Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books

[Tom Beshear]

In the 1990s Le Guin began writing a lot of short stories, mainly in her 
Hainish milieu (which includes The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World 
is Forest, and the Dispossessed). Novellas are collected in Four Ways to 
Forgiveness and shorter stories in The Birthday of the World and Other 
Stories. Many of these stories are quite good.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael Bailey" <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2011 3:28 AM
Subject: Re: Top 100 Science-Fiction, Fantasy Books


James Kyllo  wrote:
> The books that stand out in my memory are "The Left Hand of Darkness"
> and "The Word for World is Forest" (I see there is a novel version of
> this - it's the novella, in "Again, Dangerous Visions" that I've
> read). Some of the others don't really transcend their eco-wimmin-sf
> genre, but are doubtless still better than the other inhabitant of
> that genre which comes to mind - Marge Piercy's "Woman on the Edge of
> Time"
>

I dunno why anybody would want to transcend the eco-wimmin-sf
genre...it's got everything needed to sustain life...

but anyway:

1976 was when I read the LHoD - I liked the snowy world, the cult of
ignorance, and I seem to remember she did something interesting with
gender.  Plus the edition I had, had an intro by her that I remember
as being worthwhile, in terms of introducing new ideas or helping to
grok the book, and sort of made me like her if that makes sense

there is a series of sorcery and sorcery (maybe a little bit of sword
too) that she wrote which was pretty fun.  Tales of Earthsea -- I read
those as an over 40 adult and still enjoyed them - a teen or preteen
who read those instead of or alongside Tokien would be well served,
fictionwise, I opine!

the Dispossessed is supposed to be really great, there was this
anarchist dude in the Infoshop bookstore in Kansas City with a
Lenin-looking beard who chose his email name from that book - ie,
people like it.  I haven't read it.

Always Coming Home had a table or insert at the end or beginning of
the book where ruling metaphors of life were the independent variable
and then for each it would list the respective variables - so like if
your ruling metaphor is business then yada yada -- anyway, great chart
- the rest of the book was great for noodling around in which was
perfect for me in the late 80s when I read it...actually I still do a
fair amount of noodling

That's really all I've read of hers or have to say about that although
I rate her pretty high.  I wouldn't mind rereading any of her books
that I've read (although  I didn't like the Lathe of Heaven movie very
much.)

There was a whole issue of the Fifth Estate, an anarchist magazine,
recently devoted to her and she contributed to it.

Last but not least: there's apparently a set
http://www.amazon.com/Always-Coming-Home-Ursala-Guin/dp/B0014EW6EE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1313393026&sr=8-2
with a cassette tape which I'd like to hear

Wikipedia's bibliography shows there are a lot of her books that I
haven't read.  Cool!