In The Telling, Le Guin's protagonist is Sutty, a
scholar who comes to a planet called Aka whose government has been taken
over by ruthless, techno-worshipping capitalists known as the Corporation.
Sutty is perplexed by the monoculture of Aka until she finds out that the
Corporation has been violently suppressing the peaceful, spiritual people
who follow the old ways of the planet. Those people have maintained an
anticorporate, ecologically balanced culture in the face of brutal
oppression and have even created a massive, secret library of books that
contradict the Corporation's views. As Sutty learns more, it's clear that
Aka's destiny is hardly in the hands of the Corporation, and resistance is
not futile.
More on http://www.sfbg.com/SFLife/tech/78.html