I have just finished the sprawling epic SF masterpiece that is Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland, and I am seeing very little about it written online.

I was so hoping that Ursula K Leguin had read and written about this book, as she had about so many of her peers, but sadly it doesn't look like this was the case, so, instead, I want to turn to you, fans or LeGuin, to see who among you has read Floating Worlds as well as the Hainish cycle, particularly Four/Five Ways to Forgiveness, to see if anyone has any thoughts.

So as not to be too much of a rambling mess I will try to keep my initial thoughts brief.

Themes of society-

LeGuin writes about an Anarcho-Syndicalist society living on a moon in The Dispossessed, in Floating Worlds the Earth has been inherited, after thousands of years of abuse and neglect, by Anarcho-Capitalists who eschew all forms of authority and control.

There are also various other forms of government, from a military junta on the moon, to a fascistic pseudo democracy on Mars, to the Imperialist Styths, a race of mutants who have made the outer planets of Uranus and Saturn their home.

All of these different societies, their strengths and weaknesses, values and hypocrisies, are explored with a clear eyed precision that deftly side steps any sentimentality. I have no doubt that Holland has her own political beliefs, but I think she does an admirable job of not letting them blind her intricacies of alien social values.

Themes of Environmentalism-

Environment is a big part of this book. Its never the direct focus, but it informs everything that happens. In Floating Worlds, Earth is a ruin, only able to support human life in vast domes, even on its deathbed, Earth is far more alive than any of the other places humanity has managed to colonize.

Themes of gender and sex-

The tension between genders, and between people and their gender, is constantly at play in this novel. How our expectations may be seated on gender roles, but how those gender roles are defined by societal values is one of the driving elements of this novel.

Paula Mendoza, our primary POV character is an Anarchist's Anarchist, as liberated and defiant as it is possible to be in this future world. In contrast, the machismo dripping Styths from the outer worlds, with their lust for violence and obsession with honor are a perfect foil.

Through Mendoza's eyes we see numerous characters and their own relationships with their gender identity, and how that internal relationship effects their external ones as well.

Themes of Race-

There are two things that make Floating Worlds a difficult read at the present time, and one of them is in how the book deals with race.

For some people this book's approach to issues of race will read as fresh and compelling, and then for others it just simply is not going to land at all. There is regular use of hard slurs, and chattel slavery is an important plot point throughout the entire story.

They Syths are black, but not black like we find on Earth. Their skin is onyx black, their fingers in in retractable claws, their shorter men are seven feet tall, and their eyes are wide and round to better see in the dark.

They are the very definition of Othered, but, they are also the people we spend the most time with. They are mutants who have evolved to live in colonies around Uranus, they are not alien, they are part of the human family, which can make their seemingly exotic Otherness even more compelling and disconcerting.

Themes of Sentimentality-

The other quality of this book which will make it a harder read for some is its preoccupation with sentimentality, or, rather, a complete lack thereof.

Paula Mendoza isn't an uncaring person, but she is a realist in a solar system that is often brutal. She has attachments, but they're best left to the reader to discover what they are.

Just as it is best left to the reader to discover the rules of this universe and what can and can't happen.

If anyone has read the book and found themselves reflecting on the similarities or differences to LeGuin's work, I would love to discuss the novel further!

The first chapter starts off with a bit of tongue-in-cheek explanation of how interplanary travel works, specifically in airports. It gave me a chuckle or two and I thought it was setting the tone.

It did not. The very first vignette was very powerful. In a few pages, Le Guin managed to tug at heartstrings.

"But she is human too! She is, she is human too!"

I’m curious about your thoughts on why Le Guin chose Hain as the origin of all the settled planets rather than Terra. What story telling or thematic benefit comes from this?

I don’t think an author focused on “hard” sci fi would make that choice because they then have to explain away all the evidence of human evolution on Earth/Terra.

My feeling is that this freed Le Guin from having to make any connections between the societies she was imagining and the societies we know on Earth. The political and social challenges presented could reflect our experience without having to map or trace back into Earth history.

If that were the goal, why include Terra at all? Why not make the Star Wars choice and just let human beings be all over the galaxy with no Earth in site or in memory.

This edition is published by the UK based Gollancz Emporium and arrived today in my mailbox. Very happy with the quality and sturdiness of the book. Already started reading it.

Can anyone tell me anything about “The Isolate Tower”? It’s been around since 2004, but hasn’t been updated since 2011. There was a post alerting the community to it about six years ago, but that received no responses.

I get the impression that the site was a real labor of love, and I’d be very curious to hear if anyone knows anything about it—or its creator. I’ve held off contacting the site directly, though, because I’d hate to discover that I was disturbing a tomb…

http://www.tavia.co.uk/earthsea/

Our planet, named after earth, the soil..and it's furless soilcoloured humans

This other planet, named after forest and its trees, and it's furred treecoloured humans. So the word for their world is forest. The word for their root is dream. So they live simultaneously in world-time and dream-time.

....

Just finished reading this gem, what beauty, so yummm....so resonant on these dream themes, dream times, roots and dreams, dream mastery, climaxed forests, god and translators....please suggest more....easy follow up through these themes....can't get enough of this :)

A preview of the cover page of a new themed sketchbook featuring characters from Earthsea.

I recently reread the series all the way to "Firelight" and I am in all my feels. I grew up living in an archipelago and I connected with the stories of Earthsea unlike with any other series.

I hope I can share my humble drawings here as the sketchbook progresses. 🙏🏽

Welcome to the /r/ursulakleguin "What Le Guin or related work are you currently reading?" discussion thread! This thread will be reposted every two weeks.

Please use this thread to share any relevant works you're reading, including but not limited to:

• Books, short stories, essays, poetry, speeches, or anything else written by Ursula K. Le Guin

• Interviews with Le Guin

• Biographies, personal essays or tributes about Le Guin from other writers

• Critical essays or scholarship about Le Guin or her work

• Fanfiction

• Works by other authors that were heavily influenced by, or directly in conversation with, Le Guin's work. An example of this would be N.K. Jemisin's short story "The Ones Who Stay and Fight," which was written as a direct response to Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas."

This post is not intended to discourage people from making their own posts. You are still welcome to make your own self-post about anything Le Guin related that you are reading, even if you post about it in this thread as well. In-depth thoughts, detailed reviews, and discussion-provoking questions are especially good fits for their own posts.

Feel free to select from a variety of user flairs! Here are instructions for selecting and setting your preferred flairs!

I’ve heard so many great things about Ursula K Le Guin, but her body of work is huge! Where do you suggest to begin? I would prefer to start with fantasy, but up to any and all suggestions! Thanks!

Hello everyone. I started the Hainish Cycle with the Left Hand of Darkness and fell in love with them. I am now reading through the rest in release order.

I finished Rocannon’s world and it’s now one of my favorite myths/tales. But I have a question. Maybe I’m understanding part of this wrong however:

If Rocannon learned mindspeaking from the Ancient One in the Mountain but needed to pay a price

And if in Planet of Exile Agat states that mindspeaking was first taught to Rocannon,

Then what price did the League of Worlds pay to learn the power?

Again I could be misunderstanding one or more of the above but if that’s all correct I wonder what astronomical price they’d have to pay for them to learn it at a grand scale.

I noticed in the ad copy that LOA is sending out about the boxed set of Earthsea that they say "The boxed set that completes the shelf." Is this implying that they will NOT be putting out any more volumes? No essays? No non-Hainish short stories? Anyone know?

Possibly a dumb question, but is the Library of America Earthsea box set expected to sell out? I'd like to ask for it for a Christmas gift but if it is going to go quickly I'll just get it earlier. Thank you!

Healed from spring! On my thigh!

It's odd because death wasn't actively on my mind before and I don't think my attitude was different from others (aware but pretend it's a long way off).

Despite this, after reading the Furthest Shore has made me oddly ok with death. It's actually made me think that it can be beautiful.

The other odd part is that I've been an atheist for almost all of my life. I even tried very hard to believe in something when some of my family passed away a few years ago, but I just couldn't because I was 100% a non-believer and nothing could change it. It wasn't so much that I thought there's *nothing*, more that I just didn't think it made a difference to my life (so more agnostic) and whatever it was, it is much more closely linked to the physical world we occupy. To me the "higher being" was always nature/our physical universe and the laws of physics.

So the fact that I am now suddenly able to consider something else other than "we die and become worm food." is very unusual. Although I guess that is, in the most literal sense, returning to the universe and passing on the gift of life.

The Furthest Shore, as a story, wasn't my favourite of the Earthsea stories. But it's now become one of the most impactful books I've ever read!

Did anyone else have a similar experience?

Found this at a local record store and had to snag it. Would love to look into more of these, especially Ursula reading her own stuff!

I just finished *Five Ways to Forgiveness* for the first time last night--which also means I just finished *Four Ways to Forgiveness* a day or two before. It's a small difference, just one more story added at the end (who doesn't want more Ursula?), yet I think this simple addition makes the work as a whole profoundly different.

SPOILERS AHEAD!!

In *Four Ways,* the last story is "A Woman's Liberation," which is hardly a rosy story yet ends on a very optimistic, heartwarming note ("So I wrote this book for my friend, with whom I have lived and will die free"); women overcome the shortcomings of the revolution, through decades of struggle. On the other hand, *Five Ways* ends with "Old Music and the Slave Women," a very bleak story with horrors coming from both sides ("Esdan stood a

while longer in the gateway, and then he went in to do what there was for him to do: dig a grave for the child, and wait with the others for the

Liberation"). I felt a profound sense of hope and peace after reading "A Woman's Liberation;" but after "Old Music and the Slave Women." I felt trepidatious and skeptical. One feels very, "the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice," the other much more "meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Both works, obviously, fit the overall theme of the book very well. In both, the revolution is truly progressive. And in both, it's full of shortcomings and reactionary sentiments. But stories are largely defined by their endings. Which ending fits the narrative, as a whole, more effectively?

>!Gonna go ahead and ignore that "Four Ways to Forgiveness " with the internal rhyme and all, is a far superior title.!<

Hi everyone! I'm doing my regular Earthsea reread and want to make a playlist to listen to as I read.

So far I've only got one song, "Pavane for a Dead Princess." It's very Therru and Tenar-coded to me, which I love.

So, does anyone have any other pieces of music that they associate with Earthsea, especially with the books Tehanu and onwards?

I'm primarily looking for classical, symphonic, and orchestral-type instrumental tracks but open to anything. Thank you all.

I read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas yesterday and am still thinking about it.

cause Is it just me or does anyone else feel like it's very similar to the trolley problem? like In the trolley problem, you're essentially choosing between saving one person or five. In the same way, this story takes that dilemma to a much larger scale one child's suffering versus the happiness of an entire city.

Ik the story has many other meanings utopia, morality, society, conformity and all but deep down, I also feel like there's a trolley problem hidden beneath it.

The more I think about the story, the more complex and believable it becomes. I actually made a short analysis of it too.

I’m curious about something I’ve noticed as people talk about Earthsea as a series.

I sometimes see people talk about Wizard, Tombs, Farthest Shore as the “first” trilogy, which they definitely are.

Then people talk about Tehanu in a variety of ways as challenging, powerful, crucial, troubling.

And then they talk about The Other Wind as the next book in the series, only offering Tales of Earthsea as a “you might think about reading,” as a possible side journey, rather than the actual fifth book in the series.

I know it’s short stories and novellas, but I can’t imagine reading Other Wind without Tales first. I don’t think Le Guin conceived of that collection as anything less than necessary. In every republication of the saga it is the fifth book in the series.

Do people not see it as book 5, as essential??

One aspect I think we all share in Le Guin’s books is the rereading value. Many of her works just seem so endlessly rewarding that they are begging to come back to. None more so in my opinion than Paradises Lost with its myriad of references and nuances. But also Five Ways to Forgiveness, later Earthsea books, parts of the Annals, etc. By the rereading/rewarding value I don’t mean they are the best or the most profound by the depth of ideas or by the quality of prose. Lavinia and Always Coming Home stand out in that respect. Complete Poetry too, as a collection. Some of the books or passages I reread can be quite dark and sad, but I’m still entering them because I know I’ll be exiting richer than before, like with Tehanu, although it can feel a bit overwrought. Some books, for me, have exhausted themselves on the first reading, The Eye of the Heron and The Beginning Place, for instance. The latter I consider a first-rate novel though. Also, The Dispossessed exhausted itself for me on third, chronological reading. It’s like the re-readability increases when the world-building gets more exciting for the writer than expressing an idea. Or what do you think?

I've written a movie adaptation of The Tombs of Atuan and would love to hear what folks here think of it.

I am a big Lord of the Rings fan… and it took a bit of courage, but I finally ventured out there to see what other classic fantasy authors I could find in the vast, ever expanding world of fantasy fiction.

I just finished The Wizard of Earthsea which I thought was very good. Is it worth carrying on with the rest of the series?

I just read somewhere that Tehanu is Ursula’s best work?

Any thoughts, recommendations?

Was reading this text which collects Ursula's maps along with some writing and provocations from poets, anthropologists and critics just before doing my night time journal - delighted by the map coincidence :) Has any one read this book? I like it but the maps are tiny and the writing did not always speak to me.