Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 -2018): an appreciation.

My proudest pursuit and achievement is my university Arts education, which I completed in 2012. Among other things it introduced me to countless remarkable books and films I otherwise may never have even heard of. Quite late in that undertaking, though admittedly thanks only to my alma mater's library, came maybe the discovery which has influenced the strongest: the literary works of Ursula K. Le Guin. Before encountering her works, my favourite author was Tolkien and while I retain a great love for his stories, for me Le Guin's appeal more to my aesthetic and thematic sensibilities now. I consider her the greatest writer of all time.

Born in 1929 as the daughter of writer Theodora Kracaw and anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, Ursula graduated from Columbia University in 1952 before studying in France as a Fulbright Scholar until 1954. She then returned to the US with her husband Charles Le Guin and they had three children: Elizabeth, Caroline and Theodore. She lived in Portland, Oregon from 1958 until passing away on 22 January.

Ursula's first publication attempt came aged just 11 to the magazine Astounding Science Fiction; it was rejected. But after publishing the first of her Orsinian Tales in 1961, the dam burst and she became one of the most acclaimed and profilic writers of our time. 1966's Rocannon's World, her first published novel, started her "Hainish Cycle," which later included 1969's The Left Hand of Darkness and 1974's The Dispossessed (the first of her works I read, and still my favourite). These made her the first person to win Hugo and Nebula Awards (the two literary SF honours) for Best Novel for the same two books.

         

Simultaneously, 1968's A Wizard of Earthsea began her more child-oriented but no less successful Earthsea fantasy series. She continue to produce a steady output of novels and short stories until 1985, when she published her most ambitious and unique work, Always Coming Home. After 1990 her bibliography slowly decreased but by then, she had already written enough masterpieces to put most other great authors to shame. However, in her seventies Le Guin still managed to deliver Lavinia (2007), an exquisitely beautiful feminist retelling of Virgil's Aeneid, and the brilliantly original Annals of the Western Shore (2004-2007) series. In 2003, she deservedly became the first woman appointed a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America organisation.

Her many distinctive influences, and how she invoked certain ones for each different story, I think made her a literary trailblazer, certainly for female authors. From Tolkien and Philip K. Dick (who was actually a high school classmate of hers, though they never knew each other) and children's classics like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows, to Norse mythology, Tolstoy, the Bronte sisters and seminal feminist authors like Emma Goldman and Virginia Woolf and even Eastern philosophical works like the Tao Te Ching (in her personal life she even embraced Taoist and feminist beliefs), Le Guin's use of these diverse influences helped open the door for women speculative fiction authors like J. K. Rowling and Connie Willis among others and to afford SF and fantasy a greater critical stature than before. She also has inspired numerous male authors like Neil Gaiman and Salman Rushdie.

Now, alas, the last chapter of Ms. Le Guin's own story has just been completed. Her cause of death remains unknown, although her son Theodore stated she had been in ill health for some time. Her passing deserved considerably more media coverage than it received (hence why I didn't learn of it until last week), although her family's privacy should also be respected. But regardless, her work will forever remain to entertain and educate us as all art should, and it is a towering monument to everything she loved and valued. Vale, Ursula K. Le Guin. We will never see your like again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5xdeGQVvwU