it's a purpose, after all
So one of my recent accomplishments was finishing this long essay. (For those of you playing along at home, it's the first entry on this list.) It's about DUST by Elizabeth Bear, and PARADISES LOST by Ursula K. Le Guin, and fate and free will and angels and SF.

Now I am done, and so, because I am simultaneously proud of it and want to stuff it down a well, I am posting about it here, and saying that I will send it to people.

Which I will. Send it, that is. I have a whole bucket of excuses for it, which I will not give.


"'To Climb in Search of God': Fate and Free Will in Elizabeth Bear's DUST and Ursula K. Le Guin's PARADISES LOST"

Essentially, I discuss fate and free will as Bear and Le Guin present them in these books (okay, novel and a novella). They're both set on generation ships, and involve people called angels, but that's about where the resemblance ends. And, of course, they turn out to have similar things to say about people and fate. In the essay, I talk a lot about how they use speculative fiction elements, and the motif of angels, in pursuit of this theme.

If I actually left in all the excuses I keep typing for this essay, this post would be twice as long as it is now.

How to get it: email me. (my first name)(dot)(my last name) at gmail. It's a PDF file, about 17 pages long with bibliography, table of contents, etc.