![]() As opposed to realistic fiction, she says, imaginative fiction opens all the doors that may be closed in realist fiction. Le Guin particularly saw a power in sci-fi and surrealism. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. Le Guin said, “Reading is a means of listening.” “The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. The imagination is an essential tool of the mind, a fundamental way of thinking, an indispensable means of becoming and remaining human.” ![]() It is not a weapon, though all weapons originate from it, and their use, or non-use, depends on it, as with all tools and their uses. It has no place in the vocabulary of profit-making. She was outspoken about the suppression of imagination in our culture and cultures of the west, and the commodification of it.įrom her book, Words Are My Matter: “Imagination is not a means of making money. ![]() Le Guin’s own work was once dismissed as genre rather that heralded as literature, but she got her due. Le Guin knew what stories could do, and she knew how western societies in particular subtly suppress stories that are in any way perceived as “genre”.
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