[HN Gopher] Ursula Le Guin Books
___________________________________________________________________
Ursula Le Guin Books
Author : drdee
Score : 163 points
Date : 2021-05-08 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (fivebooks.com)
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| I'd recommend The Wind's Twelve Quarters (a collection of short
| stories) as a good introduction to Le Guin's work. Many of those
| stories later sprouted into separate novels.
|
| Outside of the Hainish Cycle The Lathe of Heaven is also worth
| checking out.
| DoomHotel wrote:
| The 1980 film The Lathe of Heaven is wonderfully done,
| especially when you consider it was made as a PBS project for
| $250,000.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lathe_of_Heaven_(film)
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _Lathe of Heaven_ can be seen on youtube here: [1]
|
| Those who haven't seen it should be prepared for a very low-
| budget film which definitely feels like a 1980 period piece,
| but I personally enjoyed it anyway.. and conceptually it's
| way better than a lot of much higher budget, newer movies.
|
| It's for people who prefer to watch something that makes them
| think, instead of the usual scifi fare of effects,
| explosions, fights, and people running around in skin-tight
| outfits.
|
| [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8VRbaVNvSA
| lucas_codes wrote:
| 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 impressed it was written in
| 1969.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" the feminist bent (among other things) makes it feel
| incredibly modern - I remember being impressed it was written
| in 1969."_
|
| 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?
| pmoriarty wrote:
| As a huge fan of the _Wizard of Earthsea_ , I could never bring
| myself to read the other big wizard school books: _Harry Potter_.
|
| _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?
| signal11 wrote:
| I enjoyed both. I mean, for X to be good, Y doesn't have to be
| bad. They're different things.
|
| Ignoring wizardry and fantasy for a moment, _Harry Potter_ is
| also a "school adventure", which is a staple of British
| children's literature, including works such as Enid Blyton's
| _Mallory Towers_.
|
| Anyway -- there's so much good children's literature out there.
| Read (or procure for the kids in your life) what you want!
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Harry Potter is not atrocious - lots of people read it and it
| has inspired a lot of people. I think it seems trite to people
| who have read a lot of the fantasy classics and are steeped in
| Wizard of Earthsea, Gormenghast, Once and Future King and the
| like, but to people that are looking for something different,
| it is imaginative and the characters grow in a realistic and
| interesting way.
| vmilner wrote:
| I'm a huge Earthsea fan and I enjoyed HP too - I just think
| they're different styles of books, in particular HP has a lot
| of comedy, and it's more directly aimed at children than
| Earthsea is. Similarly, 'The Worst Witch' is great for slightly
| younger children.
|
| To be honest, you could knock off the first volume of HP in a
| day or so, so the easiest thing is just to try it.
| grey-area wrote:
| Earthsea is written for adults too, Harry Potter is written for
| children. Most of the significant differences stem from that.
| tinco wrote:
| This might be a bit controversial since we're in a thread about
| how good Le Guin is, but in my opinion "Name of the Wind"
| perfects the subgenre. It is the same basic story, even based
| on the same magic system, but it's more polished, emotional,
| mysterious and riveting.
|
| The Harry Potter books are amazing, I don't think they're
| related to Earthsea in any significant way though. There's a
| reason that they're so popular, and it's not that everyone has
| bad taste.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I avoided Harry Potter for a time because in some ways of
| LeGuin and her critical article "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie",
| which helped solidify some perspectives I had regarding
| fantasy, whenever I would see excerpts from Harry Potter I
| found the language unenticing and mundane.
|
| However I did not give enough weight to the strengths of J.K.
| Rowling, which are in character and plotting.
|
| LeGuin in my estimation had the full package, but you can't
| discount Rowling's abilities either.
| nbernard wrote:
| It's difficult to answer as the Harry Potter books' complexity
| deepen during the series, as the characters (and the child
| reading the books?) grow. The first one is definitely a
| children book. The last ones less so (and can be quite dark).
| ilamont wrote:
| 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_ , moved on to the third book
| in the series (and liked it) but couldn't get into #4.
|
| I've also enjoyed her short stories, including some of her later
| collections from the 1990s and 2000s.
|
| A book that is seldom on her "best of" lists but I think should
| be there IMHO: _The Beginning Place_. I first read it in the U.K.
| (with an alternate title, _Threshold_ ) but returned to it
| recently and it holds up in terms of the story and the scope of
| the strange world it describes. Not to mention the beauty of
| science fiction or literature or prose or whatever you want to
| call it in the hands of a master:
|
| _The creek, his companion and his guide: what of it? It must
| join a river, or become a river, downstream, and large or small
| it must run at last into the sea. His breath caught. He stared
| blankly at his fire, his mind held by that thought: the sea that
| lay beyond the coasts of evening. The darkness to which this
| living water ran. White breakers in the last of dusk and out
| beyond them the depths, the night. The night, and all the stars._
| bluquark wrote:
| 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.
| anand-bala wrote:
| If you loved Tales Of Earthsea, you _must_ read the last book
| in the Earthsea Cycle: The Other Winds. It takes a very
| introspective approach to the notion of mortality and
| immortality, which ties in with the importance to the _names_
| of humans, dragons, animals, and other objects. It's
| phenomenal, to say the least.
| bluquark wrote:
| In my opinion _Paradises Lost_ is one of the best books Le Guin
| has written. If you 're wondering which of her books to read next
| after her two most famous sci-fi novels, I recommend that one.
| throwaway82003 wrote:
| Anyone read a short 133 pages book of her's 'Very Far Away from
| Anywhere Else'? Heard that it's good.
| bawolff wrote:
| Yes. I read it a long time ago. Its a really beautiful coming
| of age story.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| I've never read a Le Guin book, but I see some Richard Powers
| covers there so they must be OK.
| redisman wrote:
| I also recommend The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. It's only
| about a 15 minute read but quite powerful
|
| https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/emily.klotz/engl1302-6/rea...
| ineedasername wrote:
| It's hard to remember the exact timing of when I read some books,
| but I know that Earthsea was one of the first, if not the first
| book, that ended up sparking a love of reading.
| mattmattmatt wrote:
| Was working my way back through the Earthsea Cycle, when I
| started reading 'No Time To Spare` while waiting for my next
| library book.
|
| Sure, it's a collection of blog posts and not a novel. But what
| an incredible insight into intricate, carefully observed lens
| through which she views the world.
|
| I've never wanted to just keep reading someone talk about their
| new cat more.
| minnca wrote:
| I think The Beginning Place is an underrated Le Guin book that
| didn't make the list! It's definitely not science fiction or even
| futuristic - more like fantasy plus magical realism - but I found
| the plot so unique and engaging.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| The world is vast and strange Hera, but no vaster or stranger
| than our minds are. - The Tombs of Atuan
|
| I've always felt that quote summed up what Ursula Le Guin had to
| say.
| mudil wrote:
| Interesting fact. Ursula Le Guin was in the high school at the
| same time with Philip K Dick.
| https://www.openculture.com/2016/12/when-ursula-k-le-guin-ph...
| OisinMoran wrote:
| What a coincidence, I just finished The Lathe of Heaven by her
| this morning. It's not on the list here but I enjoyed it quite a
| bit (4/5 stars I would say), so I'm even more excited to check
| these out.
|
| The Lathe of Heaven is about a man whose dreams change reality--
| rewriting the past so everything fits--but his therapist is
| trying to use that power for his own gain and to create a utopia.
| Things don't exactly go as planned though.
| runfaster2000 wrote:
| I've read that one. It's good, but not nearly as good as her
| other writing. I'm always torn by whether I like the earthsea
| or Hainish series better. She also has many wondering short
| stories, some of which borrow from her longer works.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Le Guin is popular for her speculative and scifi books but her
| Earthsea cycle is also very nice fantasy.
| void-star wrote:
| 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 writing, regardless of genre.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| 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.
| void-star wrote:
| 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.
| nikolay wrote:
| My favorite actually is A Wizard of Earthsea.
| teh_klev wrote:
| 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_
| 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.
| greatquux wrote:
| Those three initial novels are a really fun read!
| teh_klev wrote:
| I agree, and flying cats!
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" 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 the old.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > To me, newer stuff tends to be much worse than the old.
|
| Maybe, but it seems more like an application Sturgeon's Law
| (90% of everything is crap). The filter of history is
| fantastic for leaving a lot of the poor quality stuff behind.
| Contemporary writing (novels, short stories) haven't been
| filtered for us yet. This leads me to usually favor older
| writing (even just 2-3 years old) over truly new stuff unless
| I'm a fan of the author or have received a recommendation
| from friends who are more voracious fiction readers than me
| and who I have similar taste to.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| You're right. Sturgeon's Law applies to all ages, and there
| are a ton of awful old books.. but it's just a lot easier
| for me to find good old books than good new books.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| I find good luck reading stuff that was recently
| Nebula/Hugo nominated. Usually it isn't strictly scifi,
| much of it is fantasy (but by the definition in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27090292, it is
| still sci-fi/speculative fiction).
|
| This year there are 8 novels that appear on either list
| (http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2021-hugo-
| awards/, https://nebulas.sfwa.org/sfwa-announces-
| the-56th-annual-nebu...). I've read three (Piranesi, The
| City We Became, The Midnight Bargain). Piranesi isn't
| speculative at all, just pretty and thought provoking and
| _foreign_ in a way that 's difficult to describe. The
| City We Became and the Midnight Bargain are both
| interesting. I found TMB to be at points a bit heavy
| handed with the metaphor, but still thoroughly enjoyable
| and interesting. Both it and The City We Became are very
| openly political, in the case of The City We Became,
| _very_ openly so in a very contemporary way.
|
| That said, it's also a good way to find authors. Polk,
| Jemisin, and Moreno-Garcia have other books that I've
| read or will soon read that are all critically acclaimed
| and IMO very good, thought provoking, sci fi, in the way
| that adventure books like Sanderson's aren't (though
| those are still great to read). I should note that I
| haven't had the chance to get to Le Guin yet (except for
| _Omelas_ , which is great, and I see influence of in, for
| example, Jemisin's _Broken Earth_ trilogy). She 's on my
| list, but I want to finish up basically everything by
| Jemsin first. Hopefully this year!
| sdenton4 wrote:
| 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...
| teh_klev wrote:
| I've re-read the original Foundation trilogy around ten
| times over the years. Sure the writing is clunky, it's a
| product of its time (~40s-50's) and a bit "Boys Own". But
| if you can get past that the story itself is still a
| classic in the genre and I still enjoy it every time I read
| it again.
|
| But you're right in some respects, thus far for me, Le Guin
| has been totally captivating and obviously a far better
| writer than Asimov. But remember she also started her
| writing in different times.
|
| Also, I don't quite remember any "groping" in Foundation. I
| know there's some stories about Asimov having wandering
| hands, but I don't remember that in the books.
| anand-bala wrote:
| > Part of the function of time is to filter out the
| timeless from the merely timely
|
| This is such a beautiful observation.
|
| As a kid, I wasn't into "old" fantasy and scifi, but
| recently have started reading them. And I must say, there
| are a lot of authors with some beautiful foresight,
| especially Le Guinn: the entire Earthsea Cycle talks about
| some deep psychological introspection, about how power
| dynamics can affect different sects of society differently,
| about the notion of "inherent evil". This stuff is as
| timeless as human society.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > People who consider something from the 1960's or 70's to be
| "too old" are really missing out on so much amazing
| literature.
|
| I completely agree. Personally I read fairly widely in a
| temporal sense, as long as the story engages me I'll run with
| it. I think the point I was trying to make is that a lot of
| folks can be put off by scifi thinking it's a genre brim full
| of space lasers, FTL space craft and nasty aliens and not
| much else; when in fact it's much much more than that. This
| part of the interview stood out as evidence of that:
|
| > This was when she got the National Book Foundation Medal
| for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters in 2014;
| in her speech she not only thanked the committee for giving
| her the award, but said _it was high time that speculative
| fiction writers were recognised as participants in the
| culture of literature, instead of being sort of segregated to
| a ghetto--she called them "realists of a larger reality." And
| she reminded everyone how important science fiction is
| because the genre is about "writers who can see alternatives
| to how we live now."_
|
| But sadly it's been a long time, if ever (I haven't checked),
| since we saw any speculative fiction making it onto
| shortlists or winning prizes on say the Booker Prize[0],
| because it's not "literary" enough (bloody snobs).
|
| Finally I should also say that I also enjoy a good rip-
| roaring interstellar and galactic scale space opera as much
| as I enjoy more nuanced writing.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_Prize
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" But sadly it's been a long time, if ever (I haven't
| checked), since we saw any speculative fiction making it
| onto shortlists or winning prizes on say the Booker
| Prize[0], because it's not "literary" enough (bloody
| snobs)."_
|
| Yeah, snobbishness is a huge problem in literature, visual
| art, and music... in all culture, probably.
|
| Some people want desperately to be the gatekeepers of
| taste, and unfortunately the rest of society lets them get
| away with it.
|
| On the other extreme, there's a lot of trashy cultural
| production ("kitsch") which I find problematic myself,
| because it tends to be so trite and superficial.. but as a
| cultural relativist I have a hard time mounting any kind of
| serious argument against it.
|
| I guess if someone likes something, that should be enough,
| and there's really not much anyone can say against it that
| doesn't amount to anything more than "I don't like it".
|
| That conclusion doesn't sit very easy with me, but I can't
| think of a way around it.
| mrec wrote:
| Honestly, I don't see this as a problem any more. Litfic
| is as much a genre as SF, and just as an SF novel isn't
| going to win the Booker, a litfic novel isn't going to
| win the Hugo or Nebula. Yes, the Booker judges believe
| that their preferred genre is intrinsically superior to
| all the others, but nobody else needs to pay any
| attention to them if they don't want to.
|
| Twenty or thirty years ago it was different, because the
| channels for discovery and discussion were so
| impoverished for anything remotely niche, but that hasn't
| been the case for a while now.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| That's true, but the converse is that it's easy for many
| of the people buying their velvet Jesus' and Thomas
| Kinkade paintings to ignore the Van Gogh's and Picassos
| (well, ok, these are hard to miss, but insert your
| favorite "serious", "great" painters here).
|
| And fans of whatever the scifi equivalent is of the
| trashiest of romance novels might never get to seriously
| give Ursula Le Guin a chance.
|
| I think that's a pity.
|
| People are getting balkanized and locked in to their
| favorite echo chambers. In one sense its good, because
| you're not getting your tastes and preferences dictated
| to from the ivory tower by some gatekeeper elites, but on
| the other hand I think a lot of people are missing out on
| discovering some amazing art, music, and literature
| because they're so enclosed in their little bubble from
| which many never dare to or even think of escaping.
| zabzonk wrote:
| What, no Earthsea?
| swayvil wrote:
| Srsly. Earthsea is the most potent of all her work.
| tediousdemise wrote:
| 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.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| > as well as a magic system incorporating "true names" of
| things, a concept used in many other fantasies such as
| Eragon.
|
| Er... also was a pretty important influence on one of the
| most important cyberpunk works of all time...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Here's an interesting talk on the use of speech and names
| in _The Wizard of Earthsea_ :
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaTfnDQQKaM
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" right up there next to LotR"_
|
| I absolutely hated _LotR_ and everything else from Tolkien
| that I 've read.
|
| To me _The Wizard of Earthsea_ is infinitely better, and
| Tolkien is not even in the same league as Le Guin.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Why is that? Basically why you dislike Tolkien, as LotR
| and TWoE have different flavor so liking one over the
| other isn't strange.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| 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 generic.
|
| By the way, I am a fan of much older literature than
| Tolkien, and consider the works that Tolkien himself was
| probably inspired by to be much more lively, authentic,
| imaginative, and well written than anything Tolkien
| himself ever wrote.
|
| Things like, say, Apulius' _The Golden Ass_ , a Roman
| fantasy written in 1 AD.
|
| Or virtually any of ETA Hoffmann's work -- written in the
| 1700's.
|
| Or Poe (1800's), or Blackwood (early 1900's), or the
| French Decadents (1890's), etc..
|
| Or the _Mahabarate_ (400 BC or even earlier).
|
| Or _The Count of Monte Cristo_ (1800 's).
|
| Etc, etc, etc..
|
| These works were all far more complex, three-dimensional,
| interesting, and insightful than the "good guys team up
| to defeat the big baddie" that LoTR brought.. not that
| that in itself had to doom Tolkien's work, if he had any
| profound insight in to the world or the human condition,
| or maybe had some interesting characters, but he had
| none.
|
| To me Tolkien has always just seemed as nothing more than
| a mediocre writer who'd have been long forgotten if there
| was any justice in world of literature, but instead he's
| gotten massively overrated.
| tomgp wrote:
| 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.
| onei wrote:
| 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, 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.
| vidarh wrote:
| Le Guin really used it as a moment to drive home her
| views on diversity in "A Whitewashed Earthsea - How the
| Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books" here [1] (I've seen the
| Earthsea adaptation, and while I'm not as critical about
| it as she is, it really is a very different story, and
| best watched as a story inspired by Earthsea).
|
| 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...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" First is the diversity of the characters. It's not all
| white people"_
|
| I read _The Wizard of Earthsea_ when I was 11, and didn
| 't even notice the race of the characters. I don't think
| much of it is made in the book. It's just a passing
| description.
|
| Much, much later, as an adult I heard someone mention it,
| and I went back and checked and sure enough they were
| right. But the characters' race had absolutely nothing to
| do with why I loved the book.
|
| The characters could have been blue, or purple, or
| glowing orange for all I cared. The book was not about
| that.
| swayvil wrote:
| Same here. Race seems such a small subject, relatively
| speaking.
| vmilner wrote:
| The notable white people are the Kargish bad guys.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| 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.
| vmilner wrote:
| 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.
| weyj4 wrote:
| Well said, but your word choice ("potent") reminded me of
| this great essay of hers:
| https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ursula-k-le-guin-
| the...
|
| tl;dr she's making a feminist argument that a lot of our
| stories (Joseph Campbell, monomyth, etc) involve this phallic
| potency of going out into the world with our pointy sticks
| and poking wooly mammoths or whatever. she thinks maybe
| instead of pointy sticks we could think about this carrier
| bag model. but I can't figure out what she really means in
| practice, because surely she wants her politically-oriented
| work to be...potent? if her stories aren't effectively pointy
| sticks then what should they be? anyway I haven't even read
| Earthsea so I should probably shut up and go do that, but if
| anybody figures this paradox out lmk.
| grey-area wrote:
| Great link, thank you. She really is an interesting
| thinker, and her stories have a lot to tell us. Earthsea is
| worth reading.
|
| Re potency, I think she's saying it is more common, if less
| glamorous, to receive and collect than to fight and
| conquer. Perhaps she chooses to collect and share stories
| and questions rather than tell you what to do. That is why
| her tales can seem slow to some - there is a lot under the
| surface, a lot of meaning nameless or unsaid.
|
| I think of her stories more as questions than answers.
| fractallyte wrote:
| Thank you for that link!
|
| Now I'm wondering what is the story of the _Heroine_ with a
| Thousand Faces?
|
| Where is the other half of human (pre)history?
| SeanLuke wrote:
| I like all of Earthsea. But what really surprised me about the
| Earthsea "trilogy" was how interesting the later three books
| were, and how much they subtly reflected, I suppose, changes in
| her philosophy about feminism and culture. [For those of you
| who don't know, Le Guin wrote the original trilogy early in her
| career, then wrote the last three books much, much later, with
| a big gap between].
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I found the later books rather boring - she grew away from
| me. The book where we departed company, I think, was Always
| Coming Home.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I never even got to the later _Earthsea_ books.
|
| I absolutely loved and treasured _The Wizard of Earthsea_ ,
| which I've read and reread many times over my life
| (something I almost never do with any books).
|
| The other two books in the trilogy: _The Tombs of Atuan_
| and _The Furthest Shore_ were pretty disappointing to me,
| so I stopped reading Le Guin after that.
| vmilner wrote:
| The 1997 BBC Radio adaptation of TWoE (narrated by Judi
| Dench and Michael Maloney as Ged) is wonderful - parallel
| in quality to their 1981 Lord of the Rings adaptation.
| bnralt wrote:
| The two earliest Earthsea short stories, The Word of
| Unbinding and The Rule of Names, are worth reading if you
| liked the more high-fantasy focus of the first book.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I found a reading of _The Rule of Names_ here:
|
| - Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwDAn0aBqcc
|
| - Part 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YFgSFvMN7M
|
| - Part 3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTTZ4fEFgFA
| phsource wrote:
| The article does mention a book in the Earthsea series
| (Lavinia), as a note
|
| EDIT: I was mistaken! It's not an Earthsea book; it was just
| mentioned in the same paragraph
| zabzonk wrote:
| Lavinia is not an Earthsea book.
|
| https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Lavinia_(novel)
| 37ef_ced3 wrote:
| The real star of the Earthsea trilogy is the second book, The
| Tombs of Atuan:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tombs_of_Atuan
|
| The others put me to sleep, honestly
| ycombinete wrote:
| Interesting. I've read the first two books, and had the
| opposite experience.
| vmilner wrote:
| I found Atuan a bit dull at 20 (years old), but really
| moving at 40.
| jkmcf wrote:
| 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.
| vmilner wrote:
| The excellent female reading by Karen Archer helps
| (though is annoyingly hard to find.)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 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
| pmoriarty wrote:
| 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
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It was a kind of weird closing of the circle for me. I'd seen
| the TV movie (jeez, 1992, my guess was way off for when that
| came out) as a young teenager (perhaps 13 or 14) and the
| story stuck with me, but I absolutely could never remember
| the name. Being pre-Internet (for me, we went online a few
| years later in our house) there was no easy way to find it
| again. Then I discovered Le Guin's writings after another TV
| movie ( _Lathe of Heaven_ (2002)) and started reading her
| fiction works. In 2014, I saw the Ishi books on my girlfriend
| 's (at the time) bookshelf and realized that was the name I
| had been trying to recall for 20 years. Borrowed them, read
| them, then found out (because it's non-obvious, Kroeber and
| Le Guin are not the same name) when doing a bit more research
| that the author was her mother, and her father was the man
| who worked with Ishi. It made a lot of her writing
| (especially the Hainish cycle) more interesting to me as I
| realized it all possessed this anthropological bent in how it
| explored the worlds and their peoples.
| hatzalam wrote:
| Another really beautiful book of hers is Always Coming Home.
| Check it out sometime!
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| 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.
| timonoko wrote:
| "Dispossed", "Left Hand of Darkness" and "Strangers" (by
| Gardner Dozois) are about the same icy word. And I cant
| remember which is which, except Strangers is the creepiest. I
| do not cry, but Liraun's final words pain me so much that I
| cant breathe.
| Emigre_ wrote:
| 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?... :)
| timonoko wrote:
| 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?
| Emigre_ wrote:
| Oh you mean "icy world"? With an L. You wrote "word".
| Yeah, The Left Hand... is the one in a frozen planet.
| Great book.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| 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.
| k__ wrote:
| Good to know.
|
| I tried "the left hand of darkness" and didn't like it. Somehow
| it read more like mediocre fantasy than scifi.
| Aeolun wrote:
| 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| That's true of most SF. SF is primarily political, and has
| been since at least the late 50s. Although there is hard SF
| where the science leads, it's rarer - and less interesting
| - than SF which uses imaginary technologies to set a scene
| for political and social questions.
|
| IMO Le Guin and someone like Heinlein were two sides of the
| same strand of SF. They're both moralists rather than
| technical speculators, and in their own way they have a
| didactic streak where the morality is confidently presented
| but rather heavy-handed.
|
| Although The Dispossessed is politically ambiguous, it's
| not ambiguous in an unfathomable, mysterious, or
| unconfident way. Neither is something like Dune, or the
| Culture novels. Or even Asimov's Foundation.
|
| Part of the appeal of these authors is that they seem quite
| sure of their political and anthropological sophistication.
| While their characters may struggle, there's never a sense
| the authors feel they could be completely blindsided by
| human or alien anthropology, or steamrollered by non-human
| influences which are incomprehensible and impossible to
| deal with.
| sangnoir wrote:
| 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.
| akiselev wrote:
| _> 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._
|
| I don't remember where I read it but what you just
| described is one of the best strategies for writing scifi
| that many of the most well known authors used. I'd wager
| it is _the_ defining quality of science fiction from a
| historical perspective: it 's a form of fiction that
| split the difference between vanilla fiction and fantasy
| that just happened to grow popular in the 20th century's
| golden era of scientific research. This was the era of
| boundless optimism with flying cars and the World Fair's
| Futurama so a fuzzy genre that took our world and changed
| one abstract thing or dialed it up to 11 (alien invasion!
| total surveillance! AI! galaxy far far away!) became
| science fiction because authors chose convenient plot
| points based on the cultural zeitgeist of the time.
|
| On the surface the difference between science fiction and
| fantasy isn't all that big ("Any sufficiently advanced
| technology is indistinguishable from magic") but I think
| fundamentally they're different approaches to imagining a
| literary universe. The former is based in reality but the
| "science fiction" part is a plot device to implement the
| one aspect of the universe the author wants to change,
| whereas in fantasy it's supposed to be a new universe
| whose rules/laws are only vaguely related to our own
| because the author just happens to also be human.
|
| Edit five minutes later: Found it! Philip K Dick wrote in
| a letter (from _The Collected Short Stories Volume 1_ ):
|
| _> I will define science fiction, first, by saying what
| sf is not. It cannot be defined as "a story (or novel or
| play) set in the future," since there exists such a thing
| as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not
| sf: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the
| future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why,
| then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and
| Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space
| adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the
| essential ingredient. Also, there can be science fiction
| set in the present: the alternate world story or novel.
| So if we separate sf from the future and also from ultra-
| advanced technology, what then do we have that can be
| called sf?
|
| > This world must differ from the given in at least one
| way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to
| events that could not occur in our society -- or in any
| known society present or past. There must be a coherent
| idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the
| dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a
| trivial or bizarre one -- this is the essence of science
| fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so
| that as a result a new society is generated in the
| author's mind,
|
| > Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as
| impossible; science fiction involves that which general
| opinion regards as possible under the right
| circumstances.
|
| > Thus "good science fiction" is a value term, not an
| objective thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a
| thing, objectively, as good science fiction._
| kijin wrote:
| > 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 given
| the wrong expectations by these labels.
| minnca wrote:
| 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.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| 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.
| vidarh wrote:
| Both her parents were anthropologists. This is her father
| [1], and this was her mother [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._L._Kroeber
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_Kroeber
| k__ wrote:
| I don't know.
|
| Ada Palmer's "Terra Ignota" spoke more to me, and it's also
| more cultural exploration than science.
| wishinghand wrote:
| Taking science fiction as positing a technological change and
| then writing a story about how the world is given that
| change, Left Hand of Darkness is absolutely scifi. It wonders
| what one human society might be like if cut off for centuries
| or more after a diaspora. The ambassador in the story seeing
| if the world can be brought back into the fold is classic
| scifi. It's even more nuanced because the ambassador narrator
| isn't some emotionless ubermensch, but a sexist fish out of
| water.
| [deleted]
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I read it and I really enjoyed it. However it felt more like
| dipping my toes than engrossing myself in the world. I felt
| like I wanted a whole series rather than one book. It felt like
| so many details of a world with a functional but flawed
| anarchistic society were left unexplored.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| That book, more than anything, helped me to see anarchism as a
| viable organizational system and not just people "doing
| whatever they want".
| howfrontoage wrote:
| 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.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| ajmurmann wrote:
| I really liked how balanced the view is the book takes. There
| was a point where I thought this was Ayn Rand in space, but
| it's definitely not. It's quite human and shows the inherent
| flaws that will come organizing humans either way.
| aquir wrote:
| The best book ever! I don't know how many times I read it. My
| other favourite is The Left Hand of Darkness.
| robbiep wrote:
| My first book by her was The birthday of the world and other
| stories - Paradises lost really moved me.
|
| How good good literature can be
| danbmil99 wrote:
| Lathe Of Heaven please!
| Gimpei wrote:
| The Lathe of Heaven belongs on this list. Definitely in the top
| three.
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