Five Ways to Forgiveness

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  1978

  Again rewrites early novel Malafrena, finishing in December. Science fiction novella “The Eye of the Heron” appears in the original anthology Millennial Women, edited by Virginia Kidd, in August. Mother falls ill.

  1979

  Wins the Gandalf Grand Master Award for life achievement in fantasy writing. Susan Wood edits the first volume of Le Guin’s speeches and essays, The Language of the Night. Around this time she discovers the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, a favorite and acknowledged influence. Mother dies of cancer on July 4. Le Guin’s first children’s picture book, Leese Webster, is published with illustrations by James Brunsman in September by Atheneum. Malafrena is published in October by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Le Guin is invited to take part in a symposium on narrative at the University of Chicago, October 26–28, along with scholars and writers such as Seymour Chatman, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Robert Scholes, Victor Turner, Paul Ricoeur, and Hayden White. Her contribution at the end of the symposium is “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night; or, Why Are We Huddling Around the Campfire?”, a piece that is both a witty summary of the discussions and a metanarrative about the value of story. She wrote in a headnote to the published version that “I had bought my first and only pair of two-inch-heeled shoes, black French ones, to wear there, but I never dared put them on; there were so many Big Guns shooting at one another that it seemed unwise to try to increase my stature.” Short story “Two Delays on the Northern Line” is published in The New Yorker in the November 12 issue.

  1980

  On January 9, television movie of The Lathe of Heaven airs, filmed by PBS station WNET with a script by Roger Swaybill and Diane English with extensive contributions by David Loxton and Le Guin. Charles and Ursula appear as extras, an experience she writes about in an essay called “Working on ‘The Lathe.’” Le Guin likes the film and finds the whole experience quite positive, in contrast to later experiences with film adaptations of her work. Young adult novel The Beginning Place published in February by Harper & Row. It is reviewed in The New Yorker by John Updike in June. Collaborates with Virginia Kidd as editors of the anthologies Edges and Interfaces. From 1980 to 1993, teaches many times at The Flight of the Mind writing workshop for women in McKenzie Bridge, Oregon, in her opinion her most valuable teaching experience.

  1981

  Poetry collection Hard Words published by Harper.

  1982

  “Sur,” a story that is not so much alternative history as crypto-history (the female explorers who are first to the South Pole keep their feat a secret), appears in The New Yorker in January. The New Yorker publishes two more of her stories this year, in July and October.

  1984

  Brian Booth founds the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts and invites Le Guin, along with Floyd Skloot and William Stafford, to become members of the advisory board.

  1985

  In January, The New Yorker publishes “She Unnames Them,” a story of a type that Le Guin has called a “psychomyth.” In October, publishes a major new science fiction novel, Always Coming Home, set in the future California. Novel involves collaboration with geologist George Hersh, artist Margaret Chodos, and composer Todd Barton, whose music of the imagined Kesh people is included on a cassette tape with the original boxed set (and creates problems with the Library of Congress, which objects to copyrighting the music of indigenous peoples). The book wins the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction by an American woman and is a runner-up for the National Book Award. It also creates a stir among more conservative science fiction readers and writers for being what they consider antitechnology; Le Guin points out that the book is pervaded with technology, though the technology is predicated upon a sustainable use of resources. Publishes a screenplay, King Dog, based on a segment of Hindu epic the Mahabharata. Composer Elinor Armer composes song settings of poems from Le Guin’s collection Wild Angels. The two meet and begin to collaborate on eight musical compositions for orchestra and voices called Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts.

  1987

  Novella “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight” appears in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. The story combines another critique of anthropocentrism with an homage to American Indian storytelling tradition.

  1988

  Publishes children’s picture storybook Catwings, illustrated by S. D. Schindler. The saga of a family of flying cats continues with Catwings Return (1989), Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings (1994), and Jane on Her Own (1999). The origin of the whole set is a winged cat drawn as a doodle by Ursula, which prompts the writing of the first story. The Catwings are reminiscent of a much larger (and thus much less feasible) race of winged cats in Rocannon’s World.

  1989

  Receives the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association for her critical contributions, following in the footsteps of scholars such as H. Bruce Franklin and Thomas Clareson as well as writer-critics like James Blish and Joanna Russ.

  1990

  A fourth Earthsea novel, Tehanu, is published by Atheneum/Macmillan in March. It reexamines themes from earlier volumes such as the maleness and (implicit) celibacy of wizards and the relationship between dragons and humans. Despite controversy over what some see as a revisionist history of a beloved fantasy world, the novel receives much acclaim (in 1993 in “Earthsea Revisioned” Le Guin says she always knew there was more to tell about Earthsea, but the fourth volume had to wait until she was ready to tell a story about women’s lives: “I couldn’t continue my hero-tale until I had, as woman and artist, wrestled with the angels of the feminist consciousness”).

  1991

  Tehanu wins Nebula Award and Locus Award. Publishes Searoad, a linked collection or story cycle about a fictional coastal town in Oregon. Wins Pushcart Prize for short story “Bill Weisler,” which is collected in Searoad. In the fall, is writer-in-residence for a semester at Beloit College, in Wisconsin, holding the Lois and Willard Mackey Chair in Creative Writing.

  1992

  Searoad is shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. Wins the H. L. Davis Fiction Award from the Oregon Library Association.

  1993

  With Karen Joy Fowler and Brian Attebery, edits The Norton Book of Science Fiction, which, though initially criticized for being too inclusive or “politically correct,” is widely used as a textbook not only in science fiction classes but also in courses in short fiction and fiction writing.

  1995

  Receives the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Publishes Four Ways to Forgiveness, a collection of four linked novellas set in a world within the Hainish universe. Charles retires from Portland State University.

  1996

  Publishes a volume of poetry, The Twins, the Dream (1996), in which she and Argentine poet Diana Bellessi translate each other’s work. Receives a Retrospective Tiptree Award from The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council for The Left Hand of Darkness.

  1997

  Short story collection Unlocking the Air is nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Stories in the collection include the 1982 New Yorker story “The Professor’s Houses”; the title story in which the postcommunist revolution comes to Orsinia; and “The Poacher,” an exploration of what it means to be an interloper rather than the hero of a fairy tale. Publishes a version of the Tao Te Ching, which she describes as a rendering in English, rather than a direct translation. Though she doesn’t know Chinese, she is a lifelong student of Lao Tzu’s enigmatic text and of Taoist philosophy, introduced to both by her father. In producing her English version she consults many translations, loose and literal, and consults with scholar J. P. Seaton.

  1998

  Publishes Steering the Craft, a guide to writing based on her own practice and on the many workshops she has conducted. Her examples of excellence include Kipling, Twain, Woolf, and a Northern Paiute storyteller whose name is not recorded.

  2000

  The U.S. Library of Congress honors
Le Guin as a Living Legend in the Writers and Artists category. Awarded the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award by the Los Angeles Times. Publishes The Telling in September, the first new novel since 1974 to be set in the Hainish universe of her early science fiction. Many shorter works in the same universe have appeared over the years, including “Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” (1971), “The Shobies’ Story” (1990), “Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea” (1994), and the four linked novellas of Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995).

  2001

  The Telling wins the Endeavor Award for best book by a writer from the Pacific Northwest and the Locus Award. Le Guin is inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Publishes Tales from Earthsea and the final volume of the Earthsea story, The Other Wind.

  2002

  Tales from Earthsea wins the Endeavor Award and the Locus Award. The Other Wind wins the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Receives the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction. Fellow winner Junot Díaz acknowledges her influence. Participates in artists’ rallies against the Patriot Act, passed the previous year; she writes, “What do attacks on freedom of speech and writing mean to a writer? It means that somebody’s there with a big plug they’re trying to fit into your mouth.”

  2003

  Translates science fiction novel Kalpa Imperial by Argentine writer Angélica Gorodischer. Publishes Changing Planes, a linked collection of partly satirical stories about people who slip between realities while waiting in airports. Named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

  2004

  Changing Planes wins the Locus Award for best story collection. Publishes Gifts, the first of three volumes of the Annals of the Western Shore, a fantasy for young adults, in September. Receives the Margaret A. Edwards Award for contributions to children’s literature from the American Library Association and delivers the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture to the ALA’s subdivision, the Association for Library Service to Children.

  2005

  Gifts wins the 2005 PEN Center Children’s Literature Award.

  2006

  Publishes the middle volume of the Annals of the Western Shore, Voices, in September. The Washington Center for the Book awards Le Guin the Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers for a distinguished body of work.

  2007

  Publishes the final volume of the Annals of the Western Shore, Powers, in September. Works through Virgil’s Aeneid in Latin, ten lines a day, in preparation for writing the historical novel Lavinia, a retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of the hero’s Italic second wife, who is silent in the original version.

  2008

  Lavinia is published in April and wins the Locus Award. Powers wins the Nebula Award.

  2009

  Publishes Cheek by Jowl, a book of essays on fantasy and why it matters. Brother Karl dies on November 8 of cancer, age eighty-two, in Brooklyn, New York.

  2010

  Cheek by Jowl wins Locus Award for best nonfiction/art book. Is the subject of a festschrift, or celebratory volume, on the occasion of her eightieth birthday. 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin is edited by Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin and includes essays and original works by many writers and scholars, including Kim Stanley Robinson, Andrea Hairston, Julie Phillips, Gwyneth Jones, Eleanor Arnason, and John Kessel. Publishes Out Here, Poems and Images from Steens Mountain Country, with text, poems, and sketches by Le Guin, text and photographs by Roger Dorband.

  2012

  Publishes Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems, her sixth book of poems. Publishes two-volume edition of selected short stories under the title The Unreal and the Real. Receives the J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction at the University of California, Riverside.

  2013

  Interviewed in the Paris Review series “The Art of Fiction.” Publishes a translation of Squaring the Circle: A Pseudotreatise of Urbogony (2013) by Romanian writer Gheorghe Sasarman, which is retranslated from the Spanish translation by Mariano Martín Rodríguez, with both translations being overseen by Sasarman.

  2014

  Awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In her widely quoted speech she calls for “writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom—poets, visionaries—realists of a larger reality.”

  2017

  Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

  Note on the Texts

  Five Ways to Forgiveness contains five linked stories: the four stories previously collected as Four Ways to Forgiveness (New York: HarperPrism, 1995), as well as “Old Music and the Slave Women.” They are published here as a complete story suite, as the author intended, for this first time.

  Four Ways to Forgiveness contained four linked stories. The original publication of each of the stories is as follows:

  “Betrayals,” Blue Motel, Vol. 3, edited by Peter Crowther (London: Little, Brown, 1994), pp. 195–229.

  “Forgiveness Day,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, Vol. 18, Nos. 12 & 13 (November 1994), pp. 264–303.

  “A Man of the People,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, Vol. 19, Nos. 4 & 5 (April 1995), pp. 22–64.

  “A Woman’s Liberation,” Asimov’s Science Fiction, Vol. 19, No. 8 (July 1995), pp. 116–62.

  The four stories were then collected as the story suite Four Ways to Forgiveness and published by HarperPrism in September 1995. A British edition was published by Gollancz in June 1996. The British edition is the same as the American edition except for changes to bring about conformity with British conventions of punctuation. The first American edition is the source of the text used here.

  “Old Music and the Slave Women” was first published in Far Horizons: All New Tales from the Greatest Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg (New York: Avon Eos, 1999), pp. 5–52. It was then included in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, the source of the text used here.

  This e-book presents the texts of the original printings chosen for inclusion here, but it does not attempt to reproduce features of their typographic design. The texts are presented without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features, and they are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular. The following is a list of typographical errors corrected, cited by page and line number of the print edition: 340.28, stole!“; 361.9, soon she; 362.31, somone; 428.17, doctors.); 480.20, owners’; 504.31, give; 546.5, inaccesible; 572.10, third and and; 585.10, tribesman.

  Notes

  In the notes below, the reference numbers denote page and line of the print edition (the line count includes headings, but not rule lines). No note is made for material included in the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, except for certain cases where common words and terms have specific historical meanings or inflections. Biblical quotations and allusions are keyed to the King James Version; references to Shakespeare to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blackmore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). For further biographical background, references to other studies, and more detailed notes, see Elizabeth Cummins, Understanding Ursula K. Le Guin, revised edition (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993); Ursula K. Le Guin, “Introduction,” in The Norton Book of Science Fiction (New York: W. W. Norton, 1993); John Wray, “Ursula K. Le Guin, The Art of Fiction No. 221,” The Paris Review, No. 206 (Fall 2013); Richard D. Erlich, Coyote’s Song: The Teaching Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin (Rockville, MD: Borgo, 2010); Donna R. White, Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999); Mike Cadden, Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults (New York: Routledge, 2005); Sandra Lindow, Dancing the Tao: Le Guin and Moral Development (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012);
and Susan M. Bernardo and Graham J. Murphy, Ursula K. Le Guin: A Critical Companion (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2006).

  338.10 Cyanid skins] Cyan is a greenish blue color; “cyanid” is different from cyanosis, a bluish skin condition caused by lack of oxygen.

  353.5 aiji] A given name in Japanese, meaning “beloved child,” but here denoting a martial art.

  417.26 There are two kinds of knowledge, local and universal.] “Local knowledge” usually refers to such minor items as weather patterns or road conditions, but Le Guin draws here on the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who uses the phrase to show how complex cultural patterns such as religion are built upon, and defined by, those smaller sorts of understanding.

  424.15 the Terran Altiplano] The high plateau (averaging over 12,000 feet in elevation) that sits amid the Andes Mountains in Bolivia and extends into parts of Peru, Argentina, and Chile.

  433.29 I believe in it because it is impossible.] Adapted from a line by Carthaginian Christian philosopher Tertullian (c. 155–240 C.E.): Certum est quia impossibile est, “It [the resurrection of Christ] is certain because it is impossible.”

  459.36 “jump the ditch.”] An echo of the custom of jumping the broom, originally a joking term in Britain for an unsanctioned elopement but later a marriage ceremony practiced by American slaves who were not allowed to marry legally.

  518.23–25 But how do you get there? . . . the problem with Utopia] In “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” (1891), Oscar Wilde wrote, “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”

  572.25–26 cyanotic skin coloration] See note 338.10.

  576.31 Kwan Yin–like] Kwan Yin or Guanyin, an East Asian Buddhist divinity commonly called the “Goddess of Mercy.”