(no subject)
Jan. 23rd, 2018 09:59 pm-RIP Ursula LeGuin. I think the thing I want to particularly say... there are so many things one can say about her, about her beautiful language and her powerful feminist voice and her fierce voice, but I think the thing that I am particularly equipped to say is that people talk about how she brought social science into SF, and I don't think that's quite right. Asimov was writing about psychohistory decades before the Hainish cycle, and while Foundation is singular, he wasn't alone.
More precisely, what LeGuin brought to science fiction was an unforgettable demonstration that one could write hard science fiction about the 'soft sciences'. LeGuin brought the kind of rigor to her extrapolated anthropology that Clarke brought to his extrapolated engineering. I think it's one of her most important enduring legacies in the genre. And hell, point me to a SF writer writing today who wasn't influenced by LeGuin. The whole genre lives in her shadow, and I will miss her voice.
-Recent books I have read and loved:
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
I know I'm behind the times, but I read it on the train to Boston and I loved it. Really great take on fantasy power structures and Chosen One narratives and the strictures of the romance plot. Katsa is a terrific character.
Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile
I suspect I will not enjoy the Aaron Sorkin-penned movie if I ever force myself to watch it, but this book, about the US-funded war in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s was terrific, both entertaining and illuminating. But also incredibly unsettling. The balance the book struck between entertaining and illuminating is what was unsettling. What emerges quite clearly is that Charlie Wilson was a terrible human being, and no amount of anecdote about his outsized appetites for adventure and sex will change that. I learned a lot about the world from this book, most of it not very good, but the world makes a little more sense to me now than it did before I read it.
Moonglow by Michael Chabon
I was reading it during Philcon and I kept skipping opportunities for socializing because I wanted to keep reading. Possibly my new favorite Chabon novel? Probably just because I haven't read Kavalier and Clay in fifteen years and I need to read it again, but still. I think it does the best justice to its characters of any Chabon novel in memory. It always takes them seriously, never retreats into comic book territory, and yet it uses all of Chabon's immense gift for story to bolster the character work. Also,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ambyr, you might find his discussion of Wernher von Braun's treatment from the US government a welcome antidote to your recent comments about Copenhagen.
More precisely, what LeGuin brought to science fiction was an unforgettable demonstration that one could write hard science fiction about the 'soft sciences'. LeGuin brought the kind of rigor to her extrapolated anthropology that Clarke brought to his extrapolated engineering. I think it's one of her most important enduring legacies in the genre. And hell, point me to a SF writer writing today who wasn't influenced by LeGuin. The whole genre lives in her shadow, and I will miss her voice.
-Recent books I have read and loved:
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
I know I'm behind the times, but I read it on the train to Boston and I loved it. Really great take on fantasy power structures and Chosen One narratives and the strictures of the romance plot. Katsa is a terrific character.
Charlie Wilson's War by George Crile
I suspect I will not enjoy the Aaron Sorkin-penned movie if I ever force myself to watch it, but this book, about the US-funded war in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s was terrific, both entertaining and illuminating. But also incredibly unsettling. The balance the book struck between entertaining and illuminating is what was unsettling. What emerges quite clearly is that Charlie Wilson was a terrible human being, and no amount of anecdote about his outsized appetites for adventure and sex will change that. I learned a lot about the world from this book, most of it not very good, but the world makes a little more sense to me now than it did before I read it.
Moonglow by Michael Chabon
I was reading it during Philcon and I kept skipping opportunities for socializing because I wanted to keep reading. Possibly my new favorite Chabon novel? Probably just because I haven't read Kavalier and Clay in fifteen years and I need to read it again, but still. I think it does the best justice to its characters of any Chabon novel in memory. It always takes them seriously, never retreats into comic book territory, and yet it uses all of Chabon's immense gift for story to bolster the character work. Also,
ambyr, you might find his discussion of Wernher von Braun's treatment from the US government a welcome antidote to your recent comments about Copenhagen.