Ursula K Le Guin

In her 1976 essay ‘The Space Crone’, Ursula K. Le Guin imagines the highly advanced aliens of Altair landing on Earth. Politely, they seek a human being to accompany them on their long journey home so that they may ‘learn from an exemplary person the nature of the race’. As a palliative care doctor, I often ponder what constitutes an exemplary life, so my choice of Space Crone may not be a conventional one.