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Ursula Le Guin has died

nytimes.com

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Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#111

Post by MrHetzner »

zokier wrote: post #36

This might not be the best time to put this comment, but quite some years ago I attempted reading Dispossessed, because it is such highly rated novel and Le Guin even more highly respected author. But I didn't get very far, the whole Communism vs Capitalism aspect felt so hamfisted and overbearing that I lost interest. That cold war did end, as such the context of modern reader is quite different. The political natur…

The book was mostly about how Anarchism and Capitalism produce power structures that work against the individual.

The communists in the book were not mentioned a lot from what I remember (there was a communist state on Urras?).

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#113

Post by Freak_NL »

zumu wrote: post #85

I've always been interested in Le Guin, but never read much, outside of an Earthsea book or two as a child. From the contents of the thread I seem to be gathering The Dispossessed might be the best place to start. Is this correct? Are there any other must reads?

I second this request.

I have read A Wizard of Earthsea recently — because of its status as an archetype of fantasy writing — but (perhaps not surprisingly considering its intended younger audience) it seemed to me a bit dry and descriptive in its prose. I gather that her more adult-oriented works are different?

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#114

Post by nkoren »

zumu wrote: post #85

I've always been interested in Le Guin, but never read much, outside of an Earthsea book or two as a child. From the contents of the thread I seem to be gathering The Dispossessed might be the best place to start. Is this correct? Are there any other must reads?

Try "The Birthday of the World". Bite-sized short stories that are utterly indelible. Will make you hungry for her longer works.

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#115

Post by wz1000 »

pavlov wrote: post #102

I first read “The Dispossessed” in a hospital delivery room while waiting for my first child to be born. The way Le Guin paints an entire life’s dreams and hopes and their external bounds left an indelible impression. There is a birth scene in the book that I remember with as much emotion as the actual birth the same night. On a more general level, “The Dispossessed” is a good example of the paradigm shift that Le Gu…

> they get mistreated by the system as often as they get lifted up by it. In the end she makes the explicit point that this is just one possible way of organizing human societies among a nearly infinite set of possibilities

Well, the book is subtitled "An Ambiguous Utopia"

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#116

Post by mmustapic »

dmitriid wrote: post #99
kiliantics wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ursula Le Guin was an ardent socialist and it comes through in all her writing. I don't understand why the only comments and quotes about her politics are all downvoted in this thread. But I guess that's the average Hackernews reader for you... EDIT: the quote is from a speech, which you can hear/see in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et9Nf-rsALk

She also warns how socialism can be easily turned into the power of the few. See The Dispossessed .

No, she warns about the creation of hierarchies even in a purely anarchist society.

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#117

Post by mmustapic »

autarch wrote: post #49
stcredzero wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I enjoyed reading The Dispossessed , though I have also been known to characterize it as, "A Sci-Fi universe where communism actually works, hence the 'Fi' part." However, I've recently read Thomas Sowell's book about the original formulation of Marxian economics and philosophy, and I've come to the conclusion that the technology of the late 21st century might possibly enable a viable communal society through the rep…

But the whole point of the novel is that neither system really works very well! I think you're doing it a disservice to characterize it in that way. She did her best to imagine a communist system that was nearly ideally designed and it still fails in so many ways.

> She did her best to imagine a communist system that was nearly ideally designed and it still fails in so many ways.

It wasn't a communist system, but an anarchist one. And it didn't fail in so many ways, it's just that life in Anarres was tough. A barren moon with few natural resources. They even had bad harvests and people starved to death.

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#118

Post by Freak_NL »

stcredzero wrote: post #40
macrael wrote: post #9

I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy. —T…

If you like Sci-Fi that likes to speculate on the nature of sex and gender, also check out Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis saga.

I always liked John Varley's take on those topics — in some of his short stories in particular (collected in The Persistence of Vision, The Barbie Murders, and Blue Champagne, amongst others).

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#119

Post by arethuza »

stcredzero wrote: post #43
newen wrote: post #22

RIP. The Dispossessed is one of my favorite books.

I enjoyed reading The Dispossessed , though I have also been known to characterize it as, "A Sci-Fi universe where communism actually works, hence the 'Fi' part." However, I've recently read Thomas Sowell's book about the original formulation of Marxian economics and philosophy, and I've come to the conclusion that the technology of the late 21st century might possibly enable a viable communal society through the rep…

Iain M. Bank's Culture is perhaps my favourite example of a "working" communist society - but it does rely on "magic" technology, engineering of its inhabitants to be nicer and ultimately on god-like AIs to actually run things. Most humans in the stories are effectively pets of the AIs - pets who are very well looked after, and who can leave the Culture if they want (which the vast majority don't - of course) but where they don't really matter.

Edit: Personally I would sign up in an instant.

Re: Ursula Le Guin has died

#120

Post by dwb »

I'm not a massive fiction person (though I was as a kid), but "The Lathe of Heaven" is one of my very favourite works, in any medium or genre. Near-on perfect. RIP.
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