I believe LeGuin is herself an anarcho-syndicalist, though don't quote me on that, I'm not checking the Wikipedia article right now. That is, btw, one of my favorite books ever. You haven't, I'm guessing, read Lathe of Heaven yet, but it's a close second.
I'm a huge LeGuin fan. I have read almost all of her books, there are one or two that I couldn't get into, but the Wizard of Earthsea books (now five and a book of short stories) and the Hainish books are favorites.
So is the Lathe of Heaven which contains my favorite line in all of science fiction:
"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new."
LeGuin is an author who I can reread over and over. Her ideas and themes are varied, her language is beautiful.
Me too! I've got almost all of hers, but The Dispossessed is one of my all time-favorites. Also Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness and Always Coming Home.
I think I read this back in the day but I'm not sure. If it's the book I'm thinking of, the protagonist gets to the other planet's university and marvels at the fact that the students don't have to do any manual work? And I seem to remember him being impressed with flush toilets.
I bought Redshirts as soon as it came out and it was a fun read. But was it really the best science fiction novel of the year?
That's the one. He's not impressed with flush toilets so much as he is amazed that even on a spaceship there is no pressure to conserve water. The world he grew up on was a desert. Nobody could make you save water, exactly, but you still had to do it.
Remember the line about the school-kids wasting paper, "Do they think paper grows on trees?" And about someone being what we would call a 'special magic snowflake', "He's so delicate, you'd think he was a fish egg!"
Heh, SF that forgets about the need for conservation on a spacecraft - like the good ship Nostromo, an immense oil-refinery that travels through space for years with its entire crew in cold-sleep, and its entire vast interior full of breathable, room-temperature atmosphere.
Thanks for the indepth retelling--I read the book 20+ years ago and while I will never forget that I read it, I totally forget the plot. I just remember it as the story of a brilliant young man who was unhappy no matter what society he was in. I found it so depressing it took me forever to start reading LeGuin again--but her Hainish novels skyrocketed her to being one of my top five favorite authors. Definitely stuff you can sink your teeth into!
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So is the Lathe of Heaven which contains my favorite line in all of science fiction:
"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new."
LeGuin is an author who I can reread over and over. Her ideas and themes are varied, her language is beautiful.
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I bought Redshirts as soon as it came out and it was a fun read. But was it really the best science fiction novel of the year?
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Heh, SF that forgets about the need for conservation on a spacecraft - like the good ship Nostromo, an immense oil-refinery that travels through space for years with its entire crew in cold-sleep, and its entire vast interior full of breathable, room-temperature atmosphere.
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