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Ursula LeGuin Talks Fantasy
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" Bestselling fantasy author Ursula LeGuin talks to The Guardian about the difference betwen writing fantasy and writing for children and why she's had so many heated disputes with book cover artists over the years.

"Writing fantasy isn't writing for children, but it erases the distinctions; it's inherently a crossover genre," she says. Much of fantasy writing, she adds, is "about power - just look at Tolkien. It's a means to examine what it does to the person who has it, and to others." A believer, with Shelley, that "the great instrument of moral good is the imagination", she says: "If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there's no way you can act morally or responsibly. Little kids can't do it; babies are morally monsters - completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy." No easy task. As she once wrote in exasperation, "Sure, it's simple, writing for kids. Just as simple as bringing them up."

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During summers on the family ranch in the Napa Valley, native American "uncles" made her aware of both the richness of their oral culture, and the bigotry they faced. They and the valley inspired Always Coming Home (1985), about post-nuclear holocaust Californians. "White is not the norm for me, or equivalent to being human, as in so much of the fantasy I read," she says. "I made a conscious choice to make most of my characters people of colour." In the Earthsea books, Ged is a dark copper-red, and his friend Vetch is black. "I've had endless battles with cover departments. Gradually the people on the books are darkening - it's taken that long."

The charge that he had insulted Turkey's armed forces was dropped, but he still faces the charge that he insulted "Turkishness", lawyers said.

His trial was halted on its first day, when an Istanbul judge said the case needed the justice ministry's approval. Brussels has described the case as a litmus test of Turkey's European Union membership credentials. It has called on Ankara, which has just started negotiations over EU membership, to do more to protect freedom of expression.

The trial was halted on 16 December and adjourned until 7 February. The justice ministry's permission is being sought because of a dispute over whether Mr Pamuk is to be tried under Turkey's old penal code or a recent, revised version. Mr Pamuk's lawyers have argued that he must be tried under the old code, requiring the justice minister to give a ruling.

The case stems from a magazine interview earlier this year in which Mr. Pamuk said: "One million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares talk about it." Turkey maintains the deaths of Armenians in conflicts accompanying the collapse of the Ottoman empire in the early 20th Century were not part of a genocidal campaign, arguing that many ethnic Turks were also killed in that period. Turkey also denies its efforts to contain a separatist uprising in its Kurdish community in the 1980s and 1990s can be classed as genocide.

Editor & Publisher: Any comments, serious or humorous, about these three major 2005 journalism stories: Massive layoffs at newspapers. The "Plamegate" leak case. "Pundit payola" to conservative syndicated columnists.

Dave Barry: 1. The newspaper layoffs are just depressing. 2. I tried to follow "Plamegate," but it turned out to be WAY more complicated than calculus, so I gave up around the time they indicted "Scooter," whoever "Scooter" is. But I do feel that, if we're going to be throwing journalists in jail, there is no excuse not to at least make an effort to get Geraldo. 3. I think paying pundits is a terrible, terrible thing, unless for some reason I get back into punditry, in which case I will be all for it.

"For 2006 will be the year when I write the final book in the Harry Potter series. I contemplate the task with mingled feelings of excitement and dread, because I can't wait to get started, to tell the final part of the story and, at last, to answer all the questions (will I ever answer all of the questions? Let's aim for most of the questions); and yet it will all be over at last and I can't quite imagine life without Harry."

"However (clears throat in stern British manner) this is no time to get maudlin."

"I have been fine-tuning the fine-tuned plan of seven during the past few weeks so that I can really set to work in January. Reading through the plan is like contemplating the map of an unknown country in which I will soon find myself. Sometimes, even at this stage, you can see trouble looming; nearly all of the six published books have had Chapters of Doom. The quintessential, never, I hope, to be beaten Chapter That Nearly Broke My Will To Go On was chapter nine, 'Goblet of Fire' (appropriately enough, 'The Dark Mark'.)"

Pamuk is already on trial under article 301 of Turkey's revised penal code for telling a Swiss newspaper no one dared discuss the alleged massacre of a million Armenians 90 years ago and the deaths of 30,000 Kurds in the past two decades.

The issue of freedom of speech has dogged every stage of Turkey's efforts to join the European Union. While the EU agreed to start entry talks with Turkey in October, such court cases are likely to hinder Ankara's progress towards full membership.

Nihat Tuna, of publishers Iletisim Yayinlari, said the prosecutor of an Istanbul court that charged Pamuk for denigrating Turkish identity had begun an investigation under the same article. "This is a preliminary investigation. It does not mean that another case against Pamuk will be launched," Mr Tuna said.

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The 53-year-old author of best-sellers My Name is Red and Snow is seen by many as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. His novels deal with the clash between past and present and the values of East and West from the point of view of a bourgeois intellectual.