TUESDAY, August 11th at 7pm: Ursula K. LeGuin's THE STARS BELOW

Willow Moonfire reads Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story that initially came to prominence when reprinted in the anthology volume The Wind’s Twelve Quarters alongside of The Word of Unbinding and The Rule of Names, two of the founding short stories of what would become her Earthsea novels.

Fearing the zealots who razed his observatory burn him at the stake for heresy, an astronomer is forced underground into the cold tunnels of ancient mine workings that sit upon deeper, more extensive tunnels and caverns hewn by nature. Here he is discovered by a group of old miners who still try to eke out a living chipping silver out of the hard rock. Rather than turn him in, they adopt him, and slowly he learns some of their ways and helps them with their work, but never venturing back to the surface, afraid for what might happen if the authorities come upon him.

But his learning of the stars of heaven will not leave him, nor will the skills he learned in making his own telescopes and fine lenses – one of which he rescued from the pyre of his observatory. And so the miners see him less and less as he explore the great caves and caverns, until one evening he comes to them to tell them he has once again found the stars – and they are below the mine.

Presented Live on Stream.