<link href="../Styles/nfuin_style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> <meta content="urn:uuid:16b41fab-dd86-4378-8a00-0f837ef06d4f" name="Adept.expected.resource"/> </head> <body> <h3>Introduction</h3> <p>I was asked recently when I was going to start writing "real" fiction. Enough of the spaceships and wizards, Iona! You're not fourteen any more!</p> <p>There are a lot of possible answers to that. Chief of which is that our genre doesn't need to be defended from those who don't understand its vital relevance. In her speech at the 2014 National Book Awards, Ursula Le Guin put it best: writers of science fiction and fantasy have the unique responsibility to be “realists of a larger reality" – to light the way to a world yet to come.</p> <p>These stories were written over a four-year period beginning in 2014, and in echo of their times, they are stories about things in flux, points of transformation. I have often been accused of wanton melancholy, and it's true they aren't always cheerful: with extraordinary change comes grief, regret, things irrevocably lost.</p> <p>But nevertheless, I hope these stories are in Le Guin's spirit: they are about possibility, not constraint. Not for use in navigation, because the world yet to come will be better than anything I could possibly imagine. I hope you enjoy them just the same.</p> <p><br/></p> <p>Iona Datt Sharma</p> <p>March 2019</p> <p/> </body> </html>