“The fact is, I never have written about the future,” begins Ursula K. Le Guin’s revealing quote at Galleycat.
[Thanks to Michael Walsh for the link.]
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Not sure what it’s especially “revealing” of–how many SF writers claim to be actual futurists, prognosticators? Meanwhile, Le Guin has always ferociously identified as a science fiction writer, sharply rebuking mainstream admirers who would separate her from the field.
I really admire her, too, and am always interested in any new comment she makes about her writing.
Le Guin rebukes not only mainstream admirers who separate her from SF, but SFnal critics who claim that much of her work doesn’t qualify.
Read the context of the quote, too. She says, “the future in writing a novel is a metaphor. It’s a way of talking about the present.” That’s hardly a remarkable statement; many SF writers would agree with her, going all the way back to H.G. Wells whose Eloi and Morlocks were a comment on the British class system, on through the early Galaxy writers like Pohl and Sheckley whose futures were exaggerated satires of present-day trends. The Hainish breeding programs in Le Guin’s fiction are really just thought experiments by Le Guin to show what humans are like by imagining what it would be like if they were a little bit different.