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similar yes, but I stopped with the the first book.

I agree. That's the only book I've ever stopped reading without finishing.

It's a distinct style of humor that I quite enjoy, but I definitely see how it can be unappealing to others

I agree. As I recall, my opinion at the time I read Hitchhiker’s… was that he writes a lot of non-sequiturs, and it just didn’t make me laugh. I think I felt like he was trying too hard to be random or unpredictable. I could be totally wrong about it and doubtless there will be Adams fans who disagree, but that was just my take on it.

I listened to The Dispossessed in a single sitting I was so enthralled by it. Cannot recommend that book enough

> I swear Reddit thinks everyone other than King and Rowling is unknown.

While Guin is one of the great scifi authors, scifi is often considered a niche genre and she is an older author. Finding Guin in a modern bookstore can be a challenge.

Even finding the scifi section of any big box bookstore can be a challenge. It’s certainly the smallest section in Barnes and Noble, and has to share with high fantasy….which in turn is being overtaken by D&D and other table top gaming supplies.

I pretty much exclusively read spec fiction and nonfiction. Regular fiction and mysteries bore me to tears. There’s nothing there to titillate the mind and make me think and re-think new concepts.

I cut my teeth on Dune and Ceasar’s Column. As I matured, my tastes transitioned to The Sheep Look Up and The Culture series. In my teens, I had an entire 2 year stint where I exclusively read nuclear apocalypse fiction (Level 7 is by far my favorite in that category full of standouts). Right now, I’m taking a palate cleaner by reading Mark Kurlansky. I just finished Salt; A World History and will be moving onto The Last Fish Tale.

After that, it’s back into Scifi with Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey. I read the Ancillary series and An Empire Called Memory duology not too long ago. Based on them, I’m thinking about digging into language-oriented scifi, if that’s even a sub genre.

I’m 30f and my wife is the polar opposite. She is exclusively chick lit and Christmas lit. She loves having the post-read discussions, though, as I talk through whatever new and interesting concept from my latest read. We had a great talk about languages without gendered pronouns not too long ago.

I’ll gladly send some recommendations your way.

Omg last time I showed sympathy for this book on this sub I was called a pervert and downvoted to hell. Btw, are you familiar with The Decameron?

You've got a few options!

...if you'd like to check out a novel, The Left Hand of Darkness was my first, and what got me hooked, personally. I followed that with The Lathe of Heaven.

...if you'd like to check out some of her short stories, which are stellar, I'd suggest The Unreal and the Real, a big collection.

...if you'd like to check out an essay of hers you can read in a few minutes, enjoy! https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/IntroducingMyself.html

...and if you liked that essay, two of my favorite collections of hers are No Time to Spare and Words are My Matter.

I'm a big reader .... but never read le Guin..... where to start?

My only exposure to this book was the mentions in the movie "High Fidelity." I keep meaning to check it out.

One of my favorite short stories of all time is "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" by Gabriel García Márquez.

I'm confused by the analogy to Eve eating the apple and pandora's box.

Pandora's story is pretty murky in a lot of retellings, but while someone may have told her not to open the box, it is pretty clear that she didn't know what the consequences of opening the box would be. Hell contemporary classicists aren't super clear on what the consequences of opening the box were supposed to be.

Eve is more cut and dry in that she's forbidden from eating the fruit and is deceived into doing so anyway, but again, while there is a fair amount of hubris in making the choice, the main way in which she lacks freedom in doing so is that she isn't clear on the consequences of making it.

I'm not really sure what you mean by 'agency' either. Traditionally there are two types of freedom, freedom from obstacles and freedom from need. Some scholars extend freedom from need to include 'self mastery' ie being able to control your needs and not have dependence on something others can do without.

It is pretty clear that the people from Omelas have both freedom from constraint and freedom from need, the aside about drooz also demonstrates that self-mastery is fairly ubiquitous in their society although perhaps not universal.

To use your analogy, I would say that if I have been told by some external actor that if I scratch my nose they will kill my loved one, that would impact my freedom from obstacles, a foreign actor is constraining my choices to their own ends, and framing it as forbidden or 'if you do x, y will happen' is just a semantic distinction.

If on the other hand, by some inherent quirk of my and a loved ones physiology, scratching my nose is intrinsically linked to stopping that loved ones heart, that is not a constraint on my freedom any more than not having wings is a constraint on my freedom.

The suffering of the child is foundational and intrinsic to everything that makes Omelas good. And no one is deceived about the nature of the choice to leave the child to suffer. I would say its a pretty freely made choice.

I really enjoyed the book too. The contrasting depictions of love really reaches for something deep in the human heart. It also masterfully illustrates how love operates as a Platonic ideal, where our actions and circumstances must fall short of our desires.

GGM said that the biggest inspiration for the book was his own parents's marriage.

That was one of my favorite episodes in Strange New Worlds. I think it was maybe the one episode that was trying to stretch beyond the sort of usual Star Trek plots. As good as season 1 was I'm crossing my fingers that in season 2 they take a few more risks in the stories they tell and maybe end up with one or two new classic episodes.

We were talking about agency though, and so like with Pandora’s box or the Apple in Eden they are told not to do it. If I’m not allowed to scratch my nose because if I do a loved one of mine will die, then I’m only really free to scratch my nose in theory. I’m free, but my agency is severely limited.

I like the heaven and hell thing you've brought up, it reminds me of the parable of the long spoons, generally I feel like heaven and hell allegories are compelling when they hold a mirror up to the person in them and unsatisfying when they involve externally directed punishment or torture. The most narratively satisfying hells are the ones where you can leave at any time if you simply accept the goodness in the world and god's love, but some people are too broken to do so.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'they can't free or help the child' the child is not particularly guarded, the door to its cell is locked but that's about it, we aren't told who has the key but it seems like many people have access to the cell, hell the cell may only be locked from the inside for all the narrator tells us. No one is externally prevented from freeing the child. No one is even told not to free the child, they are simply told that their way of life cannot exist without the child's suffering.

Actions have consequences, that isn't a constraint on freedom, its simply a fact about the world. If I jump off a tall building, is it a constraint on my freedom that I will fall to my death rather than flying?

Her Earthsea Quartet is my first series in venturing into the Fantasy genre!
I love and missed her!

I read it in a college ethics class and really liked it!

I don’t see how anyone can treat that with any weight either, because you already have to assume people will have no conflicting desires. How will you solve a love triangle with 3 monogamous individuals? What if two people disagree on something being right or wrong?
Scarcity is hardly the only cause for suffering, and that’s the only part that can be solved in a compelling way. That’s what makes it feel like tripe, the biggest obstacle to utopia being ignored and being told ‘don’t worry about it’.
At least a miserable child is a veneer to place over the gaping hole in logic, and people wonder why that makes it more believable? Because it’s at least some semblance of an answer in this made up fantasy world(that also only follows the author’s views and does not reflect reality at all)

Set in a civilization actually made for humans

In an interview in the Paris Review, NK Jamison said:

“With Le Guin’s story, at the end of it, she’s suggesting that the only way to create a society that is a better place is to walk away from this one or to go off the grid. That’s not really what she’s saying, specifically, but that’s what a lot of people have concluded. But no, you’ve got to fix it, especially when there’s nowhere to walk away to. You go anywhere else in our current world and you’re either being completely exploited by capitalism or somewhat exploited by capitalism. So, I mean, it’s just a question of what kind of suffering you want to put yourself through.”

That comment (and others from the interview) demonstrate that Jemisin does get the original questions and points Leguin is trying to make with Omelas. It’s pretty easy to draw the line from Le Guin’s critique of our cultural mindset in Omelas (there’s that paragraph or two where she says the people are happy but she invents the suffering child because to us, we are unable to believe any society could be happy without at least someone suffering) to Jemisin’s argument that such a world with no widespread human-caused suffering or pain is something we have to fight to create and maintain. The title is in conversation with and exploring the meaning of “walking away.” I think Le Guin would agree considering she called Odo, the anti-capitalist revolutionary and founding member of the Anarchist society from The Dispossessed, “one who walked away from Omelas.” I can’t remember which essay she mentioned that in.

man, i started reading Ursula K Lee Guin when i was 14 or 15, to this day i can't think of an author who has changed more the way i perceive the world than her

SAME 💜