Ursula K Le Guin: The 'fearless' author who showed us a different world

Ursula K Le Guin: The 'fearless' author who showed us different MEdia Dragons...

Ursula K. Le Guin on Housman's Classic Poem “From Far”

 

• Ten Things Learned from Le Guin

  The lessons Karen Joy Fowler learned from the late author, one of the first sci-fi writers Fowler ever read.
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• King, Gaiman, Others Remember Le Guin

  Ursula K. Le Guin's passing has left a hole in the world of fantasy fiction, and some of its biggest names are paying tribute.

Science fiction great Ursula K. Le Guin died on Monday at age 88. Le Guin was the subject of this long New Yorker piece from a couple of years back, but I’d like to also direct your attention to a short piece Le Guin wrote for the magazine in 2012. In it, she describes how her editor submitted a short story of hers to Playboy under the name of U.K. Le Guin and then informed them after it was accepted that the writer was a woman. Playboy then requested to run the article under her initials so as not to frighten their male readership.

Unwilling to terrify these vulnerable people, I told Virginia to tell them sure, that’s fine. Playboy thanked us with touching gratitude. Then, after a couple of weeks, they asked for an author biography.
At once, I saw the whole panorama of U.K.’s life as a gaucho in Patagonia, a stevedore in Marseilles, a safari leader in Kenya, a light-heavyweight prizefighter in Chicago, and the abbot of a Coptic monastery in Algeria.
We’d tricked them slightly, though, and I didn’t want to continue the trickery. But what could I say? “He is a housewife and the mother of three children”?
I wrote, “It is commonly suspected that the writings of U.K. Le Guin are not actually written by U.K. Le Guin, but by another person of the same name.”
Game to the last, Playboy printed that. And my husband and I bought a red VW bus, cash down, with the check.

Yessss. BTW, if you’re wondering where to start with Le Guin, both the NYPL and Jo Walton at Tor recommend A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness, the description of which reads:

A lone human ambassador is sent to Winter, an alien world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants can change their gender whenever they choose. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters…

Speaking of other planets, 'Neighbour from hell' Maree Crabtree 'run out of town' before alleged murders

Maree Mavis Crabtree was the "neighbour from hell" who "caused havoc" on the tiny Upper Hunter community of McCullys Gap before she was finally "run out of town".