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Good to know. I tried "the left hand of darkness" and didn't like it. Somehow it read more like mediocre fantasy than scifi.
Because the science part takes a backseat to the cultural exploration. I guess that could be either fantasy or science fiction, but since it has spaceships it must be the latter.
Ada Palmer's "Terra Ignota" spoke more to me, and it's also more cultural exploration than science.
Anyone read a short 133 pages book of her's 'Very Far Away from Anywhere Else'? Heard that it's good.
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Srsly. Earthsea is the most potent of all her work.
Agreed. The Earthsea Cycle is one of the greatest and most influential fantasy sagas of all time, right up there next to LotR. It pioneered the wizarding school trope, later popularized by Harry Potter, as well as a magic system incorporating “true names” of things, a concept used in many other fantasies such as Eragon. A Wizard of Earthsea is my all time favorite book.
First is the diversity of the characters. It's not all white people, although I recall some TV/film adaptions were not particularly faithful to that much to Le Guin's disappointment.
The other is a phrase that I still use to this day: "tired is stupid". Particularly when I've been debugging something for many hours, late into the evening, I find that some rest and coming back to it later is almost always the solution to my problem. Turns out PEBKAC does not just apply to lusers.
If I would allowed to only own one book, it would be "The Dispossessed". This books explains so many different sides of humanity. On a more personal note: After reading it a dozen times there are still parts I need to cry. Just thinking about the strong emotions in parts of the book waters my eyes right now.
That book, more than anything, helped me to see anarchism as a viable organizational system and not just people “doing whatever they want”.
What, no Earthsea?
Harry Potter just seemed so trite, superficial, and generic by comparison.. but since I never actually read them I can't say if my impression of them from the outside was accurate.
Would any other Wizard of Earthsea fans who've actually read Harry Potter be so kind as to compare and contrast the two?
Is Harry Potter really as atrocious as I'm dreading it is?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because the science part takes a backseat to the cultural exploration. I guess that could be either fantasy or science fiction, but since it has spaceships it must be the latter.
> since it has spaceships it must be the latter. I look forward to the day when spaceships become as mundane as trains and helicopters, so that their presence alone will not make a novel "science fiction". Le Guin never identified her books as science fiction. Sadly the world can't seem to look at a book without shoving it into the bounds of a familiar genre. This doesn't help readers, either, as GP was apparently gi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Srsly. Earthsea is the most potent of all her work.
Agreed. The Earthsea Cycle is one of the greatest and most influential fantasy sagas of all time, right up there next to LotR. It pioneered the wizarding school trope, later popularized by Harry Potter, as well as a magic system incorporating “true names” of things, a concept used in many other fantasies such as Eragon. A Wizard of Earthsea is my all time favorite book.
Er... also was a pretty important influence on one of the most important cyberpunk works of all time...