This was one of the sf anthologies that made a huge impression on me as a teenager, and I think about half of the ten stories fully retain their magic for me - "We Purchased People" by Fred Pohl, "The Hole Man" by Larry Niven, "The Author of the Acacia Seeds [etc]" by Ursula Le Guin, "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts" by Philip K. Dick, and "If ( Read more... )

November Books 26) A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin
December Books 8) The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula Le Guin
December Books 9) The Farthest Shore, by Ursula Le Guin
December Books 10) Tehanu, by Ursula Le Guin
December Books 11) Tales from Earthsea, by Ursula Le Guin
December Books 12) The Other Wind, by Ursula Le Guin

Partly inspired by Jo Walton' ( Read more... )

Well, it is a pretty easy decision in the end: my vote for Best Novel in the BSFA awards goes to Lavinia, by Ursula Le Guin. (Second: The City & The City, by China Miéville; third: Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts; fourth: Ark, by Stephen Baxter.)

Pretty much everyone knows the basic outlines of the Odyssey and the Iliad; I believe that the ( Read more... )

This book has been strongly recommended to me for years, and I am glad I finally obtained it and read it. It is a collection of Le Guin's writings about sf and fantasy, almost all from 1973 to 1978 (one piece on Philip K. Dick dates from 1967), originally published in 1979 and revised for a 1989 edition. It is all fascinating stuff, with the ( Read more... )

Happy 80th Birthday,
Ursula Le Guin!
And thank you for everything!

( Read more... )

4) Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison

This is the famous follow-up volume to the even more famous Dangerous Visions, which I read almost exactly three years ago; an anthology of 41 stories, mainly by the leading lights of sf as it was in 1972, with vast amounts of prefatory material by editor Harlan Ellison and an afterword from ( Read more... )

28) City of Illusions, by Ursula Le Guin ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

13) The Wind's Twelve Quarters, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Under heavy work pressure at the moment, so I'm returning to basics. I've read the collection a couple of times before, but it was nice to be reminded of, say the early Earthsea story, "The Rule of Names", with that great couple of sentences ending the penultimate paragraph: But they did stop ( Read more... )

Here. Or, more briefly, here.