Author explored fantasy, feminism
PORTLAND, ORE. Ursula K. Le Guin, the award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer who explored feminist themes and was best known for her Earthsea books, has died at 88.
Le Guin died suddenly and peacefully on Jan. 22 at her home in Portland, Oregon, after several weeks of health concerns, said her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin.
“She left an extraordinary legacy as an artist and as an advocate of peace and critical thinking and fairness, and she was a great mother and wife as well,” he said.
“Godspeed into the galaxy,” Stephen King tweeted, saying Le Guin was a literary icon, not just a science fiction writer.
Le Guin won an honorary National Book Award in 2014 and warned in her acceptance speech against letting profit define what is considered good literature.
Despite being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 — a rare achievement for a science fictionfantasy writer — she often criticized the “commercial machinery of bestsellerdom and prizedom.”
“I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river,” Le Guin said in the speech.
“We who live by writing and publishing want — and should demand — our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”
Her first novel was Rocannon’s World in 1966 but she gained fame three years later with The Left Hand of Darkness, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards — top science fiction prizes — and conjures a radical change in gender roles well before the rise of the transgender community.
The book imagines a future society in which people are equally male and female and also dramatizes the perils of tyranny, violence and conformity.
Her best-known works, the Earthsea books, have sold in the millions worldwide and have been translated into 16 languages. She also produced volumes of short stories, poetry, essays and literature for young adults.
Born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, Calif., on Oct. 21, 1929, Le Guin also won the Newbery Medal, the top honour for U.S. children’s literature. Last year, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
“I know that I am always called ‘the sci-fi writer.’ Everybody wants to stick me into that one box, while I really live in several boxes,” she once said.
Neil Gaiman, a fellow Newbery, Hugo and Nebula recipient, mourned her death on Twitter and called Le Guin “the deepest and smartest of the writers.”
“Her words are always with us. Some of them are written on my soul.”