Ursula K. LeGuin - The New Atlantis

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The New Atlantis

Ursula K. Le Guin

Enthusiasts sometimes refer to science fiction writers as "the poets of our future," celebrating the

art of the best science fiction in describing futures that are not only logically extrapolated but

whose images and themes also move us on very basic levels. The following story is a superb

example: its grim future is set in counterpoint to a Utopian past that just might reemerge.

Ursula K. Le Guin is a writer of prose and poetry who has won high acclaim in both science

fiction and general literature. Her best known novels are The Left Hand of Darkness and The

Lathe of Heaven, which was adapted for presentation on PBS-TV early in 1980.

COMING BACK FROM my Wilderness Week I sat by an odd sort of man in the bus. For a long time

we didn't talk; I was mending stockings and he was reading. Then the bus broke down a few miles

outside Gresham. Boiler trouble, the way it generally is when the driver insists on trying to go over thirty.

It was a Supersonic Superscenic Deluxe long distance coal-burner, with Home Comfort, that means a

toilet, and the seats were pretty comfortable, at least those that hadn't yet worked loose from their bolts,

so everybody waited inside the bus; besides, it was raining. We began talking, the way people do when

there's a breakdown and a wait. He held up his pamphlet and tapped it—he was a dry-looking man with

a school-teacherish way of using his hands—and said, "This is interesting. I've been reading that a new

continent is rising from the depths of the sea."

The blue stockings were hopeless. You have to have something besides holes to darn onto. "Which sea?"

"They're not sure yet. Most specialists think the Atlantic. But there's evidence it may be happening in the

Pacific, too."

"Won't the oceans get a little crowded?" I said, not taking it seriously. I was a bit snappish, because of

the breakdown and because those blue stockings had been good warm ones.

He tapped the pamphlet again and shook his head, quite serious. "No," he said. "The old continents are

sinking, to make room for the new. You can see that that is happening."

You certainly can. Manhattan Island is now under eleven feet of water at low tide, and there are oyster

beds in Ghirardelli Square.

"I thought that was because the oceans are rising from polar melt."

He shook his head again. "That is a factor. Due to the greenhouse effect of pollution, indeed Antarctica

may become inhabitable. But climatic factors will not explain the emergence of the new—or, possibly,

very old—continents in the Atlantic and Pacific." He went on explaining about continental drift, but I liked

the idea of inhabiting Antarctica and daydreamed about it for a while. I thought of it as very empty, very

quiet, all white and blue, with a faint golden glow northward from the unrising sun behind the long peak of

Mount Erebus. There were a few people there; they were very quiet too, and wore white tie and tails.

Some of them carried oboes and violas. Southward the white land went up in a long silence toward the

Pole.

Just the opposite, in fact, of the Mount Hood Wilderness Area. It had been a tiresome vacation. The

other women in the dormitory were all right, but it was macaroni for breakfast, and there were so many

organized sports. I had looked forward to the hike up to the National Forest Preserve, the largest forest

left in the United States, but the trees didn't look at all the way they do in the postcards and brochures

and Federal Beautification Bureau advertisements. They were spindly, and they all had little signs on

saying which union they had been planted by. There were actually a lot more green picnic tables and

cement Men's and Women's than there were trees. There was an electrified fence all around the forest to

keep out unauthorized persons. The forest ranger talked about mountain jays, "bold little robbers," he

said, "who will come and snatch the sandwich from your very hand," but I didn't see any. Perhaps

because that was the weekly Watch Those Surplus Calories! Day for all the women, and so we didn't

have any sandwiches. If I'd seen a mountain jay, I might have snatched the sandwich from his very hand,

who knows. Anyhow it was an exhausting week, and I wished I'd stayed home and practiced, even

though I'd have lost a week's pay because staying home and practicing the viola doesn't count as planned

implementation of recreational leisure as defined by the Federal Union of Unions.

When I came back from my Antarctican expedition, the man was reading again, and I got a look at his

pamphlet; and that was the odd part of it. The pamphlet was called "Increasing Efficiency in Public

Accountant Training Schools," and I could see from the one paragraph I got a glance at that there was

nothing about new continents emerging from the ocean depths in it—nothing at all.

Then we had to get out and walk on into Gresham, because they had decided that the best thing for us all

to do was get onto the Greater Portland Area Rapid Public Transit Lines, since there had been so many

breakdowns that the charter bus company didn't have any more buses to send out to pick us up. The

walk was wet, and rather dull, except when we passed the Cold Mountain Commune. They have a wall

around it to keep out unauthorized persons, and a big neon sign out front saying COLD MOUNTAIN

COMMUNE, and there were some people in authentic jeans and ponchos by the highway selling

macrame belts and sandcast candles and soybean bread to the tourists. In Gresham, I took the 4:40

GPARPTL Superjet Flyer train to Burnside and East 230th, and then walked to 217th and got the bus to

the Goldschmidt Overpass, and transferred to the shuttlebus, but it had boiler trouble, so I didn't reach

the downtown transfer point until ten after eight, and the buses go on a once-an-hour schedule at eight,

so I got a meatless hamburger at the Longhorn Inch-Thick Steak House Dinerette and caught the nine

o'clock bus and got home about ten. When I let myself into the apartment I flipped the switch to turn on

the lights, but there still weren't any. There had been a power outage in West Portland for three weeks.

So I went feeling about for the candles in the dark, and it was a minute or so before I noticed that

somebody was lying on my bed.

I panicked, and tried to turn the lights on.

It was a man, lying there in a long thin heap. I thought a burglar had got in somehow while I was away

and died. I opened the door so I could get out quick or at least my yells could be heard, and then I

managed not to shake long enough to strike a match, and lighted the candle, and came a little closer to

the bed.

The light disturbed him. He made a sort of snorting in his throat and turned his head. I saw it was a

stranger, but I knew his eyebrows, then the breadth of his closed eyelids, then I saw my husband.

He woke up while I was standing there over him with the candle in my hand. He laughed and said, still

half asleep, "Ah, Psyche! From the regions which are holy land."

Neither of us made much fuss. It was unexpected, but it did seem so natural for him to be there, after all,

much more natural than for him not to be there, and he was too tired to be very emotional. We lay there

together in the dark, and he explained that they had released him from the Rehabilitation Camp early

because he had injured his back in an accident in the gravel quarry, and they were afraid it might get

worse. If he died there it wouldn't be good publicity abroad, since there have been some nasty rumors

about deaths from illness in the Rehabilitation Camps and the Federal Medical Association Hospitals; and

there are scientists abroad who have heard of Simon, since somebody published his proof of Goldbach's

Hypothesis in Peking. So they let him out early, with eight dollars in his pocket, which is what he had in

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