Publishing Data
Originally published in Playboy, 1968
Restored and reprinted
in The Wind's Twelve Quarters
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| Two men stationed on
a harsh and isolated planet are joined by a set of ten clones. Then nine
of the clones are killed in a mining accident. |
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| Background |
- The
story is perhaps Le Guin's most famous.
- Editors
at Playboy asked her to publish
under the byline "U. K. Le Guin" in order to disguise her
gender. Le Guin writes that this was the first and only time she met sexual
prejudice from an editor or publisher and it seemed so silly, so grotesque,
that she failed to see that it was also important.
- Inspiration
for the story came from the chapter on cloning in The
Biological Time Bomb (1968) by Gordon Rattay Taylor.
- In her introduction to the story in her collection, Le Guin says that this
is about as hard-core as her science fiction gets. She says the story
is the
working out of a
theme directly extrapolated from contemporary work in one of the quantitative
sciences--a what-if story. The theme, however, is developed qualitatively,
psychologically. Essentially I am using the scientific element, not
as an end in itself, but as a metaphor or symbol, a means of saying
something not otherwise expressible.
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| Navigation Guide |
| Of what significance to the story is the setting? |
| How would you describe the relationship between Pugh and Martin as the story
opens, that is, before the clone arrives? |
| Describe
the 10-clone. What are their advantages and disadvantages? Do you consider
them truly human? |
| Describe
the relationship between Pugh and Martin and the 10-clone. |
| Of
what significance is the setting of the accident that kills all but one
of the 10-clone? |
| What
is wrong with Kaph, the surviving clone, and why? |
| What eventually happens to him? |
| The story explores the complications of cloning humans. What effect, if
any, does this story have on your attitude toward the cloning of humans? |
This
story conveys a social message on loneliness, alienation, and aspects
of identity:
- loneliness of
the self;
- the impossibility
of understanding the self except through its relationship to the other;
- the human need
to establish that relationship through reaching out to the other in
love.
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In her essay"On
Theme" Le Guin notes that at the end of the story Kaph is
no longer self-sufficient:
Self-sufficient.
There the hammer strikes the great bells. What does it mean? to be sufficient
to yourself? What is a self? Can a self be sufficient to itself: If
not, what is the role of the Other? Is the existence of a foreign self
a threat or a necessity, or both? And what is the role of total otherness--of
death? Can a being unaware of itself be aware of its own mortality,
and conversely, can a being ignorant of its own mortality be aware of
itself--or of the Other?
I didn't answer
any of these questions [in "Nine Lives"],
of course. To get a question asked properly is all I hope to do. . .
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