[net.sf-lovers] On LeGuin and Speculative Fiction

evansr@yale-com.UUCP (Ronald Warren Evans) (02/07/84)

I agree with Paul Fuqua's recommendation of Ursula K. LeGuin as an author with
an excellent internally-consistent universe. Strictly speaking, LeGuin has at
least two -- her main SF universe, as chronicled in such books as *The Left
Hand of Darkness* and *The Dispossessed*, and the universe of Earthsea, which,
as well as appearing in *The Earthsea Trilogy*, is the setting for one or two
of her earlier short stories, the names of which escape me at the moment.
(They are collected, I believe, in *The Wind's Twelve Quarters*.)

Certainly, LeGuin is one of the best writers of speculative fiction we have.
Her prose places her among such other writers of literary SF as Stanislaw
Lem, Gene Wolfe, Raphael Aloysius Lafferty, Orson Scott Card (heard o' him?),
and even (dare I say it?) Tolkien.

Flame away all you want, by the way, at my calling Tolkien an SF author. I
think the boundaries are becoming blurred in this our Second Golden Age of
Science Fiction.



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