A Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula K. Le Guin
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea: Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
For those of you familiar with Ursula K. Le Guin’s Science Fiction works, her return to Gethen and Hainish characters is both comforting and intriguing. But not all of the stories in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea do this; of eight total stories, five do not. The collection opens with an introduction by Le Guin on Science Fiction and its appeal (or lack of) to those who don’t--or choose not to--read in the genre. Among other things, Le Guin defends Science Fiction with a humanist approach, contrary to any preconceived notions of the “science” inevitable in the fiction. The human foundation behind the works is what inevitably drives SF forward, “It’s stories. It’s fiction that plays with certain subjects for their inherent interest, beauty, relevance to the human condition” (p. 1).
Le Guin encourages and emphasizes this approach in the face of hesitation due to technophobia or the belief that readers, as humans, can only understand the lives and purposes of other humans. After all, the “freedom of metaphor” (p. 4) Science Fiction as a genre provides is the ability to explore the human conditions in many different ways, from many different angles. She writes, of Science Fiction, “it includes other beings, other aspects of beings. It may be about relationships between people--the great subject of realist fiction--but it may be about the relationship between a person and something else, another kind of being, an idea, a machine, an experience, a society” (p. 5). The impression left behind is the influence Earth-thinking has on us as humans as our fictional counterparts leave to explore other beings, other ideas, other machines, other societies. Our experiences will always be drawn with respect to where we have been and where we as readers are now, picking up this collection to begin a journey through eight different stories.
Science Fiction is relevant to our lives, to our examination of life and of living because “we have to take our dirt with us wherever we go. We are dirt. We are Earth” (p.11).
In its second part, the introduction concludes, specifically on the stories in the collection, that there “are no messages” in them. They “are stories” (p.7). To remember this important phrase, along with the reminder that we take our Earth with us wherever we go, is key to understanding the beauty behind each story--the beauty inherent in the telling of experiences, of having experiences, of being a story.
“The First Contact With the Gorgonoids” and “The Ascent of the North Face” are both short, humorous stories where expectations are met with very different and surprisingly delightful conclusions. “Newton’s Sleep” is more on the serious side, and Le Guin’s response to “smugly antiseptic” (p. 11) stories that “depict people in space stations and spaceships as superior to those on earth.” In a direct reference to Theodore Sturgeon’s “Cold Equations,” “Newton’s Sleep” is a caution against the harsh reality of science without human consideration, of the dead weight humans represent when not figured into the scientific endeavors. Heralding science for the sake of science, above and at the expense of humans and humanity is to inevitably lose something that makes us what we are.
The Spes Society values community over culture and nationality, neither of which is needed on a space station. It’s argued whether or not children should learn about Earth when they’ve never been there, or if environmentally conscious decorations should be done away with, favoring the sterility of the space station. What invariably falls victim to this are the rich cultures of Earth. By selectively choosing the fittest, most intelligent people from a dying planet, they are left with a type of survivor’s guilt and suffer the ghosts of those left behind. Esther’s repeated attempts at technological replacements for her degenerating vision mirrors the problems of the space station: technology will never be a replacement for the real thing. As the society of the Spes station begins to unravel, they begin to understand existence cannot be denied by perception alone. Out of sight, out of mind does not work.
The importance of society and of relationships to functioning in “Newton’s Sleep” are extremely important to the last three stories, “The Shobies’ Story,” “Dancing to Ganam,” and “Another Story.” But “The Rock That Changed Things” and “The Kerastion” are not directly related to either. Both are stories of rebellion, of denied freedoms and the artistic metaphors that are quite liberating, quite pertinent to Le Guin’s introduction.
The last three stories in the collection, I believe, should be treated as a micro collection within the larger one. All three return to the Hainish universe Le Guin frequently visits, and all three examine what it is to narrate our lives, whether through shared experiences or alone. Truth lies somewhere in that mixture, but it is neither one nor the other. The introduction of churten technology which gives humans the ability to achieve transilience--“skip” from one location to another, to be in both places simultaneously as an attempt at traveling from one point to the other is attempted--enforces the need for groups to think and work together despite cultural and age differences to go forward to any one destination. The consequence of not doing this results in dissonance, severe psychological delusion and distress. In “Dancing to Ganam” the events of “The Shobies’ Story” (where churten technology is first applied to a group of humans) is explained just in case it was misunderstood. In addition, the story is expanded upon, examining whether synchronous beliefs (the key to successful transilience) alone achieve “entrainment” (harmonious thought, inter-connectedness of mind) or if previous experience reassures and inspires the confidence needed for the same result. As the crew discovers, getting to their destination is the least of their problems, however delightful the means. Dancing becomes the best method to avoid the disastrous outcome of the Shoby crew; dancing requires working relationships, to the music, to each other; dancing brings the entrainment needed for transilience. But when the crew lands on Ganam, the dancing stops and our protagonists are faced with disparate realities that threaten the sanctity of the mission.
“Another Story” is a culmination of both of these stories in which churten theory both works and doesn’t work; its malfunction (time travel) brings about a distressing experience Hideo needs to work through to find the harmonious life he’s been looking for.
Churten theory is a “metaphor for narration...the chancy and unreliable but most effective means of constructing a shared reality” (p. 9). At the end of the collection, which I have not done justice in my review, we can look back at the experience of reading the book (the book itself, an experiment in churten theory; we are both in our reality and in the reality of the book), of looking at the same words from different perspectives and say, “We danced it!” (p. 129)
View all my reviews >>