The (also awesome) writer Jo Walton wrote a great celebration of Ursula Le Guin's life. She wrote in part:
She widened the space of science fiction with what she wrote. She got in there with a crowbar and expanded the field and made it a better field…
Le Guin expanded the possibilities for all of us, and then she kept on doing that. She didn’t repeat herself. She kept doing new things. She was so good. I don’t know if I can possibly express how good she was.
I enjoyed this review and thought the point about "whiplash" with Tehanu was well observed.
I read Tehanu roughly when it came out, so I'd have been about 18, having read the others much earlier. I was annoyed and disliked it due to the tonal change.
I re-read it again a year or so ago along with the short stories and The Other Wind. I loved it. Nothing had changed - except me, of course.
zem 2 hours ago [-]
same, I used to skip tehanu when I reread the series, but find it an excellent book today. it also helps that it's now the start of a second trilogy, so the shift from the first trilogy isn't really an issue. (I think younger me would have enjoyed tehanu greatly as a standalone book, it just wasn't the conclusion to the earthsea trilogy I wanted)
danielodievich 2 hours ago [-]
I have the omnibus edition that they have in this review. It is a gorgeous book, although still likely not as lovely as Folio Society's https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/books-of-earthsea.html. The paper is very white, with the reading light behind it is almost a bit too white/reflective. But great in ambient light. Charles Vess' illustrations are amazing, although there are just too few of them. I got spoiled at his glorious and PLENTIFUL work on Sandman and Stardust. Nevertheless, excellent packaging for incredible series of stories.
25 minutes ago [-]
fmajid 41 minutes ago [-]
I have that omnibus edition. Bought it for my then newborn daughter when it came out (and have them all in eBook format as well), but have yet to convince her to read it, or The Hobbit.
It is available as an eBook in the UK for a ridiculously cheap £5.99.
Read The Hobbit to her, a bit at each bedtime. Make-up funny voices for the characters. My oldest son is now 24 and it's one of his fav memories just the both of us.
You're not alone. Ursula K. Le Guin hated the TV series, not least the casting of white actors for Ged, who is clearly described as dark-skinned in the books.
Mistletoe 34 minutes ago [-]
Do you like the animated one by Miyazaki’s son?
ChrisMarshallNY 23 minutes ago [-]
Never saw that one.
morkalork 2 hours ago [-]
Fun fact: she coined the word Ansible. I had no idea until reading one of her books recently and thinking "Ansible? Like the software?"
rrauenza 2 hours ago [-]
I always thought it was Card who invented it for Ender's Game. (He borrowed it)
Thanks for the fun fact!
hinkley 17 minutes ago [-]
No he cribbed that from the Hainish Cycle and kept the mechanism. Just read that last summer and was whaaaaat.
matthewdgreen 2 hours ago [-]
Silicon Valley loves to mine the fantasy and science fiction genre for their company names. At least the ansible is a generally neutral device (with some crummy side effects, as discussed in Le Guin stories) whereas naming something "Palantir" is to miss the whole damn point.
CobrastanJorji 2 hours ago [-]
Palantir is an excellent, AMAZING name for that company. It screams "we spy on people around the world: their pasts, their present, their very thoughts. We serve corrupt powers that pretend to be pure and good. We are a tool to enable the strong to dominate the weak. The data we produce will be misinterpreted to disastrous results."
I dont know if Thiel intended to convey that, but it's exactly the same name that I would've picked for that company.
hinkley 16 minutes ago [-]
One day soon we will lose our fucking minds and start attacking former friends and allies.
o11c 2 hours ago [-]
"Far-seeing, but dangerously corrupted" fits either Palantir quite well.
mcphage 2 hours ago [-]
The last Earthsea book change its world in a way which is unique (or at least rare), even in fantasy series. I won’t say it here for spoiler reasons, but it’s really quite wonderful. The whole series is absolutely worth reading.
clircle 51 minutes ago [-]
Author used to be an Emacs maintainer, FYI.
me_smith 2 hours ago [-]
I was just gifted the first book of the series. I’m looking forward to reading it after seeing some of the praise it received recently.
barbazoo 2 hours ago [-]
Reminds me of Goodreads.
> I was just gifted the first book of the series. I’m looking forward to reading it after seeing some of the praise it received recently.
> 5/5
me_smith 2 hours ago [-]
Ha. Fair enough. I'll report back once I read it. I don't have a Goodreads account so I'm making up for it here I guess.
brador 32 minutes ago [-]
First 2 are great, next 4 start to drag but you’re invested in seeing how things turn out.
sharkjacobs 3 hours ago [-]
I was really excited for the release of that omnibus, I remember actually marking it on my calendar lmao and then I physically handled it and realized it was too big to actually hold and read.
I checked it out from the library instead and spent a day leafing through it admiring the illustrations and reading some of the additional stories and afterwords that I hadn't seen before
sharkjacobs 2 hours ago [-]
I just searched my calendar for "Earthsea" and found the entry, Oct 23, 2018: "The Books of Earthsea hit stores"
user982 2 hours ago [-]
My copy came with the color illustrations stuck to their facing pages.
inglor_cz 2 hours ago [-]
I liked that series. It was so subtly different from standard sword-and-sorcery genre, even though Ged is himself a formidable warrior.
WillAdams 8 minutes ago [-]
It was the first instance of an author asking the question, "Can fantasy be written which is not a direct copying of _The Lord of the Rings_?"
and it is interesting to contrast it with texts such as _The Broke Sword_ by Poul Anderson (first published the same year as _The Fellowship of the Ring_) and _The Charwoman's Shadow_ by Lord Dunsany (published nearly 3 decades earlier).
She widened the space of science fiction with what she wrote. She got in there with a crowbar and expanded the field and made it a better field… Le Guin expanded the possibilities for all of us, and then she kept on doing that. She didn’t repeat herself. She kept doing new things. She was so good. I don’t know if I can possibly express how good she was.
https://reactormag.com/bright-the-hawks-flight-in-the-empty-...
I read Tehanu roughly when it came out, so I'd have been about 18, having read the others much earlier. I was annoyed and disliked it due to the tonal change.
I re-read it again a year or so ago along with the short stories and The Other Wind. I loved it. Nothing had changed - except me, of course.
It is available as an eBook in the UK for a ridiculously cheap £5.99.
https://books.apple.com/gb/book/the-books-of-earthsea-the-co...
https://www.gollancz.co.uk/news/2018/10/17/the-books-of-eart...
Did not love the television mini-series.
I may just get that book.
I have the Frankenstein book, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bernie_Wrightson_s_Fran...
Thanks for the fun fact!
I dont know if Thiel intended to convey that, but it's exactly the same name that I would've picked for that company.
> I was just gifted the first book of the series. I’m looking forward to reading it after seeing some of the praise it received recently.
> 5/5
I checked it out from the library instead and spent a day leafing through it admiring the illustrations and reading some of the additional stories and afterwords that I hadn't seen before
and it is interesting to contrast it with texts such as _The Broke Sword_ by Poul Anderson (first published the same year as _The Fellowship of the Ring_) and _The Charwoman's Shadow_ by Lord Dunsany (published nearly 3 decades earlier).