io9: Ursula Le Guin

Listen to an amazing interview with Ursula Le Guin

Annalee Newitz — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 09:30:25 PST

The BBC's Owen Bennett Jones recently interviewed Ursula Le Guin, one of the most important science fiction authors of the past half-century. The author of Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, and the Earthsea Chronicles, Le Guin has continued to write gorgeous, compelling tales of alien life well into her eighties. She tells Jones about how the science of anthropology influenced her work, as well as how she's brought Taoist themes into her writing. This is a terrific interview with one of science fiction's great masters. Listen to it at the BBC website. More »

Breaking Waves showcases the fury and fragility of the sea

Josh Wimmer — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 10:45:00 PST

Need a break from holiday commercialism? Want to send a much-needed gift to groups cleaning up one of 2010's worst disasters? Great! Check out Breaking Waves, an anthology featuring award-winning writers like Ursula K. Le Guin and Vonda McIntyre. More »

TiMER and the trope of destructive prescience

Esther Inglis-Arkell — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:26:07 PDT

Streaming on Netflix is a scifi romance with very deep philosophical roots. TiMER is about what would happen if a piece of technology could tell you when you would meet your soulmate. More »

Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed: When you want to like a book but don't

Josh Wimmer — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 14:00:08 PDT

After a short break, "Blogging the Hugos" is back with 1975 Hugo winner The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin. I thought it was right in so many ways — so what went wrong? More »

The truth is self-evident: Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness isn't about gender

Josh Wimmer — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:00:00 PDT

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It's 1970, and with this Hugo winner — Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness — we finally got the ladies up in here! And the men too! And of course, the menwomen. More »

Have You Ever Hated A Book, Then Come Back To It Later And Loved It?

Charlie Jane Anders — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:00:00 PDT

LibraryThing's science fiction group had a great discussion about "wrong book, wrong time" situations, where you hate a book, but much later, you rediscover it and fall in love. What books are you glad you gave a second chance to? More »

Which Authors Said "No Thanks" To Google Books?

Cyriaque Lamar — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:25:32 PST

Who opted out of the Google Books settlement thus far? Approximately 6,500 authors and other literary entities including such writers as Michael Chabon, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Busiek, and, of course, Ursula Le Guin. More »

Will The Google Settlement Leave Ursula Le Guin Dispossessed?

Scott Timberg — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 16:34:52 PST

Now that Google has declared war on China, can it take on a diminutive 80-year-old science-fiction and fantasy author? Probably, but Ursula K. Le Guin is not going down without a fight. More »

The Most Fantastical Cities On Earth, As Chosen By Ursula K. Le Guin And Michael Moorcock

Charlie Jane Anders — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:00:00 PDT

Their books take you to strange cities from other planets, alternate histories and mythical realms. But what real-life cities inspire Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Nalo Hopkinson and China Miéville? The SharedWorlds project found out, with fascinating results. More »

Ursula K. Le Guin's Secrets Of Creation

Charlie Jane Anders — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:40:59 PST

Ursula Le Guin did an interview with Vice Magazine (of all places) and explained exactly how you can make a mysterious technology, and a universe of 80 wildly different inhabited worlds, feel totally real. More »

Tear Down The Bookshelf Markers, Urge Le Guin and Martin

Charlie Jane Anders — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:30:00 PST

Call it a sign of the times: A Public Radio discussion about the future of science fiction turned into a conversation about the ways SF is struggling. On the one hand, it's lost ground to fantasy, which has become the more popular book genre by far. On the other, the best science fiction writers still don't get the respect and attention accorded to a Cormac McCarthy. What's the solution? Tear down genre lines — maybe starting with the fantasy/SF split. More »

Ursula LeGuin and a Giant Squid Battle for the Future of Gay Utopia

charliejane — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 14:00:34 PST

A new queer zine mixes science fiction legend Ursula K. LeGuin and bondage-porn czar Michael Manning into a heady concoction. The Gay Utopia, an "online symposium," includes a poem by LeGuin and an article (with NSFW pics) on Manning's art. It also includes a hilarious Q&A with a giant squid, an insect-sex-zombie apocalypse and "erotic mind-control fiction." Good times! More »

Dream-Eaters and Three-Sexed Aliens in the Five Greatest World-Building Novels

Annalee Newitz — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:00:48 PST

What would weather be like if you lived in a planet-sized bag of oxygen? What would reproduction be like if there were a third sex who combined the genetic material of two other sexes by linking them at the neurological level and giving them braingasms? What would scientific progress be like in an anarchist-feminist society? One of the ingredients in many great science fiction novel is world-building, the practice of creating an entire unfamiliar (yet familiar) world whose strange permutations allow us to explore how unfathomable environments can dramatically reshape events that happen all the time in our own lives. Here are five cool world-building novels to suck your attention away from the misery of cooling weather and impending turkey day doom. More »