Literally my favorite SF/fantasy author... very sad to see her go, but she did leave us a lot of good books to read. Can't thank her enough for that.
Why that's probably my favorite book :P.

I never managed to get more than half-way through it too. Maybe I should give it a third attempt if you were serious about it being your favourite. Then I really hope there will be something else than nightmares in it as I am not fond of horror.

Well, she led a long, interesting and fulfilling life and left a legacy that will last for years and years to come. May she rest in peace. Neither the time, nor the place to try to push your agenda - in any form.
Not sure whether you'll understand it, but please, at least have some respect for the passed writer's memory.

I'm not trying to push an agenda with that post; I just thought that this might be an interesting read for fans of the author in question (it was written by her, and appears to have been the afterword of some edition of one of her works).

Why can't people have a mature discussion about these sort of things, anyway?

We can. But not here. And not now.

Because people here are sick of you bringing gender crap into every second discussion.

Because this thread isn't "about these sort of things". Make a thread called "Gender discussion" and keep your gender topics in this thread.

On the gog forums you can expect to meet a specific subset of her fans who won't be pleased to be informed or reminded of such interests or positions of hers. You are basically soiling her memory, or the thread, by sharing this article. Now, if she had written about DRM-free gaming or the idea number of hitpoints on ad&d magic swords, or some locally consensual stuff, that would be super interesting and super welcome and ooh what a cool person she is did you know she also wrote on this and on that. But this here is perceived as antagonizing within the gog "community". It's like a flaw, the opposite of the stuff they wish to remember of her right now.

Basically, part of her is unwelcome here, and displaying it is "disrespectful". Welcome to gog.

It's the part that wrote the books, by the way. :|

I understand wanting to keep this thread quiet and contemplative. But I do think that we'd honor Ursula best by acknowledging her realm of philosophy, the things that were in fact dear to her. I would have loved to link to her "Constructing the Golem" article, but won't, out of respect for you. I'm pretty sure I'm not doing her a service though. Her morals and her ideas were what infused her work. Shoving those who visibly appreciate, connect and link to her writing through the same airlock as the ones who literally characterize it as degenerated art, I have a hard time accepting that.

It's been quite a few years since I've read "The Dispossessed" at the university. "Utopian and Dystopian literature" the course; I made a presentation about it that I don't remember one bit, and I think I even went on to choose the book for my final oral exam. I'm pretty sure they didn't ask one question about it though. It's difficult for a living author to make it into the literary canon, and particularly a sci-fi writer. She did. Deservedly so. Held her ground among Thomas Moore and George Orwell in this course, delivered so much more credible work than Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

There's an article of hers in Jeff VanderMeer's fiction writing instruction book ("Wonderbook"), and I think I never read it; I'll start with that tonight.

Yeah, I was serious alright ;).

They may seem like nightmares but looking back on things, when you finish the book, you can't help but thinking how it makes a point that changing some things you perceive to be problematic can lead to a host of other problems - or you can interpret it as "whenever you gain something, something else inevitably gets taken away, and rarely in equal amounts".

That's one of the things I love about that book - it makes you consider that some things, bad things, are there for a reason, perhaps replacing even worse things or compromises we couldn't live with.

It's not a "happy" or "sane" book in the classic sense, I agree, but not necessarily a "nightmarish" one either. To me it hits the nail on the head on a number of real-life issues.

RIP. I haven't read anything by her since the 90's, but she was the author that got me to branch out from the comfort of horror novels as a kid.

Probably my favorite as well, of the LeGuin that I've read.

While the article is an interesting read (and thank you dtgreene for pointing that out), I doubt it has anything to do with what you've postulated. Rather, dtgreene has been, in the past, somewhat... tenacious in steering threads into gender discussions and I think this has prompted people to downvote the post. It's somewhat of a 'kid that cried wolf' syndrome, where it gets to be tiring, and I think that's what this reaction is all about.

Perhaps because you seem to only have three focuses (in no particular order):
A) Gender
B) Cheats/Hacks/Seeing whether/how things can be manipulated or broken
C) Being correct

And so this post feels like just another instance of focus (A), with UKL's death only being an excuse to revisit the topic.

Quality.

I love Stephen King, but he writes a lot. He has way more that 20 novels to his name, and while I adore the great ones, there is a lot of crap in there. :P I don't think anyone ever accused Miss Le Guin of ever "phoning something in", no offense to Mr King.

If you've read the piece dtgreene referenced than you would know that it was not. She wrote her book without thinking about feminist agenda and probably that's why this book was good.
That's the question you should answer yourself. Because it's those who push social justice agenda can't stand any criticism.
P.S. Oh, and I'm sure that anyone would be happy to read what thought about gender and race such reknowned writers as Lovecraft, H.G. Wells and Frederich Nizche.

Wow, all these people here claiming to be fans of Ursula but are somehow insulted by being linked to her work - "not now, let us all just feel sad about her not making any more books without actually having to remember her as a person". Having followed Ursula's career for a very, very long time (not just reading her fiction), I have little doubt that she would have been very happy to see her work linked here and probably unsurprised from the reaction of many so-called fans. Any fan would have to know her political leanings.

The afterward isn't even controversial, its just a discussion of how English pronouns weren't suitable for LHoD.

It reeks of "stick to basketball".

Ursula Le Guin was not just a great writer, she was also a feminist (although was not always one), a leftist, racism obviously was very important to her - remember her response to the Legend of Earthsea miniseries :). I would suggest that any acknowledgement of her legacy, whilst ignoring her feminist views, or her views on race, and how they were incorporated into her work is no proper acknowledgement. For those interested, here is a short interview with the wonderful woman herself:

http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/pschmid1/engl5H/leguin.interv.html

RIP

p.s. If you disagree, feel free to down vote me, I would consider it honouring Ursula Le Guin's memory.