It was a delight to discover this story in the collection, The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, not so long ago. Le Guin has plenty of admirers, of course, and for a multiplicity of reasons—much has been made of her feminism, her activism, her advocacy for writing itself. For me, it was really about the dragons, and the possibility that a boy might become a wizard. But then I was a boy when I read A Wizard of Earthsea in the course of a summer night, by clandestine torchlight under my duvet. ‘The Rule of Names’ is one of two stories in the collection that were early ventures into the world of Earthsea and its magic. There are two rules: you never ask anyone their name, and you never tell anyone yours. This is because “the name is the thing”—too powerful to reveal. The magic in Earthsea is premised entirely on language—on names, on words—and it seems as though that may have begun here in this story of (mistaken) identity. I have wondered to what extent Alan Moore is influenced by Le Guin, in his assertion that fiction is essentially—and not metaphorically—magic, and vice versa. I feel the same way. I want it to be true because it would mean the boy did become a wizard after all.
Originally appeared in Fantasticmagazine in 1964, now collected in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Harper Perennial
A Personal Anthology 