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".

  • captcha [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • Beaver [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.