"ein klassisches Beispiel für die Spannung zwischen theologischer Erzählung und römischer Verwaltungsgeschichte":

Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις ἐξῆλθεν δόγμα παρὰ Καίσαρος Αὐγούστου ἀπογράφεσθαι πᾶσαν τὴν οἰκουμένην.

Margaret Atwood is a Canadian novelist, poet, and critic whose work blends fiction, feminism, ecology, and political satire.

She prefers the term “speculative fiction,” emphasizing that her inventions  are extrapolations of existing technologies and social trends.

Atwood’s fiction often features archivists, witnesses, and survivors — characters who record or reinterpret the collapse of social orders.

Recurring themes: power, surveillance, reproductive rights, environmental destruction, mythmaking, and the blurred line between utopia and dystopia.

Atwood is also an inventor and activist, engaging with climate issues, civil liberties, and the politics of storytelling itself.

The story when εὐαγγέλιον got seriously wrong, again.

the Spanish Inquisition ???

Gilead is a totalitarian theonomocracy built on fear, infertility, rigid control and necrotic inversion of Eros / Libido. After environmental collapse and declining birth rates, the state reorganizes society by biblical literalism, stripping women of money, rights and reducing them to fixed roles—Wives, Handmaids, Marthas. Language, dress, and movement are regulated; surveillance and ritualized violence enforce obedience. Power is justified as moral restoration but functions through repression and coercion. Gilead presents itself as orderly and pious, yet is sustained by hypocrisy, cruelty, and the systematic erasure of individuality.

daughter of Alfred Louis Kroeber and Theodora Kroeber

spent her childhood in highly stimulating environment (community of Berkeley anthropologists)

married historian Charles le Guin in 1953, stayed with him ever since

6 Hugo Awards; 8 Nebula Awards; 25 Locus Awards; 2nd woman honored (in 2003) as a Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

main topics / influences: cultural anthropology & the Golden Bough; (jungian) archetypes; (philosophical) taoism; mythology

two major cycles: Earthsea cycle (high fantasy) and Hainish cycle (soft sci-fi)

in cca 20 minutes You will be asked a question: "Is the planet on which Earthsea cycle stories unfold part of the Ekumen/Hain universe ?"

Ishi (c. 1861 – March 25, 1916) was the last known member of the Native American Yahi people from the present-day state of California in the United States. The rest of the Yahi (as well as many members of their parent tribe, the Yana) were killed in the California genocide in the 19th century. Widely described as the "last wild Indian" in the United States, Ishi lived most of his life isolated from modern North American culture, and was the last known Native manufacturer of stone arrowheads. 

Ishi, which means "man" in the Yana language, is an adopted name. The anthropologist Alfred Kroeber gave him this name because in the Yahi culture, tradition demanded that he not speak his own name until formally introduced by another Yahi. When asked his name, he said: "I have none, because there were no people to name me", meaning that there was no other Yahi to speak his name on his behalf. 

Collection of six "high fantasy" books taking place on the world of Earthsea : a vast archipelago of hundreds of islands surrounded by mostly uncharted ocean. In most of the cycle, it narrates

the story of Duny - Sparrowhawk - Ged (secret name!) as he matures from (arrog|ignor)ant boy into one of the wisest and most powerful magicians in the land

the story of transformation of Tenar, raised to perform rites for divinities long dead, into protectrice of Life & those oppressed.

The Ekumen is a loose confederation of cca 83 human worlds in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish cycle. It is not an empire but a network for communication, exchange, and mutual recognition among civilizations long separated by time and distance.

Lacking armies or central authority, the Ekumen relies on envoys, trust, and dialogue rather than force. Its guiding aim is to reconnect humanity after millennia of isolation, preserving cultural difference while enabling cooperation, shared knowledge, and slow, fragile interstellar understanding.

LeGuin's most favorite archetypes are those of "Observers" / "Messengers" / "Bridge-Builders-Between-Worlds".  According to their code-of-conduct, emissaries should not interfere with politics / culture of the planet they are sent to. 

Hainish novel set on Gethen (Winter), where humans undergo 24-day "somer" (ambisexual) and 2-day "kemmer" (male or female; fertility and receptiveness) cycles.

Terran envoy Genly Ai tries to bring Gethen into the Ekumen. Estraven, an politician exiled from Karhide to Orgoreyn becomes Genly’s uneasy ally.

Gender as a social system—what changes when “man/woman” isn’t a permanent category?

The 80-day ice-crossing becomes the story’s moral center.

The story of loyalty (&betrayal), friendship, love and death.

Referat.

Paired worlds: Anarres (anarchist, austere) and Urras (capitalist, lush) — one origin, two social experiments.

Physicist Shevek leaves Anarres to complete a theory of time and restore true communication between worlds.

Anarres: no property, no state — but social pressure replaces law; conformity replaces freedom.

Urras: abundance and beauty, built on inequality, exploitation, and silenced labor.

Nonlinear structure: past and present interwoven, mirroring Shevek’s theory of simultaneity.

Central tension: revolution must stay unfinished—or it hardens into authority.

We'll spend great deal of next summer-semester analyzing this book.

Is the planet on which Earthsea cycle stories unfold part of the Ekumen/Hain universe ?

"Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust… In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes. But they are of the same essence… Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies."

(Ursula K. Le Guin, City of Illusions)

P.S. Slava Ukrajine 🇺🇦

"Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust… In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes. But they are of the same essence… Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies."

(Ursula K. Le Guin, City of Illusions)

P.S. Slava Ukrajine 🇺🇦