Communities of the heart

"We live in a society that believes itself to be rational - scientific and quantifiable. Yet at the same time we live in a culture that is saturated with the mythic. We speak of life as a journey; we are all heroes on our own quests. We seek the fantastic, the princess in the castle, the wizard peering into a crystal bowl. We tell fantastic stories of our technological age - of space ships, other worlds, aliens. And we tell the same stories - in myth, in fantasy, in science fiction. Or do we? Ursula K. Le Guin would answer yes and no. We do tell the same stories, to better and more fully under…