Ursula K Le Guin's "Nine Lives" (novelette): A feeling of loneliness

10-clones, 5 men & 5 women, all derived from the same man, act as a single individual, mutually dependent, but not noticing others. Even sex is within the group.

9 die in an earthquake. Story is of the survivor discovering life as an individual.

Collected in.

1. David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF".

Fact sheet.

First published: Playboy, November 1969.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1970 in novelette category.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Ursula K Le Guin.

Ursula K Le Guin's "The Island of the Immortals" (short story, free): Immortality considered a disease

Like many immortality stories, immortality here too comes with a rider: major damage to body won't repair, & you might have to live an eternity lame, e.g. And immortality here is an infectious disease - spread by flies, & most people take elaborate precautions to escape being bitten.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Stories, Fall 1998.
Download full text from Lightspeed. [via QuasarDragon]
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Ursula K Le Guin; about immortality.

Ursula K Le Guin's "The Silence of the Asonu" aka "The Wisdom of the Asonu" (short story, free): Some glimpses of human nature

Bits of it are very funny.

Story summary.

Asonu of title are both a world & aliens who live there. They have a curious trait: after the age of 6 or 7, they stop speaking; an adult would perhaps utter a dozen monosyllables in as many years; yet they are able to live perfectly normal lives in their community. These are pastoral nomads, going wherever their "flocks of anamanu" take them.

Humans find this lack of speech very interesting, & often interpret it as something deeply spritual. Here we learn of the methods men employ to try figuring out the aliens' "wisdom" & what they've learnt.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1998. (Where? Links all over the web mention Orion, but that's a publisher. I would have assumed it was in some collection of author published by Orion, but author's ISFDB page doesn't list any collection published in 1998.)
Download full text from Lightspeed.
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Ursula K Le Guin.

Ursula K Le Guin's "The Word For World is Forest" (novella): Natives throw out ruthless & evil colonists

I'll put it among the essential reads of science fiction on colonialism.

In some sense, this is yet another precursor to Hollywood movie "Avatar". While Alan Dean Foster's "Midworld", often cited as the prototype after which Avatar is modeled, focuses more on world building, Le Guin's version has a more strongly demarcated conflict: human colonists ("yumens" to natives) are far more evil, natives (derisively called "creechies" by colonists) are able to repel them by themselves - making the reader root more strongly for the natives.

Story summary.

Colonists from earth want wood from the forest world of Athshe ("New Tahiti" to colonists). So they set about razing the local forests, destroying native cities & villages inside the
forest. There is general genocide of natives, taking some as slaves, routine rapes of their
women.

Natives finally wake up via the hero, Selver. He & his wife were taken slave, his wife
raped & killed by Captain Don Davidson - official villain & personification of the ultimate evil. From this point on, the days of humans on this world are numbered, with Selver organizing & leading the local military raids against colonist camps.

Another individual that is sketched in some detail is colonists' anthropologist, Captain Raj Lyubov - the "good" human.

Quotes.

1. "The world is always new, however old its roots."
2. "For four years they've behaved to us as they do to one another. Despite the physical differences, they recognized us as members of their species, as men. However, we have not responded as members of their species should respond... We have killed, raped, dispersed, & enslaved the native humans, destroyed their communities, and & down their forests. It wouldn't be surprising if they'd decided that we are not human."
   
   "And therefore can be killed, like animals".
   
3. "The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest."
   "Athshe, which meant the Forest, & the World."
   
   This is where the title comes from.

Fact sheet.

First published: Harlan Ellison (ed)'s "Again, Dangerous Visions" (anthology, 1972).
Rating: A.
Winner of Hugo award 1973 in novella category.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1972 in novella category.
Related: Stories of Ursula K Le Guin.

Where to start reading Ursula K Le Guin?

Suggestions at rasfw.

Related: Stories of Ursula K Le Guin.

Ursula K Le Guin on

1. Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, in this interview with Ligaya Mishan at The New Yorker. [via SF Signal]
   
   She also provides information on where to find a map on the web - map that might have been in the book but is not (search "map" in the text of the interview).
2. What's wrong with literary prizes.
   

Related: Stories of Ursula K Le Guin.

Free fiction: 3 stories from Charles N Brown & Jonathan Strahan's anthology "The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction & Fantasy"

Read online at HarperCollins (no download):

1. Gene Wolfe's "The Death of Dr Island": Not read.
2. Ursula K Le Guin's "The Day Before the Revolution": Not read.
3. Harlan Ellison's "Jeffty is Five": It appears in a lot of All Time Top 50 lists, though I cannot figure out why.
   
   From what I recall, it's the familiar grandmother's lament on how music was music when she was young & now it's noise, or how milk was "free" when she was young (because the family had buffaloes & lived in a village) against Rs 22 a liter today in city!
   
   Jeffty, a boy at the heart of the story, has the time magically stopped for him at age 5 while rest of the world moves on!

[via Free SF Reader]

Ursula K Le Guin rants about folks who think science fiction is less than literature

Link.

Best women genre authors

A panel presentation at SF Signal.
Note: At the moment, link doesn't seem to work. Hopefully, should be back live sometime.

My own favorites: C L Moore, Mary Shelley, & J K Rowling. I don't recall Shelley even mentioned in above panel; her classics (at least the ones I've read), including Frankenstein, actually make a light reading in spite of being very influential.
PS: Did you know Moore's "Black God's Kiss" is sometimes regarded as the defining story of sword-&-sorcery subgenre? Few others of the subgenre I've read appear to be poor rehashes. And her "The Bright Illusion" is among the first stories where aliens appear as truly alien; I'm not sure if this came before Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" or not - but both are remembered for this feature, & I've an impression both came around the same time. While her superlative works came later in life, with Henry Kuttner, she has several good solo works too from her early career (apart from, sadly, several crappy ones too). She's often very original - a dream author for those who regard sf as a genre of ideas.

On my to-read list: Ursula K Le Guin & Andre Norton. I've heard good things about both, but have read only one story from each, neither of them particularly noteworthy. SF Signal link above has some suggested readings of Le Guin.

Lois McMaster Bujold is a name I've heard often but never read. Would like to check something out, particularly any short fiction.

Two well regarded names that don't really figure in my list: Anne McCaffrey & Alice Sheldon (better known by her pseudonym James Tiptree, Jr). I've only read "Weyr Search" of McCaffery, the original story of the massive Pern series; not bad, but didn't really make me seek more. I've read 3 or 4 stories of Sheldon, & liked only one of them - Hugo & Nebula winner "The Screwfly Solution" which actually has the same identical plot as one of the Murray Leinster's Med Ship stories I cannot recollect the name of.

Ursula K Le Guin's "The Flyers of Gy" (short story, fantasy, free): It's a hard life for the physically "different"!

I doubt it's intended that way, but it felt like the story of the third sex - neither male nor female, yet both - still shunned in many societies, or at least looked upon condescendingly. There have sometimes been demands in India to make the government forms give a choice other than male/female in sex column.

At a certain level, this is a highly fantasized version of it. As also of society's tendency to reward the normal, & often discourage the deviation from normal - even when the deviation ought to a desirable one.

Story sometimes uses "Gy", other times "Gyr", to refer to the world where the story is set. It uses the term "plane" where "planetary" might have been meant (but author tells us it's intentional - in this interview). "Man" & "woman" are used for bird-beings of this world who are otherwise very different from human beings; I recall an instance of "human beings" used to refer to them.

In answer to one of the questions in this interview (about 75% of the way through), author tells us this story is going to be part of a series; she also provides some contextual information on this story.

Story summary.

We don't know if narrator is one of the Gyr, or a tourist; this world is a popular tourist destination.

The normal intelligent beings on this world are non-flying birds - 6 limbed (legs & arms like us, plus useless wing appendages). But one in a thousand will develop his or her wings - during late teens. Because of their rarity, wings are considered a major deformity - entire society is organized for wingless beings.

In tribal societies, kids developing wings are killed. Urban societies are more tolerant, & merely consider them a handicap.

Even in urban areas, to conform, many of those who develop wings bind them & choose never to fly! But there are some who do, & love it once they overcome the initial fears ingrained by all the conditioning.

And yet there is a longing among the grounded - kind of envy towards those who fly.

Fact sheet.

First published: scifi.com, 8 November 2000.
Rating: B
Download full text.