Episode 37 – Celebrating Le Guin

A reflection on the life and works of Ursula K. Le Guin in light of her recent passing.

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Marie’s blog

Cory’s blog

Source of our theme song

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Episode 34 – The Rule of Names

We settle down to talk about another classic work of fantasy: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series, specifically the first three novels, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore.

Also: dragons.

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The Perilous Sea of Story

There are a lot of books on writing fiction, so many that I wonder just who’s buying them all. They’re either disproportionate to the people who actually sit down and write, or publishers can always count on writers (published and unpublished and self-published) to buy these books to the degree that releasing one is always a safe investment. Or else I’m missing something about the marketplace completely.

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Episode 26 – Get Urras back to Anarres

We egoize about Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1974 classic, The Dispossessed.

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Episode 10 – The Left Hand of Podcasts

Source of our theme song

Incidental Music: Danse Macabre – Big Hit 1 Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

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Cover Confusion

I dropped by the used bookstore yesterday and found two editions of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Beginning Place side by side. An old one:

And a recent reprint:

The back cover blurbs seem to describe completely different books. Indeed, these don’t look like the same book at all. I stood there in bemusement at how greatly marketing and design trends in publishing have shifted over the years.

This probably reveals a lot about my own marketing non-savvy, but while the second cover is more technically accomplished…I prefer the unassuming quietude of the older cover.

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Episode 10 – The Left Hand of Podcasts

One year after the initially-planned recording date, we finally get around to talking about the works of Ursula K. Le Guin–specifically, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World is Forest.

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The Telling

The Telling (2000) continues Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish cycle with a pattern familiar to readers of her earlier books: a messenger from the Galaxy-wide confederacy known as the Ekumen comes to a newly-contacted planet on an anthropological expedition. The Left Hand of Darkness has the same premise and takes place in the same imagined future, what changes are the characters and the planet’s society. Le Guin manages to exploit this technique without ever coming across as formulaic. Her writing strengths lie in strong, well-realized characters, and building interesting and believable cultures. The Telling is excellent.

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