Science fiction’s great anthropologist, The Left Hand of Darkness, Earthsea, who used invented worlds to ask real questions about gender, power and how else we might live.
The scene I love: the 2014 National Book Awards. Neil Gaiman hands her the medal calling it one of the great honors of his life, and she uses her acceptance speech, ovaries of steel, to say that capitalism’s power seems inescapable today, “so did the divine right of kings”, and to tear into Amazon’s grip on publishing. Amazon was sponsoring the event. Puta ama.
An influence on Stef Silva; there’s a lovely documentary, Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, on Filmin.