I'm over half way through The Dispossessed and I'd rather rub sandpaper on my eyeballs than read anymore. How can someone so progressive about sexuality have utterly sexless writing? The main character repeatedly has gay sex with a socialist revolutionary inside a highly patriarchal, capitalist state and somehow the relationship is less interesting than a scatterplot with no coorelation. Le Guin's prose has zero color, zero suspense, zero humanity, zero poeticism, all anodized on an aimless plot. This is the most ivory-tower, assume-spherical-human author I have encountered.
I've read Those Who Walked Away from Omelas and its the best Le Guin has to offer because its only like 2 pages. Even then half of it is a professor hand-waving away what a utopia might be.
When I was a I child I had to read The Wizard of Earth-Sea for school and I actually read it. My memory of it is all white noise because there were no humans in the book, only ideas with no flesh. I've never seen someone make a fantasy book boring. Tolkien would spend pages describing a single tree but at least it would be in color and depth.
I watched the film adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven. A man who's dreams actually become reality, but he must actually go to sleep and dream the reality. Fascinating idea. One of a kind premise. SOMEHOW STILL BORING.
Is Asimov this bad too? I've read Starship Troopers from Heinlein and it was about as bad but it at least had some suspense and violence to keep things wet. If anyone has read Rand and Le Guin, I'd love to hear a comparison.
I need to rehydrate myself with my big wet boy PKD, and try to finish VALIS. I had to keep putting it down because, "thats enough crazy for today".
Maybe I should try that one when/if I give Le Guin a 3rd or 4th chance. The movie spoiled a bunch of it for me though.
I've only read left hand of darkness, but I really enjoyed it? I get the dry writing, but it was good idk?
I think that book was written before The Dispossessed but comes after it chronologically in the Hainish cycle. Maybe I should've started with it.
Is there any real conflict in the story? Because the only conflict in The Dispossessed is a scientist feeling unfulfilled about the science he's not doing. I know he's supposed to make the ansible. Maybe I should stick it out until then?
It's been awhile so recollection is hazy, but no I don't recall conflict as such, certainly not any the narrator is involved with.
The world is split into two continents, with conflict existing between the mercantile state and the.. idk, 'outlanders'? It's told through the eyes of an offworld envoy detailing their experiences with different peoples and societies/ways of being
I loved that short story as well. If you want something a bit different but also in the same untraditional but critical vein I would suggest Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. I also read an edition of Roadside Picnic which Le Guin wrote a foreword to and it was great.
As an enjoyer the STALKER movie and game series (which I understand have little relation) I should pay my respects and read A Roadside Picnic.
They aren't too long! I think the film (if you mean the Tarkovsky one) is related in spirit albeit it takes a different route. The film had one of the Strutgatsky brothers on as some kind of producer or writer or something. It's one of the movie/book combos I would hesitate to put against one another as I find they both approach the same idea in their own way. I felt I had a better understanding of the book after having watched the film.
Also, Tarkovsky also directed an adaptation of Solaris (which O have not had the pleasure of seeing ಥ_ಥ) so there's another reason to read the book!
I can't speak about her books since I have never read them, but I have heard only good things about them, especially in any leftist circles. Then again, I will fully admit that I prefer the book equivalent of Marvel movies, so I'm not even sure if Ursula K. Le Guin would be something for me.
They're hailed by left wing circles as she's the most progressively left wing of all the classic SciFi authors. You should go read Those Who Walked Away from Omelas right now to get an idea: https://files.libcom.org/files/ursula-k-le-guin-the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas.pdf
Its great essay but now imagine reading an entire book that reads exactly the same way. Like a hundred page long thought experiment.
I've only listened to The Lathe of Heaven on audiobook at work. I enjoyed it well enough. I went in expecting a bad philosophical work so when it turned out to be a classic science fiction story complete with
spoiler
bad guy wanting to take over the world
I was amused. But I can understand how that may be boring to some.
Its more of a classy SciFi for sure the two bits that stuck out were:
spoiler
- Guy dreams to end racism, world turns greyscale.
- Guy dreams to end alien robot invasion he accidentally dreamed. Alien Robots are now slaves.
In comparison with PKD
spoiler
- Abusive husband gets possessed by alien. Wife is cool with it.
- Mortician in propeller beanie
- mutant Jesus vs satanic jimmy Kimmel
- summoning elden sword with mind
- 3+6 gears = 9 speed bike
- autistic children can time travel
And of course, triple titty women.
I read The Dispossessed like a decade ago, and I feel like I had the same reaction to it. It was the situation where I just thought that maybe I wasn't intellectual enough to understand it...But thinking back on it the concepts that she was trying to illustrate didn't even seem that novel or complex..
What do you think of John Scalzi's writing? How about Terry Bisson's? Whose writing do you like?
Never heard of Scalzi or Bisson before. Philip K Dick is currently my favorite
okay, is there anyone else besides PKD whose writing you enjoy? It would be helpful for recommendations to have a more complete understanding of what you like.
I'm pretty basic SciFi fantasy ho. Stephen King, Tolkien, Robert Jordan, Frank Herbert, Evan Winter, Gibson, Bradbury etc.
Maybe try the Culture books or N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy?
The Culture series is an Iain M. Banks series of 10 books.
I remember reading the Earthsea saga after finishing One Hundred Years of Solitude. And while the plot kept me engaged enough to finish all the books. I just found her writing and characters... ¿dry? I think that is the word.
While I try to remember the plot and the setting, that is what comes to mind first. The "dryness" of her writting and worlbuilding. On the other hand, I remember far more clearly the nostalgic and colorful world of One Hundred Years. And the characters too.
I guess it is just a matter of "taste". I still want to read The Dispossessed tho.
All I remember from Earth Sea is the protag goes to school to become a wizard, somehow acquires a shadowy nemesis, then rows out to the edge of the world to encounter his nemesis, and then defeats him by like, learning his name. Its like if someone academically executed all the theoretical motions of a heroic epic without any epic or heroism.
I dont even remember the protags name or any of the magic he does. None of the world was actually important in any way. Just the pure academic notion that learning the names of things is important.
That's one of the things I most appreciate about the Earthsea cycle, how different in subject and tone the Tenar books are in comparison to Ged's. I know most fans get thrown for a loop by Tehanu, but I think The Tombs of Atuan actually covers a lot of the same thematic ground.
Is Asimov this bad too? I've read Starship Troopers from Heinlein and it was about as bad but it at least had some suspense and violence to keep things wet.
Asimov is defiantly similarly dry and curt. This is just a common writing style of mid-century sci-fi, to be very sparce and let you fill in the blanks about the character's personality and motivations. I don't find it boring, but it's definitely a deliberate stylistic choice. You can just kind of tell if you're reading something from around the 1960s, just like you can kind of tell if you're reading something from around the 1860s - authors are reading their contemporaries, and end up kind of writing in a similar way.
If anyone has read Rand and Le Guin, I'd love to hear a comparison.
Rand's writing is sort of the opposite of Le Guin in a lot of ways. Atlas Shrugged is a cudgel of prose all formulated to advance her political philosophy, and all character motivation can be boiled down to "I want to act in a way that demonstrates this point that Rand is trying get across". The Dispossessed is a story about people in a place with motivations to advance their own interests, and in doing so they prod the reader into thinking about the political and societal ideas that LeGuin is interested in exploring. That they both have kind of a dry writing style and wooden characters is, I think, more of a reflection of the writing styles of the day - these were both people writing sci-fi (I do consider Atlas Shrugged a sci-fi novel) to be published and make money in the middle of the 20th century, to an audience who has certain expectations.
It's okay to not like an author's writing, don't feel obligated to read their stuff even if it's a Well Regarded Classic. But do circle back to them a decade or two later and try again, your tastes might have changed.
This is probably a worthless unnecessary comment but I started Foundation Trilogy by Asimov once and it was the driest most emotionally stunted shit I've ever read. But then this is pretty much how I feel about most sci Fi fantasy. The first five or so Lethem novels are really awesome though, I'd reccomend those.
