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About 3 months ago, some exec from the Sci Fic Channel working on the "Earthsea" TV movie put out an invitation to SFWA members to "write something they could use in promoting the premiere. They are interested in a whole range of responses - from the quick blurb to a reasoned, literary essay on Le Guin's impact on the field."
I wrote something and sent it in, but I don't think they've done a thing with it, so I present it here for you. (Please forgive in advance the length of this post; someday I'll get real sophisticated and figure out how to make it appear on a new page, but the time is not yet.)
* * * * * * * *
Le Guin/Earthsea Tribute
by Ellen Kushner
For Ursula K. Le Guin, I betrayed my high school friends. All of them.
And I didn’t have that many to begin with. This was in the days before Dungeons & Dragons™ had imparted a modicum of Geek Cool to liking elves and dwarves and wizards. In those days, it was hardcore: fantasy was J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – The Trilogy, all 3 books of it. No skipping the index, either. We memorized the names of Gondor’s kings, and of course learned Elvish Tengwar script so we could pass indecipherable notes in class, and wore grey cloaks made out of bedsheets we dyed in my mom’s basement.
I loved the Tolkien, certainly, all three fat volumes of it. But then, one day, a friend gave me a book her mom had brought home from the library, written by her old college friend, “Ussy Kroeber.” It was called A Wizard of Earthsea.
I read it once. I read it twice. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. This was better than The Lord of the Rings!!!
It was about this kid, see, who lived in a world of magic, but he was kind of difficult. He didn’t always get along with people, and people didn’t always like him. He made bad choices, and he lived with them.
And Earthsea’s magic . . . it was all about words, about language, about speaking, about art. You could memorize lists and spells, but in the end, you were born with power, and you had to learn to use it wisely.
Oh, how I longed to walk the forests of Gont! I longed for them instantly, far more than I had ever for even the most glorious vistas of Middle Earth.
The problem was – what to tell my friends? How could I say to them – “Hey, I found something better than Tolkien!”?
I kept my mouth shut . . . for awhile. I read everything Le Guin wrote – and I wrote stuff of my own. Oh, I’d been cranking out magical adventures for (and about) my friends and me since I was 12. But the Earthsea stuff was secret, was mine. It was about a girl who lived in a small house in the woods with a wizard who she wanted for a teacher . . . . It was intimate, and it was personal. I never finished it – but it set me off in a whole new direction as a writer. I’ve never looked back.
Sir Walter Scott, the superstar novelist of the 19th century who based his work on history and folklore, once wrote that he wrote in “the big bow-wow strain” and wished he could write with “the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting. . . . “ like Jane Austen. If Tolkien was the Walter Scott of fantasy, then Le Guin was its Jane Austen. The Earthsea novels of Ursula K. Le Guin taught me that great fantasy doesn’t have to be set on sweeping panoramas of lofty towers and heroic battles. Great fantasy can be domestic. It can be about the human struggle to distinguish right from wrong, balance from imbalance, even when it’s within ourselves. It can be about who gets the last hot cake, and whose pride is injured, and the need for solitude, and the need for friendship. Le Guin’s dragons are all the more grand for living in that world of ordinary things – and my breath still catches when I read of their flight over the sea at dawn. Great fantasy also lets us smell the wind from the fields of Otherwhere, and revel in the fact that it is full of mysteries for us to love.
I loved those books so much, that for years I wanted to grow up to be Ursula K. Le Guin. But something strange happened. All that time I spent with her, alone together on the isle of Roke, the courts of Havnor, or out on a boat on the open sea . . . she taught me to listen to the voice in myself; to heed my own shadow, and draw its lineaments on the page before me, until I could see it perfectly, and name it with words and words and words that would tell its story in many different guises.
Thank you, Ursula. I still love you best.
* * *
Ellen Kushner is the author of the “mannerpunk” cult novel Swordspoint, the World Fantasy Award-winning Thomas the Rhymer, and (with Delia Sherman) The Fall of the Kings. She is also the host and writer of the weekly public radio series PRI’s Sound & Spirit with Ellen Kushner (http://wgbh.org/spirit), an exploration of the myth and music, ideas & beliefs that make up the human experience around the world & through the ages, hailed by Bill Moyers as “the best thing on public radio!”
You can hear her one-hour program on the music of The Lord of Rings at: http://www.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/pri/spirit/alphabetical.html#059
I wrote something and sent it in, but I don't think they've done a thing with it, so I present it here for you. (Please forgive in advance the length of this post; someday I'll get real sophisticated and figure out how to make it appear on a new page, but the time is not yet.)
* * * * * * * *
Le Guin/Earthsea Tribute
by Ellen Kushner
For Ursula K. Le Guin, I betrayed my high school friends. All of them.
And I didn’t have that many to begin with. This was in the days before Dungeons & Dragons™ had imparted a modicum of Geek Cool to liking elves and dwarves and wizards. In those days, it was hardcore: fantasy was J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – The Trilogy, all 3 books of it. No skipping the index, either. We memorized the names of Gondor’s kings, and of course learned Elvish Tengwar script so we could pass indecipherable notes in class, and wore grey cloaks made out of bedsheets we dyed in my mom’s basement.
I loved the Tolkien, certainly, all three fat volumes of it. But then, one day, a friend gave me a book her mom had brought home from the library, written by her old college friend, “Ussy Kroeber.” It was called A Wizard of Earthsea.
I read it once. I read it twice. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me. This was better than The Lord of the Rings!!!
It was about this kid, see, who lived in a world of magic, but he was kind of difficult. He didn’t always get along with people, and people didn’t always like him. He made bad choices, and he lived with them.
And Earthsea’s magic . . . it was all about words, about language, about speaking, about art. You could memorize lists and spells, but in the end, you were born with power, and you had to learn to use it wisely.
Oh, how I longed to walk the forests of Gont! I longed for them instantly, far more than I had ever for even the most glorious vistas of Middle Earth.
The problem was – what to tell my friends? How could I say to them – “Hey, I found something better than Tolkien!”?
I kept my mouth shut . . . for awhile. I read everything Le Guin wrote – and I wrote stuff of my own. Oh, I’d been cranking out magical adventures for (and about) my friends and me since I was 12. But the Earthsea stuff was secret, was mine. It was about a girl who lived in a small house in the woods with a wizard who she wanted for a teacher . . . . It was intimate, and it was personal. I never finished it – but it set me off in a whole new direction as a writer. I’ve never looked back.
Sir Walter Scott, the superstar novelist of the 19th century who based his work on history and folklore, once wrote that he wrote in “the big bow-wow strain” and wished he could write with “the exquisite touch, which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting. . . . “ like Jane Austen. If Tolkien was the Walter Scott of fantasy, then Le Guin was its Jane Austen. The Earthsea novels of Ursula K. Le Guin taught me that great fantasy doesn’t have to be set on sweeping panoramas of lofty towers and heroic battles. Great fantasy can be domestic. It can be about the human struggle to distinguish right from wrong, balance from imbalance, even when it’s within ourselves. It can be about who gets the last hot cake, and whose pride is injured, and the need for solitude, and the need for friendship. Le Guin’s dragons are all the more grand for living in that world of ordinary things – and my breath still catches when I read of their flight over the sea at dawn. Great fantasy also lets us smell the wind from the fields of Otherwhere, and revel in the fact that it is full of mysteries for us to love.
I loved those books so much, that for years I wanted to grow up to be Ursula K. Le Guin. But something strange happened. All that time I spent with her, alone together on the isle of Roke, the courts of Havnor, or out on a boat on the open sea . . . she taught me to listen to the voice in myself; to heed my own shadow, and draw its lineaments on the page before me, until I could see it perfectly, and name it with words and words and words that would tell its story in many different guises.
Thank you, Ursula. I still love you best.
* * *
Ellen Kushner is the author of the “mannerpunk” cult novel Swordspoint, the World Fantasy Award-winning Thomas the Rhymer, and (with Delia Sherman) The Fall of the Kings. She is also the host and writer of the weekly public radio series PRI’s Sound & Spirit with Ellen Kushner (http://wgbh.org/spirit), an exploration of the myth and music, ideas & beliefs that make up the human experience around the world & through the ages, hailed by Bill Moyers as “the best thing on public radio!”
You can hear her one-hour program on the music of The Lord of Rings at: http://www.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/pri/spirit/alphabetical.html#059