What does it mean, to be human? Imagination!

Ursula K. Le Guin:  “I believe that all the best faculties of a mature human being exist in the child, and that if these faculties are encouraged in youth they will act well and wisely in the adult, but if they are repressed and denied in the child they will stunt and cripple the adult personality. And finally, I believe that one of the most deeply human, and humane, of these faculties is the power of imagination.” [*]

Le Guin, was a writer, inspired by anthropology, of SF  like Woolf, defended “the uses of the imagination … most especially in fairy tale, legend, fantasy, science fiction, and the rest of the lunatic fringe”.  I guess that Octavia H. Butler, would have shared that view. Her SF is full of imagination, likewise, dwells on psychological and anthropological references and sensibility for „the other“. 

 

([*] source: Marleen S. Barr – obituary in Nature, 1st March 2018, doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-02439-7)