Ursula K. Le Guin Has Died At Age 88

[Iron Woode]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/23/us/ursula-le-guin-obit/index.html

(CNN)Fantasy novelist Ursula K. Le Guin died Monday afternoon in her Portland, Oregon, home, her son Theo Downes-Le Guin said. She was 88.

"It was unexpected at that moment," Downes-Le Guin said. "Her health had not been great."
The acclaimed author penned everything from short stories to children's books, but was best known for her work in the science fiction and fantasy realm.
She won numerous Hugo awards, science fiction's most prestigious honor, for titles including "The Left Hand of Darkness," "The Dispossessed," and "The Word for World is Forest."
She had lived in Portland for almost 60 years and had lived in the same house for the past 36 years.
Downes-Le Guin described growing up with a mother with such a rich imagination. "She was an extraordinary conversationalist," he said. "There was never a wasted conversation."
Last year, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published a book of her essays titled "No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters."
She had also written books on poetry and writing that are still unpublished, Downs-Le Guin said.

Neil Gaiman, a seven-time Hugo winner, remembered Le Guin for her wit and brains.
"Her words are always with us. Some of them are written on my soul," he wrote. "I miss her as a glorious funny prickly person, & I miss her as the deepest and smartest of the writers, too."
Writer Shannon Hale lamented Le Guin's death.
"She is a master storytell(er). She is fierce and frighteningly smart and does not tolerate fools. Her EARTHSEA books are a revelation," Hale tweeted.
"Look at the top tier of writers in science fiction and fantasy today ... and you see the unmistakable traces of Le Guin in their work," author John Scalzi wrote in the Los Angeles Times. "Multiple generations of her spiritual children, making the genre more humane and expansive, and better than it would have been without her."
Le Guin was born Ursula Kroeber in Berkeley, California. Her mother was a writer and anthropologist and her father was an anthropologist. She went to Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and received a Masters from Columbia University in New York.
In 1953 she married Charles Le Guin, a historian.
Her website says she wrote 20 novels, six collections of poetry and many short stories.
CNN's Dave Alsup contributed to this report.

 

[IronWing]

She knew how to write. RIP.

 

[VirtualLarry]

While I can't say offhand that I'm intimately familiar with her work, she sounds like a really amazing and prolific writer. R.I.P.

 

[FerrelGeek]

Her Earth Sea trilogy was quite good. RIP.

 

[Thebobo]

Bummer

 

[Tormac]

I loved her books growing up. She will be missed.

 

[Captante]

Classic master of sci-fi writing ... RIP

 

[TeeJay1952]

One of many books that I read where I was at all times aware that the author was much smarter than me. (Left Hand, the Dispossessed.)

 

[zinfamous]

Classic master of sci-fi writing ... RIP

man, I hope you never had the misfortune of telling her that in person! (she famously hated the label of sci fi writer).

Loved her Earthsea books. RIP.

 

[Captante]

man, I hope you never had the misfortune of telling her that in person! (she famously hated the label of sci fi writer).

Loved her Earthsea books. RIP.

Sadly never met her

 

[thebestMAX]

One of the earliest authors of the genre that I remember reading. I was too young at the time to understand them fully but I kept reading.