testing

Here's the deal; I'm insatiably curious, and I'm also a writer, and I get to hang out with some awesome, intelligent people and read a lot because I'm a graduate student. So if you're curious, too, if something in the news doesn't make sense, or if you've always wondered about something, drop me a line, post a comment and ASK, and I'll hunt up an answer for you...which may or may not match your question, but that's the risk you take, Ok?

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

back from the abyss

Hi, all; I've been "gone," lost in the hassle of the end of the semester and then the holidays. Now, I'm back.

To get back into the swing of things, I thought I'd mix it up and explain why some of those books are on my reading list. And I'll start with maybe the least obvious; what does "A Wizard of Earthsea" have to do with environmental science? Is this just an example of my being drawn off topic by a great fantasy novelist?

As it turns out, no. This book made me an ecologist, by inclination if not by training.

Ursula K. LeGuin has a remarkable ability to fold multiple layers into her stories, so on one level you've got some fun escapism and on other levels you have these wise and deep comments on some really serious issues. You can ignore these comments if you like, her books aren't heavy or bombastic in any way, but they wriggle into your brain and then pop out twenty years later when you go "oh! So THAT'S what she was talking about!" I won't follow all of the threads I've found in her writing here, and I won't follow any of them very far (you've got to read them yourself) but one of them is that in her literary world, wizards have to be very careful because while they have the power to change almost anything they please, in so doing they will change the rest of the world in unpredictable ways. This is, of course, quite true of our world, too, and most of you probably know it at least intellectually, but it's one thing to hear a dire warning on a documentary, based on science that might be a little too arcane to understand, or simply not included at all, and it's another thing to read the same idea coming out of the mouths of these fantasy characters talking about Balance, and magic, and dragons.

For one thing, it's more fun. For another thing, it shows us the lives of people who really act on this knowledge in their daily lives, and where acting on it is, if not simple, at least simpler, and less ambiguous; the mighty wizard, capable of changing the weather, sleeping outside, in the rain, wrapped in a wet blanket. Beside him sleeps a little wild animal, not enchanted, keeping him company simply because it likes him.