Comments on: Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin

y2karl — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 21:29:49 -0800

The King and Tehanu go to meet dragons. A map of Earthsea. A very large map of Earthsea. The Hainish Encyclopedia. The Ekumen. The Disconnected. Le Guin's World. Ursula K Le Guin's Official Website.

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 22:10:30 -0800

No....NO!....I beg of you, on the sacred runes, on the Dragon's Teeth.....No EarthSea lunchboxes and other marketing paraphernalia! ".....this was merely a passing shadow of dark foreboding. For the moment, Ged's future seemed bright and clear as the sunlight refracted through the waves which bore LookFar miraculously aloft. That night, however, his dreams were troubled by dark merchandising schemes..... "

By: anastasiav

anastasiav — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 22:20:35 -0800

Interesting. She's also involved with Poets Against the War Even to the dreadful now of news we listened comforted by far timezones, languages we didn't speak, the wide, forgetful oceans. Today, no comfort but the jewel courage. The war is ours, now, here, it is our republic facing its own betraying terror. And how we tell the story is forever after. ::complete poem::

By: plep

plep — Thu, 02 Oct 2003 23:35:09 -0800

Her politics are basically anarcha-feminist. 'The Dispossessed' is perhaps her most interesting work, from a political point of view.

By: lazaruslong

lazaruslong — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 00:07:08 -0800

I think that her Earthsea series was good in that it was a great bildungsroman-esque development of one badass character, mixed with an original take on some of the fantasy cliches. That said, I also own her The Left Hand of Darkness, as well as Four Ways to Forgiveness (4 of these semi-connected short stories) and was not impressed, really. Earthsea rocks though.

By: wendell

wendell — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 00:39:45 -0800

Four words: "The Lathe of Heaven". The original PBS TV-movie introduced me to her works; I dove into the book to help figure out the fuzzier parts of the movie and just fell in love. (I remember that was also the summer I gave up on Heinlein, sorry lazaruslong.) One of my biggest life regrets is not reading more LeGuin, and now, y2karl, you give me all this good on-line material? Aaargh!! (Maybe if I dream real hard, I can change that...)

By: Pericles

Pericles — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 03:03:16 -0800

You can't beat "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" for a very short story (beware pop-ups). I read it years ago, and it still has resonance today. When i re-read it a month ago, I couldn't help but think of Omelas as the current U.S.A., with the child in the cellar as the people incarcerated in Guantanemo Bay. A great story does that; stays with you and morphs and adapts itself to different times and events.

By: arha

arha — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 04:03:25 -0800

Thanks for the link Pericles. I'm surprised that there isn't more discussion of Daoism on the le Guin sites. This is the backbone of the earthsea series, and the main reason for me that I can still re-read these books that I fell in love with as a child and get something new out of them. I don't think I can say the same thing about any other book. My only criticism of le Guin's later work is that it becomes increasingly difficult to emphasise with her characters. They become ideas rather than people.

By: arha

arha — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 04:06:15 -0800

empathise doh

By: JollyWanker

JollyWanker — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 05:37:05 -0800

Those familiar with English translations of the Tao Te Ching will find LeGuin's thoughtful rendering will I think be pleasantly surprised by LeGuin's accessible style. Even better - to my taste - is the audiobook version read by the translator herself. (arha: I'm pleased to discover another reader of the Earthsea cycle that recognizes LeGuin's affinity for Lao Tzu and its effect on at least her earlier work...)

By: evening

evening — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 05:37:51 -0800

I love Le Guin's scifi (not into fantasy, read first Earthsea and don't care to read on). Her stuff is original and well written and I love falling into her worlds. She's what I call "social" scifi (stories are always about culture and society), so anyone not into "hard" scifi may want to give it a try.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 05:50:20 -0800

LeG also writes mainstream stuff. She wrote the cleverest take on the New Yorker-format coming-to-understand story I've read, "Two Stops on the Northern Line."

By: alms

alms — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 07:17:51 -0800

Speaking of Earthsea, does anyone know definitively how to pronounce the name "Ged"? One could say that it's pronounced with a hard G, because otherwise it would be spelled "Jed" (which would have very different associations!). But the general rule in English is that a G is soft if it is followed by a soft E (e.g. general).

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 08:33:26 -0800

You can't beat "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" for a very short story (beware pop-ups) Except that nobody actually shows why the kid needs to be in the basement. Which is to say, it's so far into the land of didactic fables that any point it makes is reduced to inanity. And there should be a sequel -- "The Ones Who Come Back To Omelas At The Head Of A Tank Column." and Terry Bisson's "Meat" is a better very short story.

By: Pericles

Pericles — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 09:25:38 -0800

I'd be fascinated to read the sequal, should you write it, ROU_Xenophobe. The kid needs to be in the basement like people need to be kept on the cuban island, to ensure the 'security' and 'freedom' of the society that keeps them there. The similarities are that U.S. security, human rights and freedoms seem, at the moment, to be predicated on denying freedom and human rights of others (no habeas corpus, secret military tribunuals etc in Guantanemo Bay), shoot to kill in Iraq etc.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 10:49:00 -0800

But the general rule in English is that a G is soft if it is followed by a soft E (e.g. general). Get a gecko, you geek, before you turn into a geezer! (I have no idea, by the way, what you mean by a "soft E.")

By: widdershins

widdershins — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 10:58:51 -0800

Ah, languagehat, I knew you'd come through. I always pronounced Ged w/a hard G, myself. Love the Earthsea series and most of her work. OK, quite off-topic, but has anyone here read Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy? In my mind there are similarities between LeGuin and Piercy, though Piercy is not Sci-Fi or Fantasy.

By: lazaruslong

lazaruslong — Fri, 03 Oct 2003 13:32:15 -0800

The Lathe of Heaven rocks. Heinlein reigns supreme over all. Unicorns kick ass.

By: azazello

azazello — Sat, 04 Oct 2003 00:12:08 -0800

Ursula 0wnz j00. Thanks for the post. LeGuin gets more praise from me than I can fit here, and I was really unlucky to miss her Tehanu reading event in Berkeley this summer.