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Everybody that I know that reads SF has their own favorite Ursula K. Le Guin story. I have a hard time because I have two. 'The Lathe of Heaven' and 'The Left H
by jacquesm 9mo ago
Everybody that I know that reads SF has their own favorite Ursula K. Le Guin story. I have a hard time because I have two. 'The Lathe of Heaven' and 'The Left Hand of Darkness'.
- PretzelPirate 9mo agoI have a signed copy of 'The Left Hand of Darkness' and I will never let it go. I do wish my copy of 'The Dispossessed' was signed. That book is a masterpiece!
- dtgriscom 9mo agoAlthough I love most of her fantasy works, I found 'The Dispossessed' to be too difficult for me. However, that's probably because her interests were broader than mine.
- eternauta3k 9mo agoIf you want some help then check out Mythgard Academy's course: https://mythgard.org/academy/dispossessed/ https://mythgard.org/academy/dispossessed/
- dtgriscom 9mo agoThanks, but watching an eighteen-hour seminar on a book so that I can enjoy that book doesn't seem worth it to me. (Note that "to me"; I'm quite open to being a literary lightweight. My experience of AP English in high school was that it inoculated me against the great works of literature.)
- scarecrowbob 9mo agoI eventually dropped out of a PhD Lit program, but damn the AP English syllabus did everything it could do to dissuade me from enjoying literature. I feel you on not wanting to read stuff that can't be read without footnotes.
- scarecrowbob 9mo agoAs a person actively organizing with anarchists and who has had a lot of long, fraught relationships leading to my late 40s, I found the Dispossessed to be relatable is ways I wouldn't have if I'd read it earlier in life. I don't know if it's a difficult book, but I can see how it might land differently for me in different situations.
- jacquesm 9mo agoLucky you! Make sure your heirs realize the significance...
- Phelinofist 9mo ago> ... 'The Left Hand of Darkness' I read it last year. I found it to be quit boring and it also felt kinda "dated" in the sense that more recent SF is more space-y. However, the social constructs were well thought out.
- opto 9mo agoReplying for anyone reading this comment: Le Guin was a Daoist, but also, and concurrently, an anarchist. So much of her writing, especially The Word for World is Forest, parts of Earthsea, The Dispossessed, is informed by her anarchism. Very often you find Le Guin exploring ideas of an anarchist response to colonialism, or just enjoying setting out an anarchist society and imagining how it might work, how it would unfold, the challenges it would face, and the solutions people might try.
- jackyinger 9mo agoThe social constructs were the entire point. The spacey stuff was just a vehicle to get a more relatable protagonist into the story.
- mbb70 9mo agoIn the foreward, she calls out to her, great SF is descriptive, not predictive. TLHOD is about sex, gender, friendships and culture in our world. Also a huge number of spacey contemporary works like A Mote in God's Eye, Rendezvous with Rama, Dune, Ringworld...
- bryanrasmussen 9mo agowhat does space-y mean in this context? Spacey, as in trippy (vernacular definition), in the way that Phillip K. Dick is? Or set in outer space? If the second, there was a lot of sci-fi set in space for decades before The Left Hand of Darkness, and the cultural focus of that book and a lot of the new wave of science fiction writers of that time was a reaction against the outdated space focused science fiction of the previous generations.
- sonofhans 9mo agoFunnily enough, at the time (50 years ago) one common criticism of LeGuin was her lack of space battles and ray guns. Science fiction has always had those tropes and always will. Luckily, LeGuin brought more to it.
- jibal 9mo agoThe Lathe of Heaven was the first I read and had a big impression on me. Much later, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas did.
- dtgriscom 9mo agoThe WNET film of "The Lathe of Heaven" was wonderful. It was low-budget, and at times looked it, but captured the book well. It was unavailable for quite a while because of a scene centering around the Beatles' "With A Little Help from My Friends"; it was too expensive/complex to re-license it.
- jibal 9mo agoI've seen it a couple of times (it's on YouTube, IIRC) and it was well done but I much preferred the book.
- roughly 9mo agoI think “The word for world is forest” is criminally underrated.
- jacquesm 9mo agoYes, true, that's also a great one. I should really re-read all of them.
- celsius1414 9mo ago2026 is the 60th anniversary of Rocannon’s World, the first novel of her Hainish Cycle SF books. I’m rereading all of them over the course of the year to celebrate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainish_Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainish_Cycle She is one of my writer-heroes.
- andyjohnson0 9mo agoI enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness and Earthsea, but my favourite of her works is Always Coming Home [1]. Such a rich and varied and humane book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_Coming_Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Always_Coming_Home
- lproven 9mo agoI read _Always Coming Home_ about 30 years ago now, and ever since, "heya" has been my default greeting. I could count how many people recognised it on my fingers, but that doesn't matter.
- ilamont 9mo agoI grew up reading Earthsea but later discovered Threshold/The Beginning Place. Some of her short stories are very good, too.
- 7402 9mo agoMine is 'City of Illusions.' I liked the Patterning Frame, which appears in it; I made one. https://7402.org/blog/2021/patterning-frame.html https://7402.org/blog/2021/patterning-frame.html