"Found and Lost: The Collection of Le Guin's Novella" Author: [US] Ursula Le Guin Publisher: Henan Literature and Art Publishing House

Introduction
🪐
The gaze of the creator, the narrative of the eyewitness, and the restless soul of a space wanderer.
All worlds must be told again until they become strange enough.
☄️
Stories are never true, but lies do silence children.
In the darkening earth, she saw the light in the window in the distance.
Who lights the lamp? Whose child are you and who are your children? Whose story will be told?
I said, I have the same name as you.
📖
An overall review of the novellas by Ursula K. Le Guin, the "godmother of science fiction":
A collection of thirteen novellas covering five worldviews, a panoramic view of Le Guin's writing
In the mid-to-late twentieth century, under the shadow of economic depression, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the threat of nuclear war, the space race, biological experiments, and environmental pollution, the illusion of technological progress was shattered. People began to rethink technological development and the not necessarily bright future of mankind. The writing style of science fiction also changed, injecting rich humanistic colors into the "hard" science fiction of the "golden age".
Ursula Le Guin is one of the representatives of this "New Wave of Science Fiction" movement, and is world-famous for her "Earthsea" series and "Universe of Earthsea" series. "Found and Lost" is a collection of Le Guin's novellas, which includes 13 novellas and five worldviews. It has both the grandeur of a long story and the lightness of a short story. Each novel can be independent and echoes other works. It fully demonstrates Le Guin's writing style and depth of thought, and provides a general overview of Le Guin's writing career.
“The novella is a form I particularly love, and I’m glad to have them all together. It’s a big book, probably thicker than the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but it’s manageable.” — Ursula K. Le Guin
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦
In the eyes of readers, what Le Guin is best at is "creating worlds" and conducting "thought experiments" in these new worlds. People with fluid genders, animals that can transform into human form at any time, planetary consciousness in plant form, a marriage model of four people in a group, a male-female ratio of 1:16, a colonized planet with modified biological genes hoping to return to the alliance, a crisis of faith on a spaceship that will fly for six generations, a magical world that has lost balance... These strange worlds seem strange, but in fact they are just "our world" with some parameters modified. While enjoying the wonders, we will inevitably look back at ourselves and reflect on whether the parameters in our world that seem to be originally set, such as gender, race, religion, and class, are really so natural and reasonable.
But Le Guin believes that she is not "creating" a fictional world, but "discovering" the real world and human beings themselves. She upholds the attitude of an explorer, going deep into the blind spots of common sense and the forest in everyone's heart, digging out new worlds that are unfamiliar to us but not frightening, and witnessing them being broken and complete again and again.
In "Found and Lost", she begins by saying:
"I am not interested in describing action or adventure, but in psychological interest. I am tired of writing adventure stories unless the characters' actions show what is going on in their hearts, or their actions reflect what people are like. In fact, the more action there is in a story, the less things really happen. I am obviously more interested in describing the changes in the human heart, describing the vast world rooted in our hearts. There is a forest in everyone's heart, which is vast and unexplored. Every night, each of us will get lost in this forest and wander alone."
🌘
Although many stories in Found and Lost take place in space, they are not the familiar Star Wars narratives, but more like an interstellar oral history or a note on the exploration of the New World, exuding a strong "post-Cold War" atmosphere:
It is as if there was some great construction that has now collapsed and vanished, and we still have to continue living in the ruins of the world, because there is no other "home" to return to. We can only keep reminiscing about "when the world was young", and reflect and retell everything we can understand in vain, in an attempt to confirm the coordinates of our tiny group in the vast universe and rebuild our own world:
“What you pick out of it for the sake of telling a story, that’s everything.
The foundation on which you build your world, that partial, comprehensible, rational, coherent world, is everything.
So all choices are arbitrary. All knowledge is essentially incomplete, an infinitesimal fragment. Reason is like a net thrown into the sea, and the truth it brings back is a fragment, a moment, a spark of the whole truth. All human knowledge is limited. Every life, every person is limited, arbitrary, a very faint reflection of a moment..."
🌳
Contents:
"Every novella by Le Guin is a literary classic," but before this they were scattered everywhere and had never been presented to the public in their entirety.
"Found and Lost" is the first collection and overall review of Le Guin's novellas, bringing together thirteen novellas and covering five worldviews, from which one can get a panoramic view of Le Guin's writing.
Among them, "Wider and Slower than an Empire", "The Segiri Chronicle", "Another Story, or "The Inland Sea Fisherman", "The Day of Forgiveness", "The Son of the People", "The Emancipation of a Woman", and "Ancient Music and the Slave Girl" belong to the "Haine Universe" worldview; "The Seeker", "On the High Swamp", and "The Dragonfly" belong to the "Earthsea Legend" worldview (the translation of some proper nouns is based on the "Earthsea Legend" series translated by Cai Meiling and Duan Zongchen, Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House, 2014 edition); "Buffalo Girl, Meet Tonight", "The People of the Hearne Family" and "The Lost Paradises" belong to three different worldviews.
The works in this collection have been nominated for the Hugo Award 6 times, the Nebula Award 4 times, the World Fantasy Award 3 times, and the Locus Award 12 times. Among them, "Buffalo Girl, Meet Tonight" won the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award; "The Day of Forgiveness" and "The Seeker" won the Locus Award; "The Segiri Chronicles" won the Otherwise Award; "A Woman's Liberation" won the Asimov Readers' Choice Award.
🪅
Translators talk:
The ten translators have been working in the field of science fiction for many years as writers, critics and researchers. At the same time, almost all of them are readers of Le Guin. This time, they collaborated on the translation at the invitation of Utopia and introduced Le Guin's 900-page collection to the Chinese world word by word.
When I was young, I always thought Ursula's science fiction was not good.
Other people's science fiction either has an idea that opens your eyes.
Or it could be as refreshing as a Hollywood blockbuster.
Only Ursula is obscure and euphemistic.
Always talking about something elusive.
She didn't seem to be telling a story, but just saw something new and interesting, or had a new and interesting perspective on something, so she put it in her palm and showed it to you.
It was not until I was thirty that I realized her superiority.
While other science fiction writers were still talking about the vastness of the universe and the length of time, she had already turned her attention to human beings themselves.
She was not looking far away, but exploring deep inside.
We are not discussing how far and how great things we can see and think of.
Rather, we are discussing the subtle twists and turns in our own hearts.
In her novels, people do not live for anything great or noble, but just exist.
She first illuminates the character's soul and then draws the character's body.
Describe the character standing or walking.
Let readers know that the meaning of life is not to achieve greatness, but to truly exist and live.
Science fiction originates from the conquest of life and nature.
But in the end, we still have to return to our existence and meaning as human beings.
In this respect, Ursula was half a century ahead.
——Zhou Huaming, a science fiction writer and translator, is passionate about content creation in the overlapping fields of games, fantasy, and Internet technology. He first published a game-related fantasy novel in 1999. He began to publish science fiction novels in 2002. In 2006, he published the work "Gene War". ("More Vast and Slower Than the Empire" and "Buffalo Girl, Meet Tonight")
I read Ursula K. Le Guin, a writer who was ahead of her time. The racial and gender issues she discussed in her works are not only shocking but also thought-provoking.
In "Gu Le and the Slave Girl", a slave child has a disease that can be cured as long as there are medicines and doctors. However, the slaves cannot get treatment, so the kind and peaceful slave mother can only wait quietly for the child to die, and regard death as "freedom."
In "The Emancipation of a Woman", a young plantation owner liberated all his slaves, but these "freed" slaves were still slaughtered by other plantation owners.
"The Hearne Family" is one of Le Guin's few non-fantasy works. It narrates the experiences of four generations of women in the Hearne family in a small town through a jumping timeline. Each story is like a maxim.
——Hu Shaoyan, living in Singapore, is a science fiction writer and translator. He is the author of Earth Reborn and the translator of A Song of Ice and Fire series and The Lost Southland series. (The People of the Hearn Family, Ancient Music and Slaves, The Liberation of a Woman)
There are not many translations of Le Guin in the simplified Chinese world. Apart from The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, Confessions, Changing Planes, The Word of the World is Forest, and the Earthsea series, there are only short stories in magazines. Before reading her works, I had more than ten years of experience in science fiction and fantasy, but I was still struck by her all at once and regarded her as one of my favorite writers and my goal in writing. She is broad-minded, tolerant, and non-judgmental. She uses stories to convey beliefs and ideas, and uses thought experiments to build imaginary worlds.
"Found and Lost" is a collection of novellas selected by Le Guin, and I am honored to be able to participate in it as a translator. This is my first time translating a novel, and it may also be the last time. Translating Le Guin's works is a challenge and a pleasure. Taking this opportunity, I was able to read her two novels word by word and re-recognize her profoundness and timelessness. The two works I translated, "The Segiri Chronicle" and "The Day of Forgiveness", both discuss gender issues, but they are more than just gender. They are worth re-reading today. I have always wanted to create works that can make the world a better place, but what is good and what is bad, whether your honey is poison to others, the complexity of this cannot be explained in a few words. Fortunately, Le Guin's story provides us with a path for thinking.
——Wang Kanyu, writer, scholar, editor, doctoral researcher of the CoFUTURES project at the University of Oslo, has published personal novel collections "Seafood Restaurant" and "Clouds 2.2", and edited "The Way Spring Comes", "New Voices of Chinese Science Fiction", and "The Making of the Wandering Earth" in English. ("Segri Chronicles" and "The Day of Forgiveness")
Translating and reading Le Guin’s works is like falling into another time and space through the gaps in words, and feeling a grand, delicate, and profound spiritual beauty. The balance and harmony she pursued is closely connected with Eastern philosophy. Therefore, her stories are extremely universal and extremely close to our cultural bloodline.
——Chen Qiufan, science fiction writer and translator. His translations include Twelve Tomorrows, Silver Belt, Qimalan, etc. (Another Story, or The Inland Sea Fisherman)
I first read Le Guin's work when I was in middle school. I put it down for a while because of the complicated background information in the story. A few years later, I picked it up again and read it patiently. I found many delightful highlights.
In her writing, I see reflections on gender, questions about the current state of civilization, intriguing world construction, and the beauty of life lies in curiosity and exploration of the unknown. She is not in a hurry to arouse my emotions, but like a fellow traveler, she takes my hand and leads me into new worlds. This relaxed and slow pace calms my heart. After reading, I have an urge to travel, which makes me want to find something in my world.
I always tell myself that I can read it again when I want to temporarily withdraw and think about things that seem to have nothing to do with the details of life but are closely related to the whole world. At that time, I didn't expect that one day I would become the translator of her works and become a bridge for more people to know her, and I am proud of it.
——Hu Xiaoshi, a young writer, screenwriter, and translator, graduated from Dalian University of Foreign Languages ​​with a major in translation. His works include Twelve Tomorrows and The Story of Dupont. (Another Story, or The Inland Sea Fisherman)
Interesting souls from a distant world
Ursula Le Guin is a very familiar name, but I haven't read many of her works, which is probably a pity. This time, translating her novella gave me a strong feeling that she is an author who is good at constructing the world and has the ability to sort out logical relationships based on the essence of things. This is an ability that belongs to the core of science fiction. If I am allowed to get a glimpse of the whole picture, I would guess that her works are magnificent and grand, at least some of them should be like this. A work can reflect a certain aspect of the author's temperament, and I believe I should not be wrong about this.
Let me briefly talk about this novella that I translated. It describes a future vision of human beings all over the galaxy. This vision is not only possible, but also very likely. It is the only way for human beings to survive in the galaxy (assuming that human beings can really achieve galactic survival). Human beings have the ability to travel between galaxies, but they do not often travel between galaxies because the time consumed by travel will uproot all social attributes of human beings. Even if a lonely person can travel all over the galaxy, his life will lack meaning. Ursula has portrayed and described this dilemma very delicately. What she tells is not a story in the usual sense, and it is even difficult to say that this story has any climax. It is a man's journey, which reflects the colorful world of the entire galaxy through the not-so-strong intervention of individuals. I like this story. Although the story does not have any unexpected and reasonable twists and turns, and there is no so-called dramatic climax, it reveals a kind of logical and rational beauty. In this logical and rational world, emotional moments always come unexpectedly.
What an interesting soul this is in the vast Milky Way! Although she is gone, the words and thoughts she left behind are the wealth of all mankind.
——Jiang Bo, a Chinese science fiction writer, is the author of "Heart of the Galaxy" and "Gate of the Machine". ("Son of the Tribe")
As the saying goes, a child who grew up reading Earthsea is not a bad kid. When I reread Le Guin as an adult, I felt very similar to Metso when he first came to the round hill - "Since I set foot on that mountain, I seemed to have become the child who first heard "The Magnificence of Enrad", completely lost in the mystery."
Two days after I finished reading it, I happened to see the Western Zhou Dynasty square tripod with a man with a broken leg guarding a door. The little man with a broken leg was leaning on a crutch, guarding a door. "The palace guards are used to guard the inner palace, and the man with a broken leg is used to guard the enclosure." Everyone can have food to eat. I remembered the ending of "Searching for the Master":
"So what are you going to do, Master Tern?" asked the Master Summoner.
"I can guard the gate," Metjo answered. "My legs are lame, and I won't stray far from it. I'm old enough to know what to say to people who come. I'm a searcher, and I can tell if they belong here or not."
I really miss that world where everyone has their place.
——Li Te, science fiction reader and translator. (The Seeker)
As we all know, Ursula Le Guin once collaborated with Sinologist Jerome P. Seton to translate Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching into English. Her literary creation was influenced by Eastern philosophy, feminism, and ecologism, showing a style that is very different from other European and American science fiction and fantasy works. One of my favorite details of Le Guin's works is that forgiveness and reconciliation have always played a big role in her works. If people in the world read more of Le Guin's works, would there be less disputes and more peace?
——Yao Renjie, a non-professional translator, has translated science fiction short stories such as "The Strange Path on a Different Planet". ("On the High Marsh")
It was only after I started writing that I began to read Ursula K. Le Guin’s works in depth, but I soon became convinced that she was not only a mentor in reading and writing, but also my idol in life.
I can't forget that in her writing, soul mates who suffered from the world's criticism supported each other on the vast ice field, the glory of the city full of laughter and happiness was all tied to a suffering child, and the abandoned, insulted and burned little girl finally spread her dragon wings in the flames. I can't forget that she laughed and scolded in public speeches, criticizing the fantasy literature creation that was dominated by white male aesthetics at the time, and I can't forget that she would still cry in front of the interview camera because of the suffering of others when she was in her 80s after she achieved success.
I believe that in the eyes of every creator who, like her and me, faces a changing era, new challenges, and has experienced countless prejudices, misunderstandings, and neglect, those beautiful, broad, and meaningful words condensed from experience and wisdom are like a glimmer in the darkness, illuminating the unknown road ahead under our feet. In the process of repeatedly reading and translating Le Guin's works, I can feel that her breath has become the breath of her characters, my breath, and the breath of my characters. In her writing, a person's "true name" can only be given by the "other" who has insight into her talent. The "smell of others" that descends on a person is a huge force that we cannot understand but will eventually shake reality. Breath, like hands, names, forests, shadows, and other seemingly simple but profound things, constitutes countless seemingly distant worlds in Le Guin's writing, but touches some of the profound essence of our world in a way that is difficult for realistic works to achieve.
"My imagination makes me a man, but also makes me a fool; it gives me all the worlds, but also exiles me from them." Le Guin gave me many worlds, and also gave me the ability to create countless worlds. I hope this collection of works can also bring the same power to every reader and potential creator today. "Truth is about imagination", "I don't care what will happen in the future, because I have seen the appearance of dragons in the morning wind."
——Mu Ming, a speculative fiction writer. He has published a collection of short stories in Italian, Colora il Mondo (Coloring the World), and is about to publish his first collection of short stories in Chinese, The Ring. (Dragonfly)