From archive (archive) Subject: Tehanu (or, Ursula LeGuin should be deified) Summary: senseless babbling about how great her new book is From: wisner@mica.Berkeley.EDU (Bill Wisner) Organization: Earl's Reptile Farm and Cheesy Dinosaur Park Date: 14 Mar 90 11:23:22 GMT Late in 1988 (as I recall) I read on USENET that Ursula LeGuin had written a fourth Earthsea book. About a year ago, LeGuin told me in person that she had indeed written the book but had not yet signed a publishing contract for it. Last Friday I visited my local Waldenbooks and saw Tehanu, the Last Book of Earthsea on the shelves. Of course, that I would buy the book was a foregone conclusion. This evening I sat down with the book and started reading. And I read. And I read. I gobbled up the entire book in one two-and-a-half hour sitting. It's that good. It's also a very powerful conclusion to the previous three books. If you're a LeGuin fan, buy the book and enjoy the hell out of it. Do not wait for it to be released in paperback. If you're not a LeGuin fan, buy the book anyway so she'll make enormous amounts of money. Do not wait for it to be released in paperback. This is all opinion, of course; your mileage may very. (If it does, I don't really want to hear about it.) I'm going to bed now with that really great feeling that I have after reading a really good book. Tomorrow perhaps I'll read it two or three more times. And then I'll be ready to discuss it rationally. Night, world. Bill Wisner Gryphon Gang Fairbanks AK 99775 "Put a cork in it, Wisner." -- Karl Kleinpaste From archive (archive) Path: sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!mcsun!uunet!ns-mx!iowasp!deimos.cis.ksu.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf-lovers Subject: DANCING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Ursula K. LeGuin Message-ID: <1990May17.211951.3210@cbnewsj.att.com> Date: 17 May 90 21:19:51 GMT Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 53 DANCING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD by Ursula K. LeGuin Harper & Row, 1989, ISBN 0-6-097289-0, $8.95. A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper Copyright 1990 by Evelyn C. Leeper In 1978 Ursula LeGuin's first collection of essays, THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT: ESSAYS ON FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, appeared. (At least, I think it was 1978--I can't find a copyright date on my copy, but the LC number starts with "78-".) This has remained a major work in the field of science fiction criticism, with such oft-cited articles as "Dreams Must Explain Themselves," "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," and "Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown." So when DANCING AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD appeared, I eagerly snatched it up--perhaps too eagerly, as the subtitle "Thoughts on Words, Women, Places" should have given me a hint that it was not more of the same. But it was nominated for a Hugo, so it must have something to do with science fiction, right? Well, there are a few articles and reviews connected with science fiction here, perhaps comprising half the book. The rest deals more with women and feminism and how repressive men are and how women have to throw off the shackles and some science fiction, or that their (at times) autobiographical nature means they refer to a science fiction writer, or that they are important issues, but, unlike THE LANGUAGE OF THE NIGHT, this is *not* science-fictional enough to be nominated for a Hugo. One might as well nominate any science fiction author's non-fiction works. (In all honesty, I can't say I'm any more pleased with most of the other nominees, though it's possible they all suffer in comparison with the Panshins' book.) Given that I consider this mainstream non-fiction, what then? Well, many of the articles are actually speeches transcribed for publication, and speeches are generally meant to be spoken. I found almost all of the speeches hard to follow--the intonation and inflection was lost. I also found much of the content too strident; you might have guessed that from the preceding paragraph. There are some articles I did enjoy: her travelogues, and her commentary on her eleven-year old article "Is Gender Necessary?" But what does it say when one of the most interesting pieces is a reworking of a piece from the previous volume. I know this collection wasn't meant to "entertain" me. I wasn't supposed to "enjoy" it. I was supposed to read it and learn from it and go out and change my life because of it. But I couldn't even get past the first part--reading it--and in that regard for me it was a failure. [It does strike me as odd how LeGuin appears to be putting herself forward as an ardent feminist in this volume, while Sarah LeFanu in FEMINISM AND SCIENCE FICTION (Indiana University Press, 1989) seems to claim LeGuin's writing marks her as more a male chauvinist than a feminist. But then LeGuin here does somewhat tear down her portrayal of the default on Gethen being male rather than neuter or female, so perhaps the inconsistency is not so strong as one might first imagine.] Evelyn C. Leeper | +1 201-957-2070 | att!mtgzy!ecl or ecl@mtgzy.att.com From rec.arts.sf.reviews Fri Sep 1 18:02:02 1995 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!liuida!sunic!sunic.sunet.se!news.kth.se!nac.no!Norway.EU.net!EU.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!news!nobody From: "Danny Yee" Subject: Book Review - Always Coming Home (Le Guin) Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Sender: news@media.mit.edu (USENET News System) Organization: Basser Dept of Computer Sciece, Uni of Sydney, Australia Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 19:39:40 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat) Lines: 72 title: Always Coming Home by: Ursula K. Le Guin publisher: Bantam Books 1987 subjects: anthropology, short fiction, poetry other: 562 pages _Always Coming Home_ is the only work I've ever felt could really be compared with Tolkien, in this case with the _Silmarillion_ rather than with _The Lord of the Rings_, since it is a fictional ethnography rather than a novel. Where Tolkien drew on history (along with linguistics and mythology) to create his imaginative world, Le Guin draws on anthropology (along with linguistics and mythology) to create hers. This difference is very clear cut: Tolkien's world has almost no ethnographic detail, while Le Guin's has no history. The subject of Le Guin's work is the Kesh -- a people who inhabit a valley in a far-future California and who are clearly based on native American models. Mostly she lets them speak for themselves, allowing the reader to learn about them through a montage of their short stories, poems, and myths. These are built around a central novella, which tells the story of a woman called Stonetelling who leaves the valley to live with her father's people, the Condor. The "back of the book" contains additional information about the Kesh in more traditional ethnographic form. While there are several passages of reflexive commentary in _Always Coming Home_ (where Pandora the archaeologist addresses the reader directly) and some of these make direct comments on contemporary issues, it is not clear exactly what Le Guin's "message" is. A more explicit account of her ideas about utopia can be found in the essay "A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Very Cold Place to Be" (reprinted in _Dancing at the Edge of the World_). As a work of fictional anthropology _Always Coming Home_ is a brilliant success. As a utopia, however, it has some major flaws. One is the "machina ex machina" of the City of Mind, a benevolent collection of machine intelligences which provides the Kesh and other peoples with all the positive benefits of science and technology (weather forecasts, global communication, etc.), while sparing them the need to devote resources to those ends. Another is the straw-man patriarchal and authoritarian society of the Dayao/Condor. This is too extreme to be an interesting contrast to the Kesh (except polemically), and its implausibility means that the "failure" of the Condor to dominate the societies around them (in effect to reenact the historical incorporation of traditional societies by empires and centralised states) actually *detracts* from the credibility of Le Guin's vision. (I can't help thinking that things would be a little different if the Kesh were to face Julius Caesar and a single Roman legion, even with their technological inferiority.) In an attempt to avoid this criticism Le Guin falls back on possible genetic changes in "human nature", a move which undercuts her work's engagement with reality and which I found as distressing as the terrible ending to _Tehanu_. Le Guin seems to have lost the strength of mind and the intellectual courage which were so apparent in _The Dispossessed_, where she went out of her way to face the likely problems in her anarchist utopia. Despite its flaws, _Always Coming Home_ is a work of extraordinary creativity. Though many who loved Le Guin's novels will find it unapproachable, many who would never think of touching a science fiction novel would enjoy it. %T Always Coming Home %A Ursula K. Le Guin %I Bantam Books %C New York %D 1987 %O paperback %G ISBN 0-553-26280-7 %P 562pp %K anthropology, short fiction, poetry Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au) 26 August 1995 Copyright (c) 1995 Danny Yee | 230 reviews available at http://www.anatomy.su.oz.au/danny/book-reviews/index.html Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed1.news.luth.se!luth.se!Cabal.CESspool!bofh.vszbr.cz!howland.erols.net!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk (Paul S Jenkins) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 27 Jul 1998 15:30:05 -0400 Organization: CIX - Compulink Information eXchange Lines: 60 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: pj@willowsoft.compulink.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: tinbergen.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2061 _The Left Hand of Darkness_ by Ursula LeGuin Review Copyright (c) 1998 Paul S. Jenkins Suppose, in the far future, an isolated planet somewhere in the distant reaches of the galaxy has been colonized by humans and then left alone. That relatively small pocket of humanity, forced to adapt over time to a hostile environment, may well evolve into a different kind of humanity. The prevailing low atmospheric temperature might encourage a society that takes extremes of winter in its stride. Other factors may encourage the species to evolve into a form of hermaphrodism, each person being normally neuter, changing randomly to male or female for procreation. Such is the society that accepts the Ekumen Envoy, Genly Ai, when he arrives on the planet Gethen to assess its suitability to join the galactic empire. Almost at once the envoy's efforts are thwarted, when the kingdom's representative, with whom Ai has been carefully negotiating, is denounced as a traitor. Ursula LeGuin's _The Left Hand of Darkness_ is Genly Ai's report of his attempts to establish friendly communications with the different societies on the planet. We see nearly everything that happens from his point of view, and since he is, in effect, a human visitor on an alien planet, we see the planet's peculiarities through his eyes. _The Left Hand of Darkness_ contains several science-fictional ideas that have, since its first publication in 1969, become classics; the most notable being the 'ansible' -- a device to enable instantaneous communication across relativistic distances. Another is the single-sex society, in which members are neither male nor female except at those times when they are ready to reproduce. LeGuin does a superb job extrapolating the implications of this radically different humanity, even inventing a detailed mythological legacy. As lone ambassador to the planet Gethen (meaning 'winter') the envoy Ai appears vulnerable, and though the reasons for his unaccompanied visit are convincingly explained, his vulnerability drives the plot. Where the beginning of the novel shows the political consequences of Genly Ai's efforts, the latter half is a more personal story following the main characters when they find themselves up against the planet's inhospitable environment. LeGuin's achievement is not just to give us convincing SF ideas, but also to have us believing in the overall social structure and the motivations of the individuals. This is world-building of a rare capacity, complete with an appendix should we wish to research the background. _The Left Hand of Darkness_ is a richly textured novel, showing us human societies so different from our own that they can be considered truly alien. %A LeGuin, Ursula %T The Left Hand of Darkness %I Orbit (Little, Brown) %C London %D 1992 (copyright 1969) %G ISBN 1 85723 074 4 %P 256 pp. %O paperback, GBP 4.99 Path: news.ifm.liu.se!news.lth.se!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!firehose.mindspring.net!gatech!18.181.0.27.MISMATCH!sipb-server-1.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!usenet From: tillman@aztec.asu.edu (P.D. TILLMAN) Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: Review: Two stories by Ursula K. Le Guin - 35 years of Hainish future history Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Date: 23 Jul 1999 12:46:03 -0400 Organization: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ (USA) Lines: 90 Sender: wex@ronin.media.mit.edu Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Message-ID: Reply-To: tillman@aztec.asu.edu (P.D. TILLMAN) NNTP-Posting-Host: ronin.media.mit.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Xref: news.ifm.liu.se rec.arts.sf.reviews:2404 Review: "Old Music & the Slave Women" & "Semley's Necklace" Two stories by Ursula K. Le Guin: 35 years of Hainish future history. Review copyright 1999 by Peter D. Tillman I'm presently reading the Silverberg "Far Horizons"(1999) and Dozois "Good Old Stuff"(1998) anthologies. Both are worthwhile, if of mixed quality, but I'm having more fun -- guilty pleasures? -- with the Dozois. So here we have two LeGuin stories, one from each anthology, written a third of a century apart; let's compare & contrast. "Semley's Necklace" (1964, Cele Goldsmith's Amazing): we sometimes forget UKL got her start as a writer of planetary romances -- at the time she was sometimes called "the new Leigh Brackett." "Semley" is a good example, and a wonderfully romantic and haunting story: Semley the Fair, Semley the Golden.... the Clayfolk had bent to her will, and so had even the Starlords.... He slipped the necklace over her hair. It lay like a burning fuse along her golden-brown throat. She looked up from it with such pride, delight, and gratitude in her face that Rocannon stood wordless... (Memo to self: it's time to reread more early Le Guin. And if you young'uns hadn't never, you should [note 1].) "Old Music & the Slave Women" (1999) continues the unhappy history of Werel and Yeowe, begun in _Four Ways to Forgiveness_ (1995). 'Old Music' is the Ekumenical intelligence officer for the Embassy to Werel. Sick of being cooped-up -- the embassy was sealed early in the civil war -- he arranges a clandestine visit to the Liberation rebels, but is captured and imprisoned by a faction of the slaveholding Legitimate Government. An exceptional story, not to be missed. Look for it on the 1999 award ballots. UKL likes to play with skin colors, sex roles, and stereotypes. On Werel, the masters are black but not African, the rebels and slaves white but not European. Semley (back in 1964) has dark skin, golden hair and blue eyes. Her benefactor Rocannon (of _Rocannon's World_, 1966) is a hilfer, an ethnologist for the League of Worlds, a blurry sort of proto-Ekumen in Le Guin's Hainish future history which, she cheerfully admits, has accumulated some spectacular inconsistencies as it's accreted stories over the past 35-some years. Few SF writers can resist the lure of an over- arching future history for their work. Nor should they: this device provides for the growing richness and density of a well-crafted series, while avoiding the constrictions and exhaustion-of-intersest that so often afflict late books in a long-running series. Plus, it has to be great fun to go back and play in the gardens of one's youth. "YOUTH -- it's wasted on the young." It's wonderful to see Le Guin coming home to her sfnal roots, after wandering in the wilderness of Shobies, _Always Coming Home_, and other swelled-head literary foolishness. Let's keep Le Guin in the gutter where she belongs! "Old Music" demonstrates -- if there remain any doubters -- that Le Guin is as good a story-teller as anyone working now, in or out of the SF gutter, er, *genre*. And a *whole* lot better than the lit'ry crowd she's wisely dumped. Her mastery of the craft of fiction has grown in the 35 years from Semley to Old Music, but she was very good even then. "Semley's Necklace" remains one of the most haunting stories I've ever read. Memo to UKL: now that you've wowed both fandom and academia, and can write and sell whatever you please, how about another tale set in the "Nine Lives" (1969) sector of your universe? Still your finest traditional-SF tale, and #1 on my personal list of "Best Novellettes Ever". Please? Pretty-please? Pretty-please with Haagen-Dasz and strawberries? %A Le Guin, Ursula K. %T "Old Music & the Slave Women" %B Far Horizons %E Silverberg, Robert %I Avon %D 1999 %A Le Guin, Ursula K. %T "Semley's Necklace" %J Amazing %E Goldsmith, Cele %D 1964 ___________ 1) I was going to say, read some Leigh Brackett too, but I can't think of anything to wholeheartedly recommend. No doubt some other Boring Old Fart will chime in here, whose recommendation you may treat with the same reverence as this one. Stick to your own Golden Age (14), that's the ticket.... Read more of my reviews: http://www.silcom.com/~manatee/reviewer.html#tillman