2009 Locus Fantasy – LAVINIA by Ursula K. LeGuin

This is the seventh LeGuin book I’ve covered for this blog (not counting the original Earthsea trilogy, which I also read during this project).  That sets the record, beating out Heinlein and the more recent Neal Stephenson (who easily takes the page-count award) at six.  LeGuin did a lot to push the limits of sf, and I certainly think she deserves the honor, but it’s still rather surprising that she achieved the feat with wins for two separate books published in April 2009, months before her 80th birthday.

Lavinia expands the story of a minor character from The Aeneid, the epic poem by first century Roman poet Virgil.  Well, she shouldn’t really be a minor character, as she’s the main character’s wife, she’s the reason for the central conflict of the last act, and she’s presented as the mother of the Roman nation, but Virgil only gives her a few lines.  So, LeGuin comes to her rescue. The Aeneid aped Homeric style to tell a story that linked the founding of Rome to the fall of Troy, which allowed the new Roman Empire to link itself to the dominant Hellenic tradition of the Mediterranean while also claiming a moral superiority over the Greeks.  It’s a foundational text of western literature – remember, it’s Virgil, not Homer, that guides Dante through Hell – but it doesn’t seem to be as widely read or referenced in the last couple of decades.  I read it as a freshman in college.  I can’t say I absorbed it all, but having a passing familiarity with the text probably helped my enjoyment of this novel.

The final sections of the epic recount the arrival of a group of Trojan refugees, led by Aeneas, to Italy.  They immediately fall into conflict with the local Latin tribes, especially after Aeneas tries to wed a Latin princess named Lavinia, in accordance with various prophecies.  LeGuin gives us Lavinia’s perspective with a first-person narration that begins in her youth.  She has a loving father, and a crazy mother, and she’s not too keen on the local Latin suitors.  She believes her destiny is to marry a foreigner, but her mother and finest suitor start a war with the Trojans to keep her. The novel continues beyond Virgil’s poem to describe Lavinia’s loving marriage to Aeneas and her efforts to raise their son to be a fine king of the Latins.

There’s not much of the fantastic here.  Actually, the novel is more grounded in archaeology and actual history than The Aeneid, with its glittering kingdoms and divine interventions.  LeGuin’s Thirteenth-century B.C. Italy is poor and pastoral, and she works to keep the religious practices and ethnographic details fairly accurate (though she does admit to some artistic license in the afterword).  The main elements come through prophesy-infused narrative devices, including appearances by Virgil’s ghost (hey, if he can lead Dante through Hell, he can have a chat with one of his characters), and a lavishly described bas-relief shield that somehow depicts most of the major events of the Roman history to come. LeGuin manages to keep the story grounded, but give it these hints of magic.

The real attraction, as is usually the case with LeGuin, is not the speculative elements or the plot, but prose and character. If you’ve ever read Virgil or Homer, you know the heroes are larger-than-life, but LeGuin makes them feel real, and Lavinia is a wonderful heroine. The world-building is especially spectacular. LeGuin brings a very foreign place and time to life.

My one disappointment is that LeGuin seems to have lost interest in the complex analysis of gender that characterized her early work.  Since Tehanu, she seems to spend more time focusing on essential differences of sex…though maybe it just feels that way because most of her recent works have been set in explicitly sexist fantasy worlds. In this novel, men are quite literally from Mars (the god); they stupidly fight and ignore women. Lavinia’s mother, meanwhile, is quite the shrew.

Still, this is the best LeGuin novel I’ve read since at least The Dispossessed…maybe since The Lathe of Heaven.  Powers was nice, but I think the Nebulas would’ve been better served with this as their choice.

Grade: B+

2008 Nebula – POWERS by Ursula K. LeGuin

Reflecting broader trends in the publishing world (mainly, that mostly only kids read books now), two completely different Young Adult books won both the Hugo and the Nebula in the same year.  Of course, this is also a record-breaking fourth Nebula win for LeGuin.  Powers is the third entry in her YA Annals of the Western Shore trilogy, which is very much in the vein of her fantasy classic Earthsea.

Gavir is a slave in the city-state of Etra.  He and his sister were captured from the Marsh people, who are rumored to have special powers.  Gavir, for example, has an incredible memory, and can even, on rare occasions, remember the future.  As he narrates his childhood, he explains his unquestioning loyalty to his owners, who give him an education, but the abuses of the system are apparent from early on.  His sister is given to one of his master’s sons as a concubine, while another of the sons murders another slave without punishment.

Gavir eventually runs away, and we get a series of episodic adventures.  He joins a band of runaways, and, again, we begin to see the inequalities and sexual abuse within their social system. In the book’s most interesting section, Gavir returns to his people’s homelands in the Marshes. In Etra, we get the typical faux-medieval society, but in the Marshes, LeGuin gets to use her anthropological talents.  The Marsh people fish for subsistence and practice strict separation of the sexes.  LeGuin manages to make it seem fairly idyllic while also making it clear that it’s far from perfect and that Gavir does not belong.

A lot of the ethnographic details are nice, and LeGuin’s prose flows as nicely as ever. LeGuin never talks down to her YA audience; the proceedings are very dark and some of the material on gender is fairly subtle.  The novel eschews some of the expected dramatic resolutions.  We don’t get final confrontations between Gavir and many of his oppressors, or a touching reunion with his biological parents.  And, Gavir really uses his powers – the fact that he has a printed book makes more of a difference to the plot than the fact that he can occasionally see the future.  On one hand, I like that LeGuin avoids clichés.  On the other hand, the novel can feel a little aimless, and some of the early characters don’t have much point in the long-run.

I feel like I’m becoming a broken record with these Nebula winners.  Once again, this was a decent book that I enjoyed, but I don’t think it would’ve been my choice for the best novel of the year.  That said, LeGuin’s talents are still clear, and I can’t think of a writer more deserving of the record for most novel Nebulas.

Grade: B

2001 Locus SF – THE TELLING by Ursula K. LeGuin

LeGuin wrote many of the finest novels of the New Wave in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s – really, some of the finest sf novels, period.  She returned to her beloved fantasy series, Earthsea, in the early ‘90s with a novel that I found aimless and a clash with the original trilogy.  Now, in the ‘00s, she returns to her Hainish social sf, which included classics like The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, and…well, it works.

Like The Left Hand of Darkness, The Telling takes a delegate of the interstellar Ekumen from Earth and puts them into a society of aliens (though humanoid and distantly related).  Sutty was born in India and lived for a time in Vancouver, hiding from religious extremists who have taken the planet’s government.  As an agent of the Ekumen she takes the very long trip to Aka, a planet where a new pro-technology Corporation government is attempting to wipe out all vestiges of an ancient folk religion.  It’s quite a clash for Sutty, but she comes to see more parallels between theocratic Earth and the anti-religious extremists of Aka’s Corporation. Sutty settles in a secluded valley where many of the old religious traditions survive, including a powerful storytelling tradition, the titular Telling, led by paired priests called maz. 

The book debates issues of rationalism and modernism versus religion with plenty of nuance – just when I thought LeGuin’s portrayal of the folk religion was two idealistic, she does pull in a few twists about how it played out in other regions on Aka.  It is, perhaps, a tad too preachy, but I’ve seen worse.  LeGuin also throws in a little mysticism, but she keeps it ambiguous.  The real star, though, is the prose.  It’s always been LeGuin’s strongest suit, and here she uses a loose, succinct style that feels almost like a prose poem at times.  It’s grounded, but it also fits the folkoric world that most of the novel takes place in.  It’s a similar airy and laid-back style as Tehanu, but it played much better here.

While The Telling certainly doesn’t top her earlier books, it is a worthy entry in the Hainish saga and LeGuin’s catalog.  She has a few more wins coming towards the end of the decade, and I’m looking forward to them now.

Grade: B

1990 Nebula and 1991 Locus Fantasy – TEHANU by Ursula K Leguin

Between 1968 and 1972, Ursula K. LeGuin published her Earthsea trilogy. These novels (which I had not read before, so I read them in preparation for Tehanu) are among the great classics of the fantasy genre; I’d say Earthsea ranks just below Narnia and Middle-Earth in the fantasy pantheon, though it’s not as well known among the general public as those two series. The series follows a young boy named Ged on a world of islands and ancient magic as he learns the depths of his own power, becomes the arch-mage, and battles ancient evils. It’s influence has been dramatic – Riddlemaster feels very derivative of Earthsea, and Ged’s time in wizard school is very reminiscent of a more recent fantasy phenomenon.

The original trilogy suffers from a few of the fantasy tropes that I personally dislike, especially the stilted, myth-inspired prose that I’ve complained about in the past, but I think its reputation is well-deserved. Even when she’s using a voice that I don’t particularly care for, LeGuin is an amazing writer. She captures the wonder of dragons and ancient tombs, and she describes the workings of magic better than anyone before (and maybe since).

The trilogy feels fairly complete, as the final volume threatens the whole world of magic while exploring the relationship between life and death and effectively ends the arc of the main character. However, LeGuin decided to return to Earthsea in 1990 to explore the issue of gender in Tehanu. In the original trilogy she meant to subvert fantasy literature by making her central characters non-white. I’d say that this concern seems somewhat dated (I barely noticed), but, then again, the casting of the recent SyFy channel movie suggests that this is still an issue. So, race subverted, but the fact that the world of wizards is completely male went by without much notice. The second book of the trilogy does focus on a girl named Tenar, who becomes a priestess and has to overcome the restrictions of her religion and sex to help Ged, but LeGuin clearly felt there was more to be said.

So, in this book, we return to Tenar, decades after her previous appearance in The Tombs of Atuan. We check in on Ged’s old mentor, the now-dying Ogion, and we learn that there are actual restrictions on women’s use of magic. Eventually, Ged shows up, exhausted and powerless from his confrontation in the third book, and Ged and Tenar must work together to help an abused young girl named Therru and to avoid conflict with the sexist wizard Aspen.

The tone and language is completely different from the previous Earthsea novels, and reading all four books together really highlighted the clash. The first three books are epic quests, narrated as legendary tales. This novel is far more grounded, quiet, even pastoral, and it moves slowly, without much plot development. It’s interesting to step into this world and get a more intimate look at it, but it turned out there wasn’t much to see.

The book continually returns to the question of how women’s power differs from men, and comes up with the answer that women are more...earthy...and stuff. I found this trite and unsatisfying. With an entire world at her fingertips, I just expected LeGuin to do more than rehash old arguments and give us examples of victimization and repression that could have come from almost any era of real history.

I like the idea behind this novel: let’s look at why this great world she created seems to be implicitly sexist and use that to explore gender roles in a fantasy setting. I think the problem here is that LeGuin has set out to write a dogmatic novel rather than letting the questions arise organically. She forces the issue at every turn, and plot, character, and world-building all suffer as a result.

Grade: C-

1975 Hugo and Locus, 1974 Nebula Award – THE DISPOSSESED by Ursula K. LeGuin

Yet another Leguin, and yet another triple crown winning novel. As in The Left Hand of Darkness, LeGuin uses science fiction to explore themes and ideas about human culture. This time, her central question is about government, and specifically, the practicality of anarcho-synidcalism.

The Dispossessed takes place in the same universe as The Left Hand of Darkness. Humans throughout the galaxy descend from an ancient people called the Hainish. In the future, these people, including Earthlings, reconnect and form a large and peaceful coalition of human worlds. "Terrans" make a brief guest appearance near the end, but most of the action takes place on the world of Anarres and its habitable moon Urras. We learn that 160 years ago a wave of socialist revolution swept through Anarres inspired by a philosopher named Odo. Anarres eventually solved the problem by exiling the revolutionaries to the harsh moon Urras, where they formed a utopian society based around their anti-state and anti-property principles. The main character is a brilliant physicist from Urras named Shevek. In order to pursue and spread his research, Shevek becomes the first Urrastian to return to Anarres. The novel follows two alternating narrative paths. The first traces Shevek’s progress in the capitalist society of Annares. The second follows Shevek’s previous life on utopian Urras, from his childhood up to his decision to leave. Throughout, we get his thoughts on the two societies and their views on free expression, labor, class, art, gender, etc.

As always with LeGuin, The Dispossessed is amazingly well-written, and the characters are the richest, most complex, and most lifelike of anything I’ve read. The ideas and conflicts are fascinating. Still, I did not enjoy this novel as much as the previous two. There isn’t much plot to speak of, and utopias, even more than dystopias, can easily fall into preachiness. LeGuin mostly avoids the soapbox, but just barely. Urras may be a utopia, but she does add some complexity: it’s highly conformist and emotions like jealousy have not been completely eliminated. Even without property, people still envy Shevek’s talents as a physicist. In fact, this is the central plot of the Urras story, and it echoes a lot of the ideas about the sociology of science in Asimov’s The Gods Themselves (must’ve been in the air in the mid-70s).

Overall, it’s a really intriguing novel with rich characters, and it’s as good a utopia as I’ve read. But, utopias are hard to write, and this book did not hold me in as rapt attention as her previous novels.

Grade: B+

1972 Locus - THE LATHE OF HEAVEN by Ursula LeGuin

Ursula K. LeGuin won her first Locus award in 1972 with The Lathe of Heaven (the award began the year after The Left Hand of Darkness appeared). The Lathe of Heaven takes place in 2002, and begins on an over-populated and polluted Earth. Like Brunner, she correctly pegs the population in the first decade of the twenty-first century at about 7 billion, and like Brunner, she fails to predict the Green Revolution which, so far at least, has made that level of population sustainable. You could argue that she’s a bit more on the money with the constant war in the Middle East and the official first mention of global warming in these award-winners so far, though in both cases things are even worse in her 2002 than they were in the real 2002.

Really though, this is all background material. Most of the story takes place in Portland, Oregon and centers around one George Orr (a play on George Orwell?). George believes that his dreams can transform the entire world. For instance, if he dreams that a relative died in a car accident long ago, when he awakes said relative will be dead, and no one will realize that things have changed. George goes for help from a local sleep expert who quickly realizes the potential of such a power and begins to guide George’s dreams through the use of hypnotism.

(An odd sidenote: something I haven’t really mentioned before is the prominence of hypnotism in these books. Apparently, most people in the '50s, '60s and '70s thought that hypnotism was the wave of the future. I think most experts now would agree that hypnotism is of very limited utility for a variety of reasons.)

Anyway, the rest of the novel follows the massive changes in the world as the unethical hypnotherapist/sleep expert makes use of George’s powers. There are usually unintended consequences. When trying to correct a problem like overpopulation, the cure may be worse than the disease.

A plot description really doesn’t do the novel justice. It’s beautifully written (moreso even than The Left Hand of Darkness), it asks some really interesting and important philosophical questions, and has some very fascinating and richly drawn characters (George’s eventual love interest is one of the best characters I’ve encountered in these readings so far). This is a fascinating novel that more than transcends the rather odd (and maybe somewhat tired) central concept.

This is the first time that Hugo, Nebula and Locus have gone with three different winners. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, A Time of Changes, and A Lathe of Heaven were all from the class of ’71. I’d have a hard time deciding between the Silverberg and the Farmer, but I’d probably choose the Farmer. Luckily, Locus magaizine’s voters made the choice moot by selecting one of the best novels I’ve read. I am glad I added that third award.

Grade: A

1970 Hugo and 1969 Nebula - THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. Le Guin

After twenty-six different Hugo and Nebula winning awards over the course of seventeen years, we finally get a work by a female author. And, it is, well, rather different, which is appropriate considering that this novel is all about the role of sex and gender in society.

Ursula K. LeGuin is the daughter of a rather famous California anthropologist, Arthur Kroeber, and she brings a lot of social science into her science fiction (which, as a result, generally gets labeled “soft science fiction” in opposition to the “hard science fiction” that dwells on the physical sciences).

The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of Genly Ai, an envoy from the Ekumen (a benevolent federation made up of the various related human species descended from the ancient Hainish civilization – this includes Ai’s homeworld of Earth). Ai resides on the ice age planet Gethen (also known as Winter), as he tries to convince the planet’s hermaphroditic population to trade with Ekumen. He begins in a monarchy called Karhide, but palace intrigues drive him to a neighboring bureaucratic prison-state. These two nations share a lot of characteristics with the US and USSR, respectively, and there is a Cold War analogy at work here, though neither side comes off well. Ai narrates much of the novel, and the center of the novel is really his observations of gender in a society where people are sexless most of the time and can assume either partner's role at various times in their lives. We also get the insiders’ view, as an important politician and sometimes ally of Ai’s named Estrevan narrates other portions of the novel. And there are a handful of nicely-rendered folktales from Gethen recorded in the book that further illustrate the society’s workings.

It’s a rich text, and LeGuin’s prose is as good as anyone I’ve discussed so far (it most reminds me of Frank Herbert’s weighty, mythological style in Dune, but it's far less stilted). She creates several compelling societies within the framework of the frigid and sexually fluid Gethen, and we see a wide variety of sub-cultures, from courts to mystical oracles. I didn’t always agree with Ai’s characterization of gender on Earth, but LeGuin is writing from a male perspective in these observations, and they do change subtly over the course of the novel. In the end, the book poses more questions than it answers about how gender shapes individual identities and societies as a whole, which is probably for the best.

It takes some time for the plot to get rolling, but once it does, it’s page-turning stuff, and includes rich character development including an intriguing and moving relationship. This is a great novel that I highly recommend. We’re going to see a lot more of LeGuin over the next forty years of awards, and I’m very much looking forward to it now.

Grade: A