Having finally gotten a copy of my own several years later, I can confirm that it isn’t like other books. With a little more paging through, I was satisfied that whatever it was, I would someday need to read the whole thing. I didn’t quite know what I was looking at, but I knew at least that it wasn’t like other books I had read. O hills of my Valley, you are too complicated! On the next page is a “poem said with the drum” attributed to a character from a different Valley town: The people in Chumo are as clever as the chickens. Rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, rock, rockbasket! The chickens are so clever, they talk like people: People keep a lot of chickens up in Chumo. The first time I encountered Always Coming Home-sitting on the table of someone I was visiting in northern California, not far from where its stories take place-I opened semirandomly and found a transcription of characters from the village of Chumo having a poetry battle with characters from further down the Valley.ĭown the Valley the intelligence of the inhabitants note: This piece was first published in the first (Winter 2021) edition of the New Maps journal. Hartwell, 200 Significant SF Books by Women, 1984-2001. Broderick and Di Filippo, Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels, 1985-2010 #4. The book contains numerous illustrations (by Margaret Chodos) and the first edition came with a cassette tape (music by Todd Barton), making it something of a multimedia experience." - Pringle, The Ultimate Guide to Science Fiction, second edition (1995), p. All in all, an astonishing feat of the imagination, which the author herself calls "an archaeology of the future." It's Le Guin's magnum opus, but it may be daunting to some readers. The central narrative, of a young woman's development, is hedged around by vast quantities of supplementary material: folktales, poems, plays, maps, charts, appendices and glossary. "A richly detailed account of a gentle, postindustrial utopia in a northern California of the indeterminate future. Advance copy (uncorrected proof) of the first edition.
Octavo, gray green wrappers printed in black.
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