（外文电子版资料）Ursula K. LeGuin - The New Atlantis.pdfVIP

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 didnt 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 hadnt yet worked loose from their bolts, so everybody waited inside the bus; besides, it was raining. We began talking, the way people do when theres 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. Ive 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? Theyre not sure yet. Most specialists think the Atlantic. But theres evidence it may be happening in the Pacific, too. Wont 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 a