The New Atlantis

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

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