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Jan. 25th, 2018 02:11 pmUrsula K. Le Guin died on Monday. I wrote a little bit about it on Tumblr, and put together a list of her stuff that's available online.
We (who are steeped in and acquainted with sf/f) mourn, and we pay our respects, because she was our spiritual mother in ways that I'm not sure we can even begin to quantify, or if we even should. Her presence as a trail-breaker, grande dame, however you want to characterize it, was so fucking important. And she remained vital and opinionated, in ways that most women, especially older women, tend not to be in public.
One of the things I always admired about her was her strong moral sensibilities, and how they lead her to defend genre as opposed to jumping ship to the spec/literary fiction side, which she totally could have done. (I mean, part of it is how sf/f embraced her early work, but it's not like authors don't bite the hands that help them up.) Combined with her low tolerance for bullshit and the ability to express that well? Amazing.
Seeing that, and the beautifully succinct letter she wrote to the Oregonian about "alternative facts" made me realize I want to be Ursula K. Le Guin when I grow up. I will probably not succeed, but I can't think of anybody more worthy of chasing after.
We (who are steeped in and acquainted with sf/f) mourn, and we pay our respects, because she was our spiritual mother in ways that I'm not sure we can even begin to quantify, or if we even should. Her presence as a trail-breaker, grande dame, however you want to characterize it, was so fucking important. And she remained vital and opinionated, in ways that most women, especially older women, tend not to be in public.
One of the things I always admired about her was her strong moral sensibilities, and how they lead her to defend genre as opposed to jumping ship to the spec/literary fiction side, which she totally could have done. (I mean, part of it is how sf/f embraced her early work, but it's not like authors don't bite the hands that help them up.) Combined with her low tolerance for bullshit and the ability to express that well? Amazing.
Seeing that, and the beautifully succinct letter she wrote to the Oregonian about "alternative facts" made me realize I want to be Ursula K. Le Guin when I grow up. I will probably not succeed, but I can't think of anybody more worthy of chasing after.
