Tag Archive: ursula le guin

How Ursula K. Le Guin helped inspire me to see people in a different way

January 24, 2018 1 Comment

As I write this, the news is breaking that Ursula Le Guin, one of the 20th Century’s great novelists, has passed away at 88. She was a giant, known for her work in science fiction yet crafting works that transcended the genre. Whenever I’ve thought of the authors who have inspired me, awed me, impressed me, humbled me, shaped my tastes, molded my views, and made me see the power of the genre, she was always on the short list. It wasn’t the awards that made Le Guin great, though she got gobs of them. It wasn’t even that her stories were entertaining, though they were. It’s that she reinterpreted the world, showing us both how it truly is (even when we didn’t acknowledge it)…
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Books & Authors, Geek Stuff

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Art does not require pain; joy is worth celebrating

December 13, 2011 0 Comments

I’m not much for the whole posting quotes thing, but this quote from Ursula le Guin’s award-winning ‘Those Who Walked Away From Omelas,’ which can be read in full here, strikes me as worth sharing: “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain … But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” In the world of…
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Random Musings, Rants, Writing

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