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Ursula Le Guin Books

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Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#81

Post by sangnoir »

Aeolun wrote: post #16
k__ wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of science fiction is indistinguishable from fantasy if your swap positron-brained AI -> wise elves/demi-god, alien invaders -> orcs or an elven race (depending on how advanced the plot demands they ought to be, relative to humans), teleportation -> teleportation, non-real-world tech/discovery/invention required by plot -> magic. A few stories managed to straddle both genres (like the Merchant Princess series by @cstross).

My observation is that most sci-fi is set in a world mostly similar to ours, except for one aspect/tech that's dialed to 11. Fantasy has a much looser attachment to our world, and sometimes the weirder, the better. Also, each has its own genre-tropes that can be used (or subverted) but barely translate to the other - I'm yet to see a fantasy story that is grounded in egalitarianism.

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#82

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

timonoko wrote: post #70
Emigre_ wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the recommendation, I’ll read “Strangers”. I liked “Dispossessed” and “The Left Hand of Darkness”, specially the later. I have to ask - which “icy word” you mean?... :)

As I said I cant really remember which is which. Or maybe the Dispossed was about two worlds and only the other one was hostile and cold?

The Left Hand of Darkness takes place on a very cold world. The Dispossessed takes place on a pretty normal seeming world and its somewhat less hospitable moon.

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#83

Post by void-star »

pmoriarty wrote: post #60
void-star wrote: post #43

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…

The Tao Te Ching is one of the most profound books I've ever read in my life.. but it's hard to recommend just one translation. Reading different translations of it is like looking at a diamond through its many facets.

I would agree with that, however in the context of understanding Ursula Le Guin and her writing I stand by my call out to this translation specifically.

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#84

Post by vmilner »

pmoriarty wrote: post #71
vmilner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notable white people are the Kargish bad guys.

True, but their race is barely even noticeable in the book, and they only even appear in maybe the first 20 pages. The book is really not about race, and racial issues are pretty much non-existent in the book.

Le Guin herself said she didn't make a big thing of it, but that the traditional genre skin-colour stereotypes are deliberately flipped. I certainly didn't notice until it was pointed out to me.

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#85

Post by vmilner »

jkmcf wrote: post #75
vmilner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found Atuan a bit dull at 20 (years old), but really moving at 40.

This is great to hear. I think I skimmed a lot of it the first time in my early teens and have skipped it on following rereads. I recently picked up the omnibus collection and hope to read it soon. Since I haven’t read the post trilogy stories.

The excellent female reading by Karen Archer helps (though is annoyingly hard to find.)

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#86

Post by sdenton4 »

howfrontoage wrote: post #68
erikpukinskis wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That book, more than anything, helped me to see anarchism as a viable organizational system and not just people “doing whatever they want”.

Honestly I disagree they had anarchism. Seemed they had a sort of collectivism where they replaced some authority with "computers that hand out assignments" and pseudo-authority from the capital (Anares? I forgot). It looked like an odd system where presumably you were free but conditions were so hars and social pressure so strong that you did what was required. Sweden in space desert.

Anarchism means 'without leaders,' not without society.

Actual anarchists are generally interested in how to design a society that can function at a high level without leaders. This usually involves some mix of process and committees, with some serious thought about how to handle delegation of decision making without concentrating power in too few hands.

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#87

Post by tomgp »

pmoriarty wrote: post #76
forgotpwd16 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that? Basically why you dislike Tolkien, as LotR and TWoE have different flavor so liking one over the other isn't strange.

It just always seemed super boring, generic, and unimaginative. The hobbits were also annoying for their one-dimensional, unimaginative, middle-class goodness. Yes, I know that one of the reason Tolkien's work seems so cliche today is that so much has been influenced by it. Maybe if I'd read it in the 40's or 50's I would have been more impressed, but as I read it in the 80's, by then it already seemed way too generi…

You should check out Le Guin’s appreciation of LOTR in ‘a wave in the mind’. Both Le Guin (esp Earthsea) and Tolkien really work well being read aloud and reading her breakdown of the rhythms of the opening sections of LOTR was a revelation to me.

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#88

Post by sdenton4 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #59
teh_klev wrote: post #57

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…

"Some folks might be put off by how old these novels are..." 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 th…

There's a LOT of stuff in 'golden age' sci fi which hasn't aged well at all.

I love the /idea/ of Foundation - both the 'science of history' idea, and the idea of making every chapter a different set of characters, tracing the arc of history. But found it to be pretty terrible as an actual book when I went back to re-read it a year or two back. It's 1/3 good idea, 1/3 engineer's disease on galactic scale, and 1/3 creepy male lens. (like, seriously, if an author treats women as nothing more than background furnishings, useful for occasional groping, I start doubting their ability to say interesting+useful things about human society real quick. And 60's sci fi has a TON of this perspective.)

Le Guin is literally exceptional. A fantastic author, who I've loved since I was a kid and can always go back to.

Part of the function of time is to filter out the timeless from the merely timely...

Re: Ursula Le Guin Books

#89

Post by bluquark »

ilamont wrote: post #78

I have a bit of a different take on Le Guin's best work. I couldn't get into The Dispossessed . I will try again, though. I read The Wizard of Earthsea when I was a teen and loved it, struggled with the second book ( Tombs of Atuan ) at the time, then returned to it 30 years later and now consider it a truly fine work as a story and an examination of religion, tradition, and belief. Immediately after completing Atuan…

I found the sudden transition to a pessimistic, depressing tone in Earthsea #4 hard to swallow as well. The criticism of the wizards' arrogance in #4 was indeed overdue but the whiplash was too intense for me.

I strongly recommend #5 (Tales from Earthsea) though, it integrates the new ideas of #4 but more in tune with the original atmosphere of the world. And the plot doesn't depend on having read any of the previous books.

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