{"id":148557,"date":"2018-01-24T02:55:06","date_gmt":"2018-01-24T07:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=148557"},"modified":"2018-01-24T02:55:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-24T07:55:06","slug":"ursula-k-le-guin-bestselling-science-fiction-author-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/01\/24\/ursula-k-le-guin-bestselling-science-fiction-author-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"Ursula K. Le Guin, bestselling science fiction author, dies"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ursula<\/a>
Ursula K. Le Guin has died at 88. (Photo By Gorthian – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Le Guin died suddenly and peacefully Monday at her home in Portland, Oregon, after several weeks of health concerns, her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin said Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGodspeed into the galaxy,\u201d Stephen King tweeted, saying Le Guin was a literary icon, not just a science fiction writer.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Despite being a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 \u2014 a rare achievement for a science fiction-fantasy writer \u2014 she often criticized the \u201ccommercial machinery of bestsellerdom and prizedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river,\u201d Le Guin said in the speech. \u201cWe who live by writing and publishing want \u2014 and should demand \u2014 our fair share of the proceeds. But the name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Le Guin’s first novel was \u201cRocannon’s World\u201d in 1966 but she gained fame three years later with \u201cThe Left Hand of Darkness,\u201d which won the Hugo and Nebula awards \u2014 top science fiction prizes \u2014 and conjures a radical change in gender roles well before the rise of the transgender community.<\/p>\n

The book imagines a future society in which people are equally male and female and also dramatizes the perils of tyranny, violence and conformity.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Le Guin’s work also won the Newbery Medal, the top honour for American children’s literature. Last year, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d she told reviewer Mark Wilson of Scifi.com.<\/p>\n

Neil Gaiman, a fellow Newbery, Hugo and Nebula recipient, mourned her death on Twitter and called Le Guin \u201cthe deepest and smartest of the writers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHer words are always with us. Some of them are written on my soul,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

A longtime feminist, Le Guin earned degrees from Radcliffe and Columbia. Her 1983 \u201cLeft-Handed Commencement Address\u201d at Mills College was ranked one of the top 100 speeches of the 20th century in a 1999 survey by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Texas A&M University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him?\u201d she told the graduates. \u201cWhy should she live her life on his terms? … I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in Berkeley, California, on Oct. 21, 1929, Le Guin described a well-off childhood even during the Depression, with summers in the countryside. Her success followed an early setback: At age 11, she had her first offering rejected by Amazing Stories, the pioneering science fiction magazine.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the Second World War, my brothers all went into service and the summers in the Valley became lonely ones, just me and my parents in the old house,\u201d she told sfsite.com, another science fiction website.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no TV then; we turned on the radio once a day to get the war news. Those summers of solitude and silence, a teenager wandering the hills on my own, no company, ‘nothing to do,’ were very important to me. I think I started making my soul then,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She married Charles Le Guin in Paris in 1953. They moved to Portland and had three children.<\/p>\n

Her themes ranged from children’s literature to explorations of Taoism, feminism, anarchy, psychology and sociology to tales of a society where reading and writing are punishable by death and of a scientist who battles aliens to save the world.<\/p>\n

Critic Harold Bloom placed her in the pantheon of fantasy writers along with JRR Tolkien.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I think I am just trying to superstitiously avert evil by talking about it,\u201d she told sfsite.com. \u201cThroughout my whole adult life, I have watched us blighting our world irrevocably … ignoring every warning and neglecting every benevolent alternative in pursuit of ‘growth.\u201d’<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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