lin·gua·phile

Ursula Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

#i love dark and grim narratives a lot but i’m so sick of how popular they are#nope just because a story shows us the awful side of humanity and existence it doesn’t mean it’s good #nope just because a story shows us the awful sides of humanity and existence itself it doesn’t mean it’s good #especially if the execution is terrible which is where too many of these narratives fall flat (via sokkasass)

A big resounding YES to all of this.

(Source: alltheladiesyouhate, via elviella)

A few months ago, something I can no longer remember prompted me to attempt to make a list of my fifteen favorite books. The list got to about twelve, but trying to figure out the last three was hell.

What follows is something like my list: more than five (but less than fifteen) books that keep me coming back for more.

inthelowlight:

I want to go moonwalking

on it or under it I don’t care

I just want to go moonwalking

alone.

Women in their sixties

don’t go to the moon,

women in the cities

don’t go out alone.

But I want O listen what I want

is to be not afraid.

Listen what I need is freedom.

Women in their sixties

think about dying,

women in the cities

think about dying,

all kinds of women

think about lying,

think about lying alone.

But listen there’s a moon out there

and I don’t want sex and I don’t want death

and I don’t want what you think I want

only to be a free woman.

What is that, a free woman,

a young free woman,

an old free woman?

Asking for the moon.

Women in their sixties

have no moon.

Women in the cities

howl at the moon.

All kinds of women

talk about walking alone.

When the moon is full

listen how they howl,

listen how they howl together.

         —Ursula Le Guin

Oh goodness, where to begin? This is the kind of book I’ve been looking out for. Fun, sassy, character-driven, well-plotted. Light and fluffy, too, but in the best possible way. Sinclair is definitely an author I’m coming back to.

First, a note on the worldbuilding, which I thought was quite deftly managed. Sinclair never overwhelms you with details unnecessary to the story — someone knows Chekov! — but still provides enough detail for you to beleive that the world existed before you opened the book and will continue to exist after you close it. I’d say she did an especially good job delineating the three-way background conflcit between the Conclave, Empire, and ‘Sko without fact-dumping or getting in the way of the real story. I want to see her write more about this world!

Next, the main characters. Okay, yes, this is a typical love-from-loathing story, but the thing that makes it work is the characters. Of course they have stereotypical aspects (hair light moonlight? “air sprite”?) but in general I would say that both Trilby and Rhis are strong characters with strong voices. Do I believe the character changes they undergo? Eh. Sort of. I would’ve liked Sinclair to spend more time exploring their pasts and letting them be awkward around each other, but I don’t entirely disbelieve what ends up happening either. My main complaint is probably with Rhis — how does he go so quickly from being the Kyrhis Tivahr to Rhis Vanur? — but even then, I want to believe he can, which is an important factor.

I think it is now time to devote a whole paragraph to the name Trilby Elliot, and how gosh darn awesome it is.

Another thing that really impressed me about this book was its stellar cast of supporting characters, particularly the Zafharin ones. I’d say it’s a sign of a pretty good book when a character who only shows up halfway through the novel can steal a bit of your heart.

Honestly, Linnea Sinclair writes the most intriguing science fiction I’ve read in a while, possibly since Julie E. Czerneda (if we forget for a moment about Ursula K. LeGuin). This is definitely a book to keep, and an author to follow.

There’s something about the way LeGuin writes that gets under your skin. You don’t realize it but she’s crafting a new world in your head through the experience of words on the page, so you know exactly how people think, and even if the point of the story isn’t necessarily about the characters — because with LeGuin, you always know it’s something bigger — it’s rooted in the characters, inescapably. I usually read for character but I think LeGuin is one of the few writers that I read for her ideas alone. For instance, I can’t remember the names of characters from The Left Hand of Darkness, the first book of hers that I read, but I remember the emotional intensity nonetheless, and I know that it’s a book I cherish and will have to come back to.

Maybe what I’m sensing is that her characters somehow get out of the way of the story, if that’s possible. The Dispossessed is “about” Shevek in both senses of the word: it is a story told of him and through him, but also somehow around him, an asymptote approaching but never achieving a full identification with him.

What I think I love the most about it was the way that science became an artform. That’s the part of it that I can understand. I wish that more physicists were also philosophers. The application of temporal physics is ethics, indeed! Einstein would be proud, I think, to be referenced in a work like this.

I was thinking last night about why it is that there are some professions that get more screen time than others. Pretty much anyone involved with the border between life and death, or with the law, can get his or her own TV show, whatever the angle may be. I wonder why we’re fascinated with these professions, though. It’s always the scientists, the doctors, the lawyers, the crime-fighters who we see onscreen. I think it’s probably because we have an obsession with order and naming. We want everything in its right place, and these are the people we see as helping us with that. There aren’t TV shows about artists because art is about destabilizing the world, and we don’t want instability when we could have certainty. Sometimes the bad guy gets off, it’s true, but frequently that becomes a jumping-off point for the creation of some kind of inner stability, or the beginning of an arc that resolves itself in some negation of chaos. We like to believe that “good” is synonymous with “ordered.”

But what I think I’m saying is that anything worth doing is revolutionary. As Shevek quotes, “The Revolution is in the individual spirit, or it is nowhere. It is for all, or it is nothing. If it is seen as having any end, it will never truly begin.” Without revolution, no evolution. Without a journey outward, no journey homeward. Even the things we do under the guise of ordering the universe cause chaos; chaos is inevitable. There is a difference between understanding and controlling, between knowing and naming. Even the scientist who proposes a new order for classifying the substance of the world must do so in subversion or direct attack against the previous order. Even in science, there is no order. Science and Art, at their best, both hope for the same: a naming of the chaos, a worth in the struggle, a life before death.

Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed