The first chapter starts off with a bit of tongue-in-cheek explanation of how interplanary travel works, specifically in airports. It gave me a chuckle or two and I thought it was setting the tone.
It did not. The very first vignette was very powerful. In a few pages, Le Guin managed to tug at heartstrings.
"But she is human too! She is, she is human too!"
I’m curious about your thoughts on why Le Guin chose Hain as the origin of all the settled planets rather than Terra. What story telling or thematic benefit comes from this?
I don’t think an author focused on “hard” sci fi would make that choice because they then have to explain away all the evidence of human evolution on Earth/Terra.
My feeling is that this freed Le Guin from having to make any connections between the societies she was imagining and the societies we know on Earth. The political and social challenges presented could reflect our experience without having to map or trace back into Earth history.
If that were the goal, why include Terra at all? Why not make the Star Wars choice and just let human beings be all over the galaxy with no Earth in site or in memory.
This edition is published by the UK based Gollancz Emporium and arrived today in my mailbox. Very happy with the quality and sturdiness of the book. Already started reading it.
Can anyone tell me anything about “The Isolate Tower”? It’s been around since 2004, but hasn’t been updated since 2011. There was a post alerting the community to it about six years ago, but that received no responses.
I get the impression that the site was a real labor of love, and I’d be very curious to hear if anyone knows anything about it—or its creator. I’ve held off contacting the site directly, though, because I’d hate to discover that I was disturbing a tomb…
Our planet, named after earth, the soil..and it's furless soilcoloured humans
This other planet, named after forest and its trees, and it's furred treecoloured humans. So the word for their world is forest. The word for their root is dream. So they live simultaneously in world-time and dream-time.
....
Just finished reading this gem, what beauty, so yummm....so resonant on these dream themes, dream times, roots and dreams, dream mastery, climaxed forests, god and translators....please suggest more....easy follow up through these themes....can't get enough of this :)
A preview of the cover page of a new themed sketchbook featuring characters from Earthsea.
I recently reread the series all the way to "Firelight" and I am in all my feels. I grew up living in an archipelago and I connected with the stories of Earthsea unlike with any other series.
I hope I can share my humble drawings here as the sketchbook progresses. 🙏🏽
Welcome to the /r/ursulakleguin "What Le Guin or related work are you currently reading?" discussion thread! This thread will be reposted every two weeks.
Please use this thread to share any relevant works you're reading, including but not limited to:
Books, short stories, essays, poetry, speeches, or anything else written by Ursula K. Le Guin
Interviews with Le Guin
Biographies, personal essays or tributes about Le Guin from other writers
Critical essays or scholarship about Le Guin or her work
Fanfiction
Works by other authors that were heavily influenced by, or directly in conversation with, Le Guin's work. An example of this would be N.K. Jemisin's short story "The Ones Who Stay and Fight," which was written as a direct response to Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas."
This post is not intended to discourage people from making their own posts. You are still welcome to make your own self-post about anything Le Guin related that you are reading, even if you post about it in this thread as well. In-depth thoughts, detailed reviews, and discussion-provoking questions are especially good fits for their own posts.
Feel free to select from a variety of user flairs! Here are instructions for selecting and setting your preferred flairs!
I’ve heard so many great things about Ursula K Le Guin, but her body of work is huge! Where do you suggest to begin? I would prefer to start with fantasy, but up to any and all suggestions! Thanks!
Hello everyone. I started the Hainish Cycle with the Left Hand of Darkness and fell in love with them. I am now reading through the rest in release order.
I finished Rocannon’s world and it’s now one of my favorite myths/tales. But I have a question. Maybe I’m understanding part of this wrong however:
>!If Rocannon learned mindspeaking from the Ancient One in the Mountain but needed to pay a price!<
>!And if in Planet of Exile Agat states that mindspeaking was first taught to Rocannon,!<
>!Then what price did the League of Worlds pay to learn the power?!<
Again I could be misunderstanding one or more of the above but if that’s all correct I wonder what >!astronomical price they’d have to pay for them to learn it at a grand scale.!<
Possibly a dumb question, but is the Library of America Earthsea box set expected to sell out? I'd like to ask for it for a Christmas gift but if it is going to go quickly I'll just get it earlier. Thank you!
It's odd because death wasn't actively on my mind before and I don't think my attitude was different from others (aware but pretend it's a long way off).
Despite this, after reading the Furthest Shore has made me oddly ok with death. It's actually made me think that it can be beautiful.
The other odd part is that I've been an atheist for almost all of my life. I even tried very hard to believe in something when some of my family passed away a few years ago, but I just couldn't because I was 100% a non-believer and nothing could change it. It wasn't so much that I thought there's *nothing*, more that I just didn't think it made a difference to my life (so more agnostic) and whatever it was, it is much more closely linked to the physical world we occupy. To me the "higher being" was always nature/our physical universe and the laws of physics.
So the fact that I am now suddenly able to consider something else other than "we die and become worm food." is very unusual. Although I guess that is, in the most literal sense, returning to the universe and passing on the gift of life.
The Furthest Shore, as a story, wasn't my favourite of the Earthsea stories. But it's now become one of the most impactful books I've ever read!
Did anyone else have a similar experience?
I noticed in the ad copy that LOA is sending out about the boxed set of Earthsea that they say "The boxed set that completes the shelf." Is this implying that they will NOT be putting out any more volumes? No essays? No non-Hainish short stories? Anyone know?
I read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas yesterday and am still thinking about it.
cause Is it just me or does anyone else feel like it's very similar to the trolley problem? like In the trolley problem, you're essentially choosing between saving one person or five. In the same way, this story takes that dilemma to a much larger scale one child's suffering versus the happiness of an entire city.
Ik the story has many other meanings utopia, morality, society, conformity and all but deep down, I also feel like there's a trolley problem hidden beneath it.
Hi everyone! I'm doing my regular Earthsea reread and want to make a playlist to listen to as I read.
So far I've only got one song, "Pavane for a Dead Princess." It's very Therru and Tenar-coded to me, which I love.
So, does anyone have any other pieces of music that they associate with Earthsea, especially with the books Tehanu and onwards?
I'm primarily looking for classical, symphonic, and orchestral-type instrumental tracks but open to anything. Thank you all.
Found this at a local record store and had to snag it. Would love to look into more of these, especially Ursula reading her own stuff!
I’m curious about something I’ve noticed as people talk about Earthsea as a series.
I sometimes see people talk about Wizard, Tombs, Farthest Shore as the “first” trilogy, which they definitely are.
Then people talk about Tehanu in a variety of ways as challenging, powerful, crucial, troubling.
And then they talk about The Other Wind as the next book in the series, only offering Tales of Earthsea as a “you might think about reading,” as a possible side journey, rather than the actual fifth book in the series.
I know it’s short stories and novellas, but I can’t imagine reading Other Wind without Tales first. I don’t think Le Guin conceived of that collection as anything less than necessary. In every republication of the saga it is the fifth book in the series.
Do people not see it as book 5, as essential??
One aspect I think we all share in Le Guin’s books is the rereading value. Many of her works just seem so endlessly rewarding that they are begging to come back to. None more so in my opinion than Paradises Lost with its myriad of references and nuances. But also Five Ways to Forgiveness, later Earthsea books, parts of the Annals, etc. By the rereading/rewarding value I don’t mean they are the best or the most profound by the depth of ideas or by the quality of prose. Lavinia and Always Coming Home stand out in that respect. Complete Poetry too, as a collection. Some of the books or passages I reread can be quite dark and sad, but I’m still entering them because I know I’ll be exiting richer than before, like with Tehanu, although it can feel a bit overwrought. Some books, for me, have exhausted themselves on the first reading, The Eye of the Heron and The Beginning Place, for instance. The latter I consider a first-rate novel though. Also, The Dispossessed exhausted itself for me on third, chronological reading. It’s like the re-readability increases when the world-building gets more exciting for the writer than expressing an idea. Or what do you think?