Abstract
Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1991 short story ‘Newton’s Sleep’ begins in a utopic society that escaped the environmental and social calamity of a near-future Earth and created an enlightened culture on a space station. The group, led by a scientific elite, pride themselves on eradicating the irrational prejudices and unempirical mentality that hamstringed Earth; but chaos blossoms as the society struggles with the reappearance of religious intolerance, and becomes confused by an outbreak of mass hallucinations of the Earth they left behind. This narrative trope of the necessity of nature for the survival of humanity—physically, mentally, and spiritually—represents a new and relatively common allegory in contemporary science fiction in an era distinguished by separation from the natural world.
Highlights
Le Guin’s 1991 short story, ‘Newton’s Sleep,’ begins in what seems to be a utopic society on a space station, Spes (Special Earth Satellite)
Earth in a near-future where the planet has been ravaged by wars, environmental ruin, and economic catastrophe. This group escaped ecological and social calamity by building and retreating to their self-created space station, where they intended to build an egalitarian and enlightened culture in their enclosed metallic ecosystem. The leaders of this new society, and the people who orchestrated the exodus from Earth, are a scientific elite whose careful planning extricated them from a dying planet
Romantic science returned to the sublime in the same way that the colonists embrace nature, and only Isaac Rose is left with his belief—and his fear
Summary
—and most significantly—we can explore the hypothesis that Le Guin’s story is, in the end, a tale of nature religion roiling from out of the depths of mind, of reaching out from the void of scientism to experience the sublime, and builds on humanity’s physical and mental need for the natural world to create a coherent and spiritual whole. These themes of scientism, the sublime, and a physical, mental, and spiritual need for nature are embodied in the story’s two main protagonists: scientist Isaac Rose and his daughter Esther. The price that Isaac Rose pays for his rigid belief in the efficacy of science is spiritual bankruptcy and a loss of the observable world, one in which the ability to only see scientifically is the ultimate blindness
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