Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

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WampusCat
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Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by WampusCat »

From NPR:

Ursula K. Le Guin, a prolific novelist best known for the Earthsea series and The Left Hand of Darkness, died Monday at the age of 88. Across more than 20 novels and scores of short stories, Le Guin crafted fantastic worlds to grapple with profoundly difficult questions here on Earth, from class divisions to feminist theory.

Her agent Ginger Clark confirmed Le Guin's death to NPR.
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Frelga »

All the best people are leaving. :(
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Primula Baggins »

I am so sad. I’ll come back and try to write more than that, but not tonight. :(
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Teremia »

I am also just so sad about this loss. It's hitting me hard. I got to see her in person in 2013--a great highlight of my adult life. She was everything any writer or human being could hope to be. So poetic and so honest.
“Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.” E. B. White, who must have had vison in mind. There's a reason why we kept putting the extra i in her name in our minds!
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Primula Baggins »

“I do not care what comes after; I have seen the dragons on the wind of morning.” —The Farthest Shore
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Impenitent »

There are writers whose work has tunnelled beneath my flesh and bones into my heart or my soul. When they die, it rips into me, or iut of me, leaving a vacuum that can't be seen but diminishes me in a lasting, even permanent, way.
I feel it. This makes me so sad.

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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by River »

I yelled at the radio when I heard last night.

It's one of those things you know had to happen one day but hoped it wasn't today. She'll never really be gone as long. Her writing is still with us, as well as the mighty influence she had on all things speculative fiction. But we'll never read anything new from her again. :cry:
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Primula Baggins »

For Christmas I got the Library of America two-volume set of the Hainish stories and novels (which include The Left Hand of Darkness and The Disposessed), and I'd been holding back on it until I finished some things—it has new introductions by Le Guin written just for this set, and the endpapers are her hand-drawn map of Gethen. And I haven't read the first three Hainish novels (Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions) in at least a couple of decades, so . . . it's like having something new to read? :(
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Inanna »

Oh CRaP. WTF.

I’ve been going on & on about Ursula to My mom, my sis on how they have to read her... about her letter to The editors as well. :(. This hurts.
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Primula Baggins »

Maybe there's something here you haven't read. From her Wikipedia article:
Ursula K. Le Guin has written fiction and nonfiction works for audiences including children, adults, and scholars. Her most notable works are listed here.

Earthsea fantasy series[79]
[Main article: Earthsea]
A Wizard of Earthsea, 1968 (named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1979)
The Tombs of Atuan, 1971 (Newbery Silver Medal Award)
The Farthest Shore, 1972 (National Book Award)[75]
Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea, 1990 (Nebula Award;[80] Locus Fantasy Award)[81]
Tales from Earthsea, 2001 (short stories)
The Other Wind, 2001 (World Fantasy Award, 2002)[82]
Hainish science fiction series[19]
[Main article: Hainish Cycle]
Rocannon's World, 1966
Planet of Exile, 1966
City of Illusions, 1967
The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969 (Hugo Award;[83] Nebula Award)[84]
The Dispossessed, 1974 (Nebula Award;[85] Hugo Award; Locus Award)[86]
The Word for World Is Forest, 1976 (Hugo Award, best novella)
Four Ways to Forgiveness, 1995 (Four Stories of the Ekumen)
The Telling, 2000 (Locus SF Award;[87] Endeavour Award)
Miscellaneous
The Lathe of Heaven, 1971 (Locus SF Award)[88]
The Wind's Twelve Quarters, 1975
Orsinian Tales, 1976
The Eye of the Heron, 1978 (first published in the anthology Millennial Women)
The Beginning Place, 1980 (also published as Threshold, 1986)
The Compass Rose, 1982
Always Coming Home, 1985
Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand, 1991
Annals of the Western Shore, 2004–2007 (Powers, the third volume, won the Nebula Award for Best Novel)
Lavinia, 2008 (Locus Fantasy Award)[89]
And this is just her fiction for adults. For kids, from the "Ursula Le Guin Bibliography" article on Wikipedia:
Catwings, 1988, ISBN 0590428330
Catwings Return, 1989, ISBN 0833566350
Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, 1994, ISBN 0439551919
Jane on her Own, 1999, ISBN 0531301338
Her poetry, same source:
Wild Angels, 1974
Hard Words, 1981
Wild Oats and Fireweed, 1988
Blue Moon over Thurman Street (with Roger Dorband), 1993
Going out with Peacocks, 1994
The Twins, the Dream (with Diana Bellessi), 1996
Sixty Odd, 1999
Incredible Good Fortune, 2006
Out Here: Poems and Images from Steens Mountain Country (with Roger Dorband), 2010
Finding My Elegy: New and Selected Poems, 2012
Late in the Day: Poems 2010–2014, 2015, ISBN 978-1-62963-122-6
Her nonfiction, mostly about writing (same source):
From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," chapbook, Pendragon Press, 1973 (ISBN 0-914010-00-X)
"Science Fiction and Mrs Brown"[27]
The Language of the Night, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1979 (ISBN 0-399-12325-3) (Hugo Award nominee, 1980)
Dancing at the Edge of the World, Grove Press, 1989 (ISBN 0-8021-1105-X) (Hugo Award nominee, 1990)
Earthsea Revisioned (Cambridge, MA: Children's Literature New England, 1993, ISBN 9780948845031), 26 pages, illustrated – "A lecture delivered under the title "Children, Women, Men and Dragons" at Worlds Apart, an institute sponsored by Children's Literature New England and held August 2–8, 1992, at Keble College, Oxford University, England." OCLC 29598010 – about unifying her later Earthsea writings with her earlier Earthsea writings[28]
Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Mariner and the Mutinous Crew , The Eighth Mountain Press, 1998 (ISBN 0-933377-46-0)
The Wave in the Mind, Shambhala Publications, 2004 (ISBN 1-59030-006-8) (Locus Award winner, 2005)
Cheek by Jowl, Aqueduct Press, 2009 (ISBN 978-1-933500-27-0) (Locus Award winner, 2010)
Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. (ISBN 978-0544611610)
Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016, with a Journal of a Writer’s Week, Small Beer Press, 2016 (ISBN 1618731343) (winner of the Hugo Award for Best Related Work)
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017 (ISBN 978-1328661593)
And finally her translations (translations she published, same source):
Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral. University of New Mexico Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8263-2818-0
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way. Shambala Publications, 1998. ISBN 978-1570623950
Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was. Northampton: Small Beer Press, 2003. ISBN 1-931520-05-4 [29]
Gheorghe Sasarman: Squaring the Circle: A Pseudotreatise of Urbogony. Aqueduct Press, April 2013. ISBN 978-1619760257[30]
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Primula Baggins »

I MUST HAVE THIS BOOK

MUST HAVE

MUST

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/15/1731 ... lease-date
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Inanna »

Wow.
'You just said "your getting shorter": you've obviously been drinking too much ent-draught and not enough Prim's.' - Jude
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Primula Baggins »

It comes out five days before my birthday, so I think I can wangle it.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Inanna »

Yeah. Wow.
'You just said "your getting shorter": you've obviously been drinking too much ent-draught and not enough Prim's.' - Jude
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Alatar »

Is there a price mentioned?
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Primula Baggins »

$59.99 list. It may be quite a bit less on Amazon.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Inanna »

I’ll have to get it. There’s no way I can’t not.
'You just said "your getting shorter": you've obviously been drinking too much ent-draught and not enough Prim's.' - Jude
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Primula Baggins »

All five Earthsea novels. Every Earthsea story, including a new one. And eighty illustrations on which Le Guin worked directly with the artist, commenting on each revision, so that his vision of Earthsea was hers. Yes, I'm going to have to have that, too. :love:
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by lazycat »

She was a neighbor of mine for a time in Portland. I used to stand in line at the grocer's or the post office with her.
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Inanna
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Re: Sad loss: Ursula K. Le Guin

Post by Inanna »

Gasp. Hallowed space around you.
'You just said "your getting shorter": you've obviously been drinking too much ent-draught and not enough Prim's.' - Jude
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