Ursula K. Le Guin Biography and More

Saturday, August 17, 2019 at 3:08pm

I remembered at the end of last weekend that the Ursula K. Le Guin biography Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin is available to view freely on PBS until the end of this month.

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of my three favorite SF authors, the others being China Miéville and Stanisław Lem. The documentary is extraordinarily well done. I particularly enjoy the animated watercolor painting style used to depict scenes from her most famous works. The style reminded me of the film Loving Vincent. It was interesting to hear, in the author's own words, a retrospective on her life and the major influences of her novels.

In other news, my husband brought it to my attention that Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, which is based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, is now available on Criterion. I know what I'll be watching tonight.

And yet more exciting news—I finished a short story this morning! Not only is it a short story I like and want to actually show to people, but it also breaks my long streak of not writing short stories. The last truly short story I completed was "Rite of Courage," which I wrapped up this past January as my final addition to The Shipwright and Other Stories.

The story I wrote this morning is called "Hear Ye, Hear Ye!" and it's about two thousands words long (translated to non-writer, that's about four or five printed pages). I've decided to shop this one around a bit, so I'll write more about it at late date. What I will say is that humor is its primary mode and that it was enormously fun to write.