Free New Atlantis by Ursula K. Le Guin Page A

actually lived without TV,
without the Internet, without Twitter. It is incredible to them that in those
olden days we did communicate, in our primitive fashion. We had no TV, so we
painted pictures of reindeer on the walls of our caves. We could not text, so
we wrote novellas. . . .
    As for the Atlantis part of “The New Atlantis,” that’s
something else. It isn’t science fiction. It isn’t wishful thinking. It isn’t
even Atlantis, because it’s in the Pacific. It’s a dream, a vision, that arose
out of grief, out of yearning.
    — Ursula K. Le Guin
Portland, October 2013

The New Atlantis
    Coming back from my Wilderness Week I sat by an odd sort
of man in the bus. For a long time we didn’t talk; I was mending stockings and
he was reading. Then the bus broke down a few miles outside Gresham. Boiler
trouble, the way it generally is when the driver insists on trying to go over
thirty. It was a Supersonic Superscenic Deluxe Longdistance coal-burner, with
Home Comfort, that means a toilet, and the seats were pretty comfortable, at
least those that hadn’t yet worked loose from their bolts, so everybody waited
inside the bus; besides, it was raining. We began talking, the way people do
when there’s a breakdown and a wait. He held up his pamphlet and tapped it — he
was a dry-looking man with a schoolteacherish way of using his hands — and
said, “This is interesting. I’ve been reading that a new continent is rising
from the depths of the sea.”
    The blue stockings were hopeless. You have to have something
besides holes to darn onto. “Which sea?”
    “They’re not sure yet. Most specialists think the Atlantic.
But there’s evidence it may be happening in the Pacific, too.”
    “Won’t the oceans get a little crowded?” I said, not taking
it seriously. I was a bit snappish, because of the breakdown and because those
blue stockings had been good warm ones.
    He tapped the pamphlet again and shook his head, quite
serious. “No,” he said. “The old continents are sinking, to make room for the
new. You can see that that is happening.”
    You certainly can. Manhattan Island is now under eleven feet
of water at low tide, and there are oyster beds in Ghirardelli Square.
    “I thought that was because the oceans are rising from polar
melt.”
    He shook his head again. “That is a factor. Due to the
greenhouse effect of pollution, indeed Antarctica may become habitable. But
climatic factors will not explain the emergence of the new — or, possibly, very
old — continents in the Atlantic and Pacific.” He went on explaining about
continental drift, but I liked the idea of inhabiting Antarctica and daydreamed
about it for a while. I thought of it as very empty, very quiet, all white and
blue, with a faint golden glow northward from the unrising sun behind the long
peak of Mount Erebus. There were a few people there; they were very quiet, too,
and wore white tie and tails. Some of them carried oboes and violas. Southward
the white land went up in a long silence toward the Pole.
    Just the opposite, in fact, of the Mount Hood Wilderness
Area. It had been a tiresome vacation. The other women in the dormitory were
all right, but it was macaroni for breakfast, and there were so many organized
sports. I had looked forward to the hike up to the National Forest Preserve,
the largest forest left in the United States, but the trees didn’t look at all
the way they do in the postcards and brochures and Federal Beautification
Bureau advertisements. They were spindly, and they all had little signs on
saying which union they had been planted by. There were actually a lot more
green picnic tables and cement Men’s and Women’s than there were trees. There
was an electrified fence all around the forest to keep out unauthorized
persons. The forest ranger talked about mountain jays, “bold little robbers,”
he said, “who will come and snatch the sandwich from your very hand,” but I
didn’t see any. Perhaps