Utopian and Dystopian Pessimism: Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest and Tiptree’s “We Who Stole the Dream”

SF is basically a utopian mode of story-telling; but against a background of growing unease in Western culture generally about science and technology, it has taken the pronounced pessimistic turn evident in Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest and Tiptree’s “We Who Stole the Dream.’’ Yet as these stand in relation to one another as statement and counter-statement, they together point up the need to distinguish different kinds of pessimism. One set of applicable terms is that in effect suggested by Ernst Bloch when he opposes an “already decided’’ to a “not yet decised” pessimism. The former, which might also be named dystopian pessimism, characterizes Tiptree’s story as it contrasts with the “not yet decided,” or utopian, pessimism of Le Guin’s in respect to their representation of evil, figured in “The Dream” as a metaphysical necessity, but in The Word as a historical universal. This difference, in turn, clarifies the meaning of the Blochian terms which serve to identify it. (RMP)