Rest In Peace, Ursula K. Le Guin

[Steerpike]

Very sad news, and a blow to the community.

 

[Tom]

She was one of my favorite authors, and her works played a big part in my decision to start writing fantasy myself. Rest in peace, Ursula.

 

[Nimue]

I read A Wizard of Earthsea for the first time yesterday and fell in love with the lyrical writing, the beautiful story, about gaining power not through violence but through wisdom and self-knowledge... Earthsea felt both mythic and personal, and therefore timeless. In the afterword, LeGuin spoke about resisting race and gender expectations, writing from a small imprint in 1968, about wanting more from the fledgling fantasy genre and bringing that to life. It's strange to hear that an author I just met through her work is gone. But her words had power and her stories have outlived her; that is the mark of a great life.

 

[Dark Squiggle]

Lost her before I could read any of her books. She needs to be bumped up a few tiers on my "Need to Read" list.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We've lost another of our great matriarchs. A sad day, indeed.

 

[ThinkerX]

LeGuin's 'Wizard of Earthsea' trilogy counts as one of my all time favorites.

 

[Geo]

She was not only a brilliant storytelling whose prose is beautiful and powerful, but she was also way ahead of her time. If you read The Left Hand of Darkness today is hard to imagine that fantastic sci fiction novel centered on issues that are so important in this moment was written fifty years ago. She wrote fantasy, science fiction, essays on writing. Her book Steering the Craft is one of my go to when I'm having trouble with something in my writing from POV to voice, she explains and inspires you with her words on how to write that which you have to write. She's, no doubt, one of the most significant authors of our and any time, and she was kind, and warmth and unique in so many ways. Her death saddens me deeply. She leaves the world a better place and her words, her stories, her magic will be with us forever, but that doesn't make the lose any less deep.

 

[Nimue]

“Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. No narrative of any complexity can be built on or reduced to a single element. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing. Change is the universal aspect of all these sources of story. Story is something moving, something happening, something or somebody changing.”

— Ursula K. LeGuin, Steering the Craft

I need this hanging above my desk.

 

[TheCrystallineEntity]

I love the Earthsea cycle, Tehanu in particular, and enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness and The Telling, as well as the Gifts Trilogy, very much. She was, and still is, one of my favourite authors.