Ursula K. Le Guin: Language of the Night is a new annotated edition of Le Guin's essays on writing, science fiction and fantasy, with an introduction by David Mitchell.
About This Book
Le Guin wrote across genres for her whole life, and these essays are where she argued most directly for the seriousness of the fantastic. Ranging across genre, imagination and the ethics of the writer's work, the collection follows her emergence as one of the most influential literary voices of her time and makes the case that imagination is not escape but a means of seeing—and changing—the world. This Silver Press edition sets the essays alongside a foreword by her son Theo Downes-Le Guin and annotations by Downes-Le Guin and So Mayer, giving new readers the context behind each piece.
Key Features
- Le Guin's essays on writing, science fiction and fantasy gathered in one volume
- Introduction by novelist David Mitchell
- Foreword by Theo Downes-Le Guin, with annotations by Theo Downes-Le Guin and So Mayer
- A companion to Silver Press's Space Crone, Steering the Craft and The Word for World
What You'll Discover
- Why Le Guin treated science fiction and fantasy as fully literary forms
- Her argument for the imagination as an instrument of freedom
- How she understood the ethical responsibilities of the writer
- The thinking behind the worlds she built in her fiction
About the Author
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American writer of novels, short stories, poetry and essays, best known for the Earthsea books, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. Her work moved freely between genres and remains central to debates about gender, ecology and the uses of the imagination.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Dimensions:
- Pages:
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781068240959
- Publisher: Silver Press
Perfect For: Writers, readers of speculative fiction, and anyone interested in how imagination shapes the way we design and inhabit the world.