1. Your new book, The Birthday of the World, draws upon older stories and fleshes out some of the history of particular peoples and places. How important was it for you to revisit these worlds and attempt to figure them out again?

I go back to places I “invented” or discovered very much as one goes back to London or Yosemite - because one’s fond of it and there is always more to see, you learn more every time, you learn how to see the place, the people.

2. Did you ever imagine that your early work would contain such a historical arch?

Nope.

3. Does the historical aspect of these worlds help you to tie things together, or does it make it harder for you to place new stories within the larger framework?

In Earthsea, in the story of Ged and Tenar, things happen at about the same rate they happen here; and when I go back there I find out what has been happening. In the Tales from Earthsea, particularly in the story the Finder, I went back before that moving “now”, to find out how some things that puzzled me about Earthsea came about in the first place. My sf universe, the Ekumen, on the other hand, is a mess. History can’t run straight when time dilation confuses everything. I gave up much pretence of continuity between worlds or books long ago.

4. How important is it for you to present social and politically motivated ideologies in your work?

I don’t want to present ideologies at all. (“If I had a message, I’d use Western Union” - who said that?) I want to write novels and stories. Fiction is about people who are, like everybody else, involved in a certain time and place and politics and society, and have to make moral choices. Fiction is also about social institutions, which also involve moral choices. The fiction writer has political and ethical opinions, of course, which will inevitably influence the story, but if they are indulged, they will diminish it. I try to be honest and not to preach. This is not easy.

5. Do you feel that placing contemporary critical analysis in worlds far, far away makes it easier to attack a certain institution (i.e. capitalism or patriarchy)?

Displacing an institution or a social convention or whatever to a “future world” simplifies the fiction-writer’s job immensely, but why do you phrase it in terms of “attack” alone? The device is just as useful for investigation, unprejudiced examination, or unresolved ethical judgement. EXAMPLE: I couldn’t set my novel in contemporary China because I don’t know beans about China, but I could take a certain event from recent Chinese history (the suppression of a religion by the political regime), invent something somewhat similar happening on a “future world”, and then talk about it - from various viewpoints . . . And I included an invented reversal (suppression of political freedom) back on Earth, so things wouldn’t get too one-sided. (In The Telling.)

6. If a writer is a writer, why is it that important authors such as yourself, Octavia Butler, Harlan Ellison (the list goes on and on) become lumped into a label such as Science Fiction or Fantasy. Is it essential that these tags be destroyed or embraced?

Sf, Fantasy, Western, Mystery, Realism, etc. are all useful, necessary terms; there are genuine differences between genres, their readers come to them with certain different expectations. (Embrace Diversity!) Where it goes wrong is when critics, academic canoneers, etc. attach value labels to these descriptive terms, and say This is Literature but That is Not. (Destroy Ignorant Prejudice!)

7. Your protagonists are never built from one mold; they are instead created with a great understanding of the duality of life. How important is it for you to push past the classic tales of good versus evil and create alternatives to this tired formula?

· I don’t think there are many “classic tales of good versus evil,” actually. The great stories, the classic tales, are morally complex, profoundly complex. (Does our hero, our good Frodo, throw the Ring into the fire, at the end of The Lord of the Rings?) - Solzhenitsyn has given us a mantra against that formula: “The line between good and evil runs straight through every human heart.” -(I could say something here about the Axis of Evil, but do I need to?)

8. Have you ever opened new worlds and found that they may be too indecipherable to introduce to your readership? Do you then have to challenge yourself to quiet certain aspects of that world?

· No; I’m not that inventive. I may not understand what’s going on, but I have a naïve faith that if I keep on going (writing) I’ll find out, and so will the reader.

9. Your worlds take on their own lives with their rich histories and people, at what point do you stop influencing them and they begin to influence you?

· From word one on.

10. What is your next project?

To get a bunch of talks & essays into some kind of readable book-like shape so it can be published. To find out if there are any more stories that should go into the collection called Changing Planes, before it gets into the publishing process. To have a nice summer.