Why I Erased 10,000 Notes, 7 Years of Ideas, and Every Thought I Tried to Save.

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In City of Illusions, the third novel written in Le Guin’s Hainish universe, the earth may or may not be besieged by mysterious aliens known as the Shing. The human survivors live small, isolated, and occasionally comfortable lives. But they live in fear. What they know of the Shing they know only through rumor and innuendo—that they have spies among the humans; that they can lie in mindspeech; that any technology that exceeds some unwritten threshold will be destroyed along with the people who created it. No one has ever seen a Shing; no one knows for certain that the Shing exist; nonetheless, the Shing rule their lives completely.

One day, a man appears at the border of a household. He’s naked and filthy, and doesn’t respond to words; his mind seems absent or empty. He looks entirely human, save for his eyes, which are the color of egg yolks and oval, like a cat. The family debate what to do with him. Some think he must be a Shing and that they should kill him or send him back to the forest. Others think he may be a victim of the Shing, his mind razed to hide some knowledge—in which case, killing him would be to do the Shing’s work for them. They decide to take him in, and to try to teach him, to see if his mind returns. They name him Falk, which means yellow, for the color of his eyes.

Over the years, he learns quickly, and soon becomes a part of the family, a lover to one of the daughters of the house, a son to the eldest. But he never remembers the time before his arrival, and the mystery of his past lingers as a question wanting attention.

After some time, the eldest, a man named Zove, invites Falk to come sit with him. There, Zove asks when Falk will go in search of that question, will go looking for where he came from and how his memory was lost. With compassion, Zove explains that while Falk is welcome to stay with them, he also believes that the mystery of his arrival could hold the key to the future of the people of the earth. And whether or not they even have a future worth hoping for.

Zove says—

“We keep a little knowledge, and do nothing with it. But once we used that knowledge to weave the pattern of life like a tapestry across night and chaos. We enlarged the chances of life. We did man’s work.”

After another silence Zove went on, looking up into the bright, November sky: “Consider the worlds, the various men and beasts on them, the constellations of their skies, the cities they built, their songs and ways. All that is lost, lost to us, as utterly as your childhood is lost to you. What do we really know of the time of our greatness? A few names of worlds and heroes, a ragtag of facts we’ve tried to patch into a history. The Shing law forbids killing, but they killed knowledge, they burned books, and what may be worse, they falsified what’s left. They slipped in the Lie, as always. We aren’t sure of anything concerning the Age of the League; how many of the documents are forged?…There is no trust in them, because there is no truth in them.”

Le Guin, Worlds of Exile and Illusion, page 228

There is no trust in them, because there is no truth in them. Is there a better phrase to describe the internet today, with the myriad of lies and forgeries slipped in among the real? With the enormous scale of disinformation, of knowledge subverted to consumption? They killed knowledge, Zove says. Are we not witnessing the same murder, day by day, one banned book, one ad, one fake search result at a time?

Not long after this talk, Falk sets off from the only home he can remember. He takes a great and terrible risk, in both body and spirit, to seek the truth of his life. But to continue to live in ignorance, to let the murder of his childhood and of knowledge of the world go unanswered, would be the greater risk. For him, and for all of us.

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Planet Earth at Twilight No sudden, sharp boundary marks the passage of day into night in this gorgeous view of ocean and clouds over our fair planet Earth. Instead, the shadow line or terminator is diffuse and shows the gradual transition to darkness we experience as twilight. With the Sun illuminating the scene from the right, the cloud tops reflect gently reddened sunlight filtered through the dusty troposphere, the lowest layer of the planet's nurturing atmosphere. A clear high altitude layer, visible along the dayside's upper edge, scatters blue sunlight and fades into the blackness of space. This picture was taken from the International Space Station orbiting at an altitude of 211 nautical miles. Of course from home, you can check out the Earth Now.

I recently took some long flights and found myself puzzling over which books to bring along for the plane ride. So here, in no particular order, are a few guiding principles to help you compile your in-flight library.

I’m dedicating this piece to the person on my flight back from Italy who audibly reacted to nine, uninterrupted hours of Yellowstone. I know there’s a book out there that can tear you away from those sexy Westerners.

Pick a book that will be distracting.
Flying is full of indignities and discomforts, so bringing along a book that will grip you and draw you in is ideal. A zippy thriller or something scary or speculative should do the trick. Maybe a locked-door mystery, or a beloved classic from your childhood you’ve been meaning to reread? There’s already so much overstimulation on a plane; you don’t want to look up and get distracted by the guy clipping his toenails, or wondering what Yellowstone is even about, because you haven’t seen a horse in two hours and you thought this was a cowboys thing.

Avoid density.
30,000 feet might not be the best altitude to reach for that theory book you’ve been meaning to challenge yourself with.

Avoid books where something bad happens in or to a plane.
Obvious, but best to avoid the topic of planes altogether. This is especially true if you’re a nervous flier, or someone who thinks flight is pure hubris, and that if man were meant to fly God would have fashioned us with wings.

Pick a book with a protagonist who overcomes challenge and adversity.
The way airlines are treating people these days can feel like you’ve been dropped into the tests and trials from Joseph Campell’s template for the Hero’s Journey. Lean into those plotting tropes and pick something where a character emerges on the other side of the story stronger and wiser, even though they dealt with multiple delays, TSA throwing out hundreds of dollars worth of toiletries, and leg-room suited for an Apollo capsule rocketing to the Moon.

Pick something that you can easily dip in and out of.
There’s going to be distractions on your flight, so prepare for it. You want to be able to pick your book back up easily if you lose your place because the drink cart clangs your shoulder, or your neighbor is fidgeting, or you get distracted by yet another crowded shot of easily a dozen Yellowstone cowboys sitting around a table and not a single horse in sight.

Don’t bring something you wrote or something that is about you.
This is admittedly a niche problem, but if I look over and see your face on the book jacket, I’m going to be annoyed that you’re doing something so performative in public. Be courteous to your fellow travelers: don’t make them fear they’re about to end up in the background of a TikTok.

Don’t bring anything too big.
There’s a guy at my YMCA who is always banging these gigantic hardcovers against the metal lockers, and I can only imagine the chaos he unleashes on a plane. If a book is big enough that it’s going to tear off the pocket in the seat in front of you, it’s too big.

Bring lots of short books.
This, in my mind, is the move. Lots of little books solves many on-board problems: you can easily pull out a couple for the flight, and pack the rest away in the overheard; you’ll have plenty of options; and you’ll have a sense of accomplishment from reading a bunch of books on your trip.

Sidebar: Which airline is cool enough to start a novellas-only imprint dedicated to in-flight reading?

Bring something you’re excited about.
Overall, a plane is the perfect place to leave your pretensions behind. For a while, you’re disconnected. Read something “embarrassing” or “unliterary”—you’re in the sky, only the birds can judge you!

It’s just you, your book, and a seven-inch image of Kevin Costner in a dizzying array of cowboy hats, constantly in your peripheral vision. Happy flying!

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