51–60 of 122 posts
The way it examines what a genderless society might look like and the differences is incredibly intelligent, yet is just the setting - there's a thoroughly interesting plot over the top.
And the feminist bent (among other things) makes it feel incredibly modern - I remember being impressed it was written in 1969.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I read a Wizard of Earthsea as a kid, and looking back 2 things stood out to me. 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…
She's always been very vocal about this aspect, and how the diversity in her work was very deliberate and "snuck past" publishers and readers defences (at the time first published) by first mentioning it a bit in, and how publishers and cover artists at various point tried making the characters white:
> My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn’t see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn’t see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had “violet eyes”). It didn’t even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now—why wouldn’t they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?
[1] https://slate.com/culture/2004/12/ursula-k-le-guin-on-the-tv...
Related, her mother's two books on Ishi are well worth a read. Ishi in Two Worlds (non-fiction, biographical) and Ishi: Last of His Tribe (fiction) by Theodora Kroeber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishi
The Ishi story is fascinating, and I second your recommendation, and also want to mention the famous documentary: Ishi, the last Yahi [1] It amazed me when I found out that Ursula Le Guin was the Krober's daughter. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyXxHI3Hi90
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a big Le Guin fan and I consider her books to be sort of like "anthropological science fiction," as in they're focused on the societies and people of science fictional societies and less so on the science behind those societies.
Yeah that's a big part of her thing right. She was raised by anthropologists I think? It's very present in a lot of her books and Always Coming Home is like 1/3 straight fictional ethnography.
I decided I'd start reading her scifi novels in near chronological order and began with The Left Hand of Darkness which I found devastatingly good. This is the one mentioned in the interview where Genly Ai the observer is embedded on a planet where the humanoid species are in the main genderless and only become male or female during a period of "kemmer" to reproduce. I can't do it justice here but I couldn't put the book down.
Next up were the three previous novels; Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions. These are contained in a handy single volume published under the S.F. Masterworks imprint. All of these are also excellent novels, if a little short.
I've just started The Dispossessed and thus far it's holding my attention.
I think if you've never considered reading Le Guin's scifi then I can definitely recommend from the limited sampling I gotten through so far. Some folks might be put off by how old these novels are, but Le Guin cleverly shy's away from using technology as a plot driver (perhaps with the exception of the "ansible") so they don't feel dated. Her writing and story telling is as fresh today as it probably was back in the 60's and 70's.
Also, and I almost forgot, Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" which is quite disturbing and thought provoking.
I have only read The Left Hand of Darkness of these five, just last year, and it is definitely one of my favourite books of all time. The way it examines what a genderless society might look like and the differences is incredibly intelligent, yet is just the setting - there's a thoroughly interesting plot over the top. And the feminist bent (among other things) makes it feel incredibly modern - I remember being impre…
Artists, musicians, and writers are often on the cutting edge of cultural phenomena, and that probably goes double for those scifi writers who spend their lives imagining truly different future societies. It usually takes a while for mainstream culture (which tends to be far more conservative) to catch up... if they ever do.
I've been kind of out of touch with the current state of sci for decades now, and wonder what new visions of humanity I've been missing out on.
Would any informed scifi fans care to give a quick summary of recent developments?
I've read a ton of speculative fiction over the years (I'm in my mid 50's) but had never gotten around to reading anything by Ursula Le Guin. One day whilst catching up on some anarchist reading I found The Dispossessed listed in a "top x books for anarchists" or some such thing. And it seemed like no better time than at that moment to dip into the Le Guin's work. I decided I'd start reading her scifi novels in near…
I've been reading a lot of books from Project Gutenberg over the last couple of decades. Most of their collection ends in the 1920's, so Le Guin seems pretty modern to me by comparison.
People who consider something from the 1960's or 70's to be "too old" are really missing out on so much amazing literature.
To me, newer stuff tends to be much worse than the old.
I recently discovered her translation of the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu. It’s become one of my favorite books to open and read a random page from and meditate on. In it I think she also really shows the roots of her philosophy that she expressed throughout all of her writing. The original writing is ofcourse Lao Tzu but the voice in the translation is very much Ursula’s. I’d highly recommend it for fans of any of her wr…
Reading different translations of it is like looking at a diamond through its many facets.