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| Ursula K. LeGuin (1929 - 2018) |
In my two previous posts, I listed my first 2 12 + 4 Reading Challenges, planned for 2027; Agatha Christie et al & John Creasey. I plan to have 3 12 + 4 Challenges for 2027. The rest will be Individual Challenges and I haven't really picked books for them yet. But, this challenge features the work of Ursula K. Le Guin. I've been trying to read all of her work this past few years. She was a prolific writer; Sci Fi, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, YA, Children's books, poetry, essays, etc. I started with her Hainish Cycle and the Earthsea fantasy series. But I have been exploring her other work now and she is such a wonderful author. My plan here is to read those books remaining on my shelf and because I don't have specifically 16 individual books (I do have some collections which I'm considering as one book), I will also read some books by other favorite women Sci Fi / Fantasy authors to flesh out the challenge. I think this will be my most challenging reading challenge as they tend to be longer, more complex books.
So here we go. (Ed. Note. You may notice that some series books aren't in the correct order. I listed them from when I bought them, not necessarily in the correct order. I will read them appropriately, however)
12 + 4 Reading Challenge - Ursula K. LeGuin & some others.
"Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled readers with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. In The Birthday of the World, she returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.
Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history.The first six tales in this spectacular volume are set in the author's signature world of the Ekumen, "my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows," as Le Guin describes it—a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The seventh, title story was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "remarkable . . . a standout." The final offering in the collection, Paradises Lost, is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness.
In her foreword, Le Guin writes, "to create difference—to establish strangeness—then to let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the this acrobatics of the imagination fascinates and satisfies me as no other." In The Birthday of the World, this gifted literary acrobat exhibits a dazzling array of skills that will fascinate and satisfy us all."
"Here is a society as complex and as troubled as any on our world, peopled with unforgettable characters struggling to become fully human. For the disgraced revolutionary Abberkam, the callow 'space brat' Solly, the haughty soldier Teyeo, the Ekumen historian and Hainish exile Havzhiva, freedom and duty both begin in the heart, and success as well as failure has its costs."
"A rich and complex interweaving of story and fable, poem, artwork, and music, it totally immerses the reader in the culture of the Kesh, a peaceful people of the far future who inhabit a place called the Valley on the Northern Pacific Coast. The author makes the inhabitants of the valley as familiar, as immediate, as wholly human as our own friends or family.
Spiraling outward from the dramatic life story of a woman called Stone Telling, Le Guin's Always Coming Home interweaves wry wit, deep insight and extraordinary compassion into a compelling unity of vision."
"In Victoria on a former prison colony, two exiled groups—the farmers of Shantih and the City dwellers—live in apparent harmony. All is not as it seems, however. While the peace-loving farmers labor endlessly to provide food for the City, the City Bosses rule the Shantih with an iron fist. When a group of farmers decide to form a new settlement further away, the Bosses retaliate by threatening to crush the "rebellion."
Luz understands what it means to have no choices. Her father is a Boss and he has ruled over her life with the same iron fist. Luz wonders what it might be like to make her own choices. To be free to choose her own destiny."
"There have been eighty requests to send an Observer into the hinterlands of the planet Aka to study the natives. Much to everyone's surprise, the eighty-first request is granted, and Observer Sutty is sent upriver to Okzat-Ozkat, a small city in the foothills of Rangma, to talk to the remnants in hiding of a cult practising a banned religion. On Aka, everything that was written in the old scripts has been destroyed; modern aural literature is all written to Corporation specifications.
The Corporation expects Sutty to report back so the non-standardized folk stories and songs can be wiped out and the people 're-educated'.
But Sutty herself is in for an education she never imagined."
"This new collection of short fiction by the only science fiction author to win the National Book Award celebrates her understanding that narrative is the shining thread with which we create our common humanity. Astonishing in their diversity & power, her stories exhibit both the artistry of a major writer at the height of her powers & the humanity of a mature artist confronting the world with her gift of wonder still intact.
"The First Contact with the Gorgonids""Newton's Sleep"
"The Ascent of the North Face"
"The Rock That Changed Things"
"The Kerastion"
"The Shobies' Story"
"Dancing to Ganam"
"Another Story OR A Fisherman of the Inland Sea""
"In The Aeneid, Virgil’s hero fights to claim the king’s daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.
Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner—that she will be the cause of a bitter war—and that her husband will not live long. When a fleet of Trojan ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her destiny into her own hands. And so she tells us what Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life.
Lavinia is a book of passion and war, generous and austerely beautiful, from a writer working at the height of her powers."
"THE UNREAL AND THE REAL is a two-volume collection of stories, selected by Ursula Le Guin herself, and spans the spectrum of fiction from realism through magical realism, satire, science fiction, surrealism and fantasy.
Volume Two, OUTER SPACE, INNER LANDS, showcases Le Guin's acclaimed stories of the fantastic, originally appearing in publications as varied as AMAZING STORIES, PLAYBOY, the NEW YORKER and OMNI, and contains 20 stories, including modern classics such as the HUGO Award-winning 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas', NEBULA-nominee 'Nine Lives'; JAMES TIPTREE, JR MEMORIAL AWARD-winner (and HUGO and NEBULA-nominee) 'The Matter of Seggri'; NEBULA AWARD-winner 'Solitude'; and the secret history 'Sur', which was nominated for the HUGO AWARD and included in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES."
"For over half a century, multiple award-winner Ursula K. Le Guin's stories have shaped the way her readers see the world. Her work gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider and speaks truth to power. Le Guin's writing is witty, wise, both sly and forthright; she is a master craftswoman.
This two-volume selection of almost 40 stories selected from her glittering career was made by Ursula Le Guin herself. She has chosen to organise them thematically, splitting the stories into the nominally realistic and fantastic.
WHERE ON EARTH focuses on Ursula Le Guin's interest in realism and magic realism and includes 18 of her satirical, political and experimental earthbound stories. Highlights include WORLD FANTASY and HUGO AWARD-winner 'Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight', the rarely reprinted satirical short, 'The Lost Children', JUPITER AWARD-winner, 'The Diary of the Rose' and the title story of her PULITZER PRIZE finalist collection 'Unlocking the Air'."
"Teenagers struggle to come to terms with their own mysterious and magical gifts as they come-of-age in the far-flung Western Shore.
This fifth volume in the definitive Library of America edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s work presents a trilogy of coming-of-age stories set in the Western Shore—a world where young people find themselves struggling not just against racism, prejudice, and slavery, but with how to live with the mysterious and magical gifts they have been given. All three novels feature the generous voice and deeply human concerns that mark all Le Guin’s work, and together they form an elegant anthem to the revolutionary and transformative power of words and storytelling.
In Gifts , Orrec and Gry will inherit both their families’ domains and their “gifts,” the ability to communicate with animals, or control a mind, or maim or kill with only a word and gesture. Both discover their gifts are not what they thought. In Voices , Memer lives in a city conquered by fundamentalist and superstitious soldiers who have made reading and writing forbidden. But in Memer’s house there is a secret room where the last few books in the city have been hidden. And in the Nebula Award-winning Powers , the young slave Gavir can remember any book after reading it just once. It makes him valuable, but it also makes him a threat. Gav sets out to understand who he is, where he came from, and what his gift means.
This deluxe edition features Le Guin’s own previously unseen hand-drawn maps. Included in an appendix are essays and interviews about the novels, as well as Le Guin’s pronunciation guide to the names and languages of the Western Shore."
(Note. Those are the remaining LeGuin books that I have on my bookshelf. Unless I buy some more before year end, the other books are from other women Sci Fi authors)
"Discharged from the Barrarayan academy after flunking the physical, a discouraged Miles Vorkosigan takes possession of a jumpship and becomes the leader of a mercenary force that expands to a fleet of treasonous proportions."
"A mature alien woman judge sees an amphibious human woman, obviously a slave, displayed in a tank in front of a sex palace. And so an interstellar plot of murderous proportions involving many races and planets, galactic corporations, exploitive sex and horrible slavery is revealed."
Alternates
"Generations ago, humans fled to the cosmic anomaly known as Grass. But before humanity arrived, another species had already claimed Grass for its own. It too had developed a culture… Now a deadly plague is spreading across the stars, leaving no planet untouched, saved for Grass. But the secret of the planet’s immunity hides a truth so shattering it could mean the end of life itself."
"Simon, Jane and Barney, enlisted by their mysterious great uncle, arrive in a small coastal town to help recover a priceless golden grail stolen by the forces of evil, the Dark. They are not at first aware of the strange powers of another boy brought to help, Will Stanton -- nor of the sinister significance of the Greenwitch, an image of leaves and branches that for centuries has been cast into the sea for good luck in fishing and harvest. Their search for the grail sets into motion a series of disturbing, sometimes dangerous events that, at their climax, bring forth a gift that, for a time at least, will keep the Dark from rising."
"Sword-and-sorcery meets hard Sci-Fi in C.J. Cherryh 's epic story of a woman's mission across time and space to preserve the integrity of the universe."
"When global climate change and economic crises lead to social chaos in the early 2020s, California becomes full of dangers, from pervasive water shortage to masses of vagabonds who will do anything to live to see another day.
Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding anarchy. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy, a debilitating sensitivity to others' pain.
Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith...and a startling vision of human destiny."
This will be my most difficult reading challenge as there are so many tomes in it, but the other two have relatively short novels in them. We'll see how I do, eh?
