Realists of a larger reality wanted
October 21, 2021 12:25 AM   Subscribe

Realists of a larger reality wanted: Ursula K Le Guin prize for fiction to launch in 2022
posted by domdib (13 comments total) 22 users marked this as a favorite
 
"hope and freedom, alternatives to conflict and a holistic view of humanity’s place in the natural world"

This is exactly the kind of media I want now, not something like Squid Game.

I immediately thought of Becky Chambers... then saw she was chosen to be a judge.
posted by Foosnark at 4:27 AM on October 21, 2021 [9 favorites]


immediately thought of Becky Chambers...
I'm busy reading the Galaxy and the Ground Within right now, and I love her depiction of the interactions between species, some of whom really shouldn't like each other in other situations.
Not going to read the article linked though, because I have the same feelings that Becky Chambers likely does about publications like that one.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 5:54 AM on October 21, 2021 [3 favorites]


Here is a link to information on the prize from the Le Guin website.
posted by Quonab at 6:18 AM on October 21, 2021 [4 favorites]


I’m seeing a much greater awareness of Le Guin’s work these days, and have found multiple sources quoting her carrier bag theory and her short essay on technology in the field that I work in - I think she’s one of those writers who is becoming more relevant
posted by The River Ivel at 6:28 AM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]


I've just read her Hainish cycle, and there is so. much. there. about culture, about gender, about sexuality, about race, about colonization...

I look forward to a new generation of SF readers discovering her work, and maybe older SF readers who read Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea Trilogy once upon a time realizing they should investigate the nooks and crannies.
posted by BrashTech at 8:35 AM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


There's a link in that article to another article from 2019 saying there's going to be another adaptation of the Earthsea novels. I looked up the producer on IMDB and I'm not seeing anything. Obviously I'm intensely concerned about casting.
posted by lumpenprole at 9:30 AM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


US readers can purchase a "Forever Stamp" for 1st class postage with her likeness (in front of two people wearing dark clothes tugging a sled in a snowstorm)
posted by Jesse the K at 10:39 AM on October 21, 2021 [3 favorites]


I look forward to a new generation of SF readers discovering her work, and maybe older SF readers who read Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea Trilogy once upon a time realizing they should investigate the nooks and crannies.

May I ask -- as someone who read Wizard of Earthsea in like 1994 and hasn't thought much about Leguin since then but recognizes that she sounds pretty rad, and just inhaled the Carrier Bag Theory essay mentioned above -- where would be a good place to start if I wanted to read more of her oeuvre?
posted by saturday_morning at 11:50 AM on October 21, 2021


Read the rest of the Earthsea books and watch how her thinking evolves.

Read the short-story collections: she was an amazingly good short-story writer.

Read The Lathe of Heaven.

She won many awards for The Left Hand of Darkness (about gender), and The Dispossessed (about politics and the possibility of a workable anarchy).

Many of her works address oppression in various forms. The Telling is about oppression by way of oppressing knowledge & culture. The Annals of the Western Shore is a YA trilogy about power, slavery, and empire.

She wrote a lot, and a lot of it was very good indeed.
posted by suelac at 11:57 AM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


"And the Urkel goes to..."
posted by rollick at 11:59 AM on October 21, 2021 [2 favorites]


This award sounds fantastic- exactly the sort of thing the sci-fi world needs.

In addition, the National Writers Union, of which Le Guin was a member, is not only celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, but also having its Delegates Assembly, which started today! (I'm a delegate myself.)
posted by heteronym at 12:56 PM on October 21, 2021


The first work of Le Guin's I read was the short story collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, written later in her career. I think it's kind of an underappreciated gem and a good starting point. Several of the stories are set in the same universe as the Hainish cycle.

I actually feel Le Guin was at the top of her game with this collection. In her earlier works, I find that her tone can be somewhat stuffy or humorless (though I don't at all believe she was a humorless person). This is one reason I don't recommend starting with The Left Hand of Darkness. I have a special spot in my heart for Le Guin, as she opened my eyes to the possibilities of SF, now my preferred genre of fiction. I don't think this would have happened if I hadn't started with her more mature writing.

(I'm pretty sure I discovered Le Guin on Metafilter, so...thanks, everybody.)
posted by Comet Bug at 8:10 PM on October 21, 2021 [1 favorite]


BrashTech, there's lots of good places to start mentioned by other people above, but if you want to read into her utopian thinking, then The Dispossessed is good, and if you can trace the thread of her Hainish short stories set on Hain itself, then even better; but IMHO her magnum opus in that vein is Always Coming Home which imagines a post-apocalyptic society on the West Coast of the USA.
posted by domdib at 5:29 AM on October 22, 2021


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