Ursula K. Le Guin on the absurdity of denying your age: “If I’m ninety and believe I’m forty-five, I’m headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub.”
On cultural perceptions of fantasy: “The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?”
On breakfast: “Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime.”
Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she’s in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice—sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical—shines. No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula’s online writing, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters to her now, her concerns with this world, and her unceasing wonder at it: “How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us.”
Praise for NO TIME TO SPARE
A TimeOut Book to Cozy Up to This December
A Real Simple Best Book to Read in December
A Bustle Best Book to Read in December
One of Southern Living's Unputdownable Reads to Curl Up with in December
A Harper's Bazaar Best New Book to Read in December
A Most Anticipated Title of the Fall from Vulture
A Book Riot Must-Read Book for December
“This delightful book [is] inquisitive and stroppily opinionated in equal measure…In even these miscellanies, composed in [Le Guin’s] off hours, the sentences are perfectly balanced and the language chosen with care. After all, she writes, ‘Words are my matter—my stuff.’ And it’s through their infinite arrangements…that Ms. Le Guin’s extraordinary imaginary worlds have been built and shared.”—Wall Street Journal
“There are shades of Adrienne Rich here…At the end of ‘No Time to Spare,’ having enjoyed all the Annals of Pard and the Steinbeck anecdotes, the stories about the Oregon desert and the musings on belief, all I could think was: I want Le Guin to keep going, on and on. I want to read more.”—Michelle Dean, The Los Angeles Times
“‘No Time to Spare,’ deriving from Le Guin’s online essays, covers just about anything that crosses her mind, from 'lit biz' to cats to the Oregon landscape…Might there be truth to the commonplace that science fiction writers are prophets?...A year ago I argued that Le Guin deserved a Nobel Prize in literature. In fact — what a fantasy! — she ought to be running the country.”—The Washington Post
“In 'No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters,' Le Guin shows that elders have plenty to teach…[She] finds inspiration in the everyday and makes it sparkle with her prose…In step with her legacy, [she] challenges us to reconsider what we automatically accept…“No Time to Spare” will leave readers hoping that Le Guin is given a bit more time to share her observations — on aging, art, our world — and to remind us of things we mustn’t forget.”—Newsday
“[No Time to Spare is] erudite, witty and…wise…even in pieces about her cat, or about answering fan mail, [Le Guin] makes the reader continually conscious of the ways that her age is a part of her life. That subtle coherence gives the book a special feeling, to borrow her words…a ‘steady, luminous ethical focus’…Deep down there: that is where Le Guin has taken readers for decade after decade, and where, these essays show, she is capable of taking them still.”—The Chicago Tribune
“Le Guin’s new book, No Time To Spare…feels like the surprising and satisfying culmination to a career in other literary forms…Even in the familiar relationship of an old woman and her cat, Le Guin finds an ambit for challenging moral insight and matter for an inquisitiveness that probes the deep time of evolution...Blogs may not be novels, but a blog by Le Guin is no ordinary blog, either. It is a comfort to know, as reality seems to grow more claustrophobic and inescapable, that she remains at her desk, busily subverting our world.”—The New Republic
“The more you re-read this collection of blog posts by science fiction Grandmaster Le Guin, the more you're convinced of Oliver Wendell Holmes's quip that for the true thinker, nothing is trivial… [No Time to Spare] is delivered in the core-drilling, clear, thoughtful language of somebody who's been crafting English for more than half a century – but the entries on the craft of writing itself are, perhaps predictably, the best things in the book.”—Christian Science Monitor
“[Le Guin’s] clever observations and sharp, nimble prose provide a window into the interior life of the award-winning novelist.” —Harper’s Bazaar
"[No Time to Spare] touches on...everything from feminism to swear words in fiction. Each entry is filled with warmth, insight, and humor."—Real Simple
“[An] altogether fantastic collection No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters…[is] a magnificent read in its tessellated totality.”—Brain Pickings
“Le Guin is a natural storyteller, and these snippets from her life are inarguably delightful. She is certainly a lioness in winter here, as focused as she has ever been on the things that matter most to her. Old age is not for the young, she posits—and it is a slogan not intended as complaint, but rallying cry. Spend a little time with octogenarian Ursula K. Le Guin, and the prospect of growing old becomes a bit less daunting.”—BookPage
"Le Guin is 88 and shows no sign of slowing down in this essay collection, dispensing serious wisdom about our world, politics, literature, aging, and more."—Book Riot
“Reading the latest book from Portland writer Ursula K. Le Guin…is a bit like having a one-way conversation with a funny, cranky, keen-eyed old friend…Even when you want to quibble with her, Le Guin keeps you thoroughly engaged…It can be fun. It can be startling. It can get your back up… As you might expect from an author whose career has been devoted to imagining alternative worlds in close detail, she has a knack for stepping back from life on Earth and seeing it for the strange thing it is.”
—The Oregonian
"Rife with insight [and] humor."—The Columbus Dispatch
“A delightfully random bouquet of musings on aging, writing, the moral character of the United States, Homer, her cat Pard, and everything in between…Following LeGuin’s penetrating mind as she thinks about the problems of our world and puzzles of language makes No Time to Spare a more than worthwhile read for fans and new readers alike.”—The Riveter
“Le Guin is a thoughtful and careful writer, and so her opinions are thoughtfully and carefully organized. She knows what she thinks, and she writes so well that you’ll want to return to these candid essays…like returning to an older, wiser friend.”
—Omnivoracious
“No Time to Spare presents the best of Le Guin's blog: sharp-eyed, big-hearted, idiosyncratic and highly enjoyable…Both Le Guin's eye for detail and her dry wit are on full display here…Readers will find much to think about in this wise and eloquent collection.”—Shelf Awareness
“To Le Guin…what truly matters are the words she thinks about, rigorous in her examination. Her expression of these thoughts reads more like mini-essays than blog posts and invite close reading, which always reaps rich rewards, the true gift of this lovely book.”—Booklist
"Spirited, wry reflections on aging, literature, and America's moral life...An entertaining collection...Thoughtful musings from a deft and sharply insightful writer." —Kirkus
“Short, punchy, and canny meditations on aging, literature, and cats…[Le Guin] offers her many fans a chance to share her clear-eyed experience of the everyday.” —Publishers Weekly
Praise for Ursula K. Le Guin
“There is no better spirit in all of American letters than that of Ursula Le Guin.” —Choire Sicha, Slate
"As a deviser of worlds, as a literary stylist, as a social critic and as a storyteller, Le Guin has no peer. From the time of her first published work in the mid-1960s, she began to push against the confines of science fiction, bringing to bear an anthropologist's acute eye for large social textures and mythic structures, a fierce egalitarianism and a remarkable gift of language, without ever renouncing the sense of wonder and the spirit of play inherent in her genre of origin." —Michael Chabon
"One of the most original imaginations ever to grace American letters...Through decades and scores of books, the genre Le Guin made her own has itself grown up — writers from David Mitchell to Salman Rushdie have walked through the door Le Guin opened...To sit and talk with Le Guin is to engage a powerful mind that has responded to ideological entrapments or career bumps by carpentering a new space for itself. She is brisk and funny, but unsparing when asked to comment on something which, in her mind, does not measure up...She shows that stories that stand the test of time can come from something as simple as fellowship: like a family, like an extraordinary body of work, like a house built from a kit, standing proudly on a hill, more than a hundred years later." —John Freeman, Boston Globe
“Le Guin, of course, has long been one of our most powerful writers of conscience.” —David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times
"It’s hard to think of another living author who has written so well for so long in so many styles as Ursula K. Le Guin." —Scott Timber, Salon
“She never loses touch with her reverence for the immense what is.” —Margaret Atwood
“Ursula K. Le Guin’s prose breathes light and intelligence. She can lift fiction to the level of poetry and compress it to the density of allegory.” —Jonathan Lethem
“There is no writer with an imagination as forceful and delicate as Le Guin’s.” —Grace Paley
“Le Guin is a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller with the humor and force of a Twain. She creates stories for everyone from New Yorker literati to the hardest audience, children. She remakes every genre she uses.” —Sarah Smith, Boston Globe
"[Le Guin] is frequently referred to as 'the best of' for all manner of things—like best fantasy writer, best science fiction writer, best female writer—all of which is silly, as she both defies and accepts all categorization. Her influence on generations of readers and writers, from George R.R. Martin to Jennifer Egan to David Mitchell, is as evident as it is impossible to overstate. Admired for her quiet daring, her structures, and her inventions, most of all she is revered for her sentences." —Choire Sicha, Interview Magazine

同一个恒星系中，人类定居的两颗行星互为月亮，盈盈相望，却被不同的自然条件与社会形态隔绝成两个截然不同的世界。
阿纳瑞斯：贫瘠，荒芜。恶劣的自然条件迫使人类组成一个集体至上的社会，唯有这样才能保证人类的生存和延续。社会的约束虽然实现了对全体成员的保障，却渐渐成为一种禁锢。
乌拉斯：富足的资源为社会发展提供了强劲的动力，进而形成了激烈的竞争。鼓励竞争的世界富于创造性，但也造成了个人、集团的对立和鲜明的贫富差异。
本书体现了勒古恩对人类社会发展前景的深刻思考。主人公谢维克毅然脱离阿纳瑞斯，投奔乌拉斯，却在发现乌拉斯社会丑陋的一面后再次逃离，成为两个世界的叛离者。人类应该往何处去？勒古恩没有、也不可能提供明确的答案。
最优秀的科幻小说能让读者掩卷长思——也许答案就在读者的思索之中。

冬星，寒冷，偏僻，远离人类活动范围，但人类的一支仍旧在这里扎下根来，生长繁衍。
终于有一天，人类联盟发现了这一支兄弟。他们伸出了手：回来吧，我们的兄弟。
机动使，联盟与未知星球第一次沟通的使者，代表着人类联盟善意的手。担任这一职位的人必须坚强勇敢，因为他是孤身一人，深入未知；他必须睿智机敏，以理解当地的政治与人情；最重要的是，他必须胸怀宽广，能够包容当地种种奇异的观念和风俗。
冬星是对以上种种素质的最大考验，因为它是人类所知的唯 一 一 个单性繁殖社会。
闻所未闻的风俗、变幻莫测的政局、国家的冲突，加上猜疑、背叛和出卖，阴暗的冬星似乎将永远游离在人类联盟之外。
但黑暗中伸出了一只手。它是要与机动使相握，还是排斥来自远方的善意？它代表着光明，还是黑暗？
光明是黑暗的左手，黑暗是光明的右手。
——冬星诗人的作品