books 2009: The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, by Ursula K. Le Guin

[supercheesegirl]

I've been working on this one for a week or two now. I picked it up used at Basket's Bookstore up in Brattleboro, which was really really exciting because it's out of print and I'd never even heard of it before. It was a really neat book. Published in 1979, it's a collection of Le Guin's essays and musings and talks on science fiction to date. I found this really interesting because that was only maybe halfway through her career. She'd written The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness and the three Hainish novels, and the first three Earthsea books, and a ton of short stories, but there was so much more to come. It was neat to see where she was back then. I liked all the pieces by Le Guin in this collection; unfortunately, the collection also included all these introductions by Susan Wood, which was really annoying. One introduction at the start would have been fine, but Susan Wood felt the need to write a completely unnecessary introduction at the start of each section, and basically her introductions just made statements about Le Guin and quoted her. I did find the Le Guin bibliography at the end to be fascinating, if only because we so totally do not do things that way anymore. Which in a way is sad. Overall, really great book for Le Guin fans and also for people who think too much about SF.

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

and also for people who think too much about SF.

Hmm? You rang?

[supercheesegirl.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, you would find this interesting! Have you read much Le Guin? Some of the pieces are about her early works (Earthsea, Dispossessed, Left Hand, and the Hainish stuff), so it's nice to have a familiarity with that, but she says a lot about just general SF, and about other people's books, so it's pretty broad. Some very interesting pieces on the role of SF, the evolution of and the future of, what good SF tries to do, etc.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

I've read most of those, yah. I'll keep an eye open for it . . . Thanks!