Talk:Ursula K. Le Guin/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: I'll take this on. Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 19:42, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: I think I've got all your comments; would you have a look? Vanamonde (Talk) 05:14, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

I think it's splendid. I do have a late suggestion (sorry) - I like the mention of Heinlein and it occurred to me that the Foreword to Birthday of the World and Other Stories contained her own view of what her fiction was: "In .. A Fisherman of the Inland Sea I invented some social rules for the people of the world called O ... In this sense, you could say that 'Unchosen Love' and 'Mountain Ways' are comedies of manners, odd as that may sound to those who think science fiction is written ray-gun in hand. The society of O is different than ours here now, but not very much more different than that of Jane Austen's England; perhaps less different than that of The Tale of Genji." I think the 'ray-gun in hand' is exactly what her science fiction isn't. And by the way, the next paragraph mentions "Atomic Holocaust and the End of the World as We Know It and mutants in the glowing ruins of Peoria.", so the cold war is a mentionable influence also. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:44, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: I've added a quote which I think gets at that issue. About the second; I'm a bit hesitant to mention the cold war more generally, but that conflict is definitely touched on in the themes section where I mention the Vietnam War and its impact on The Word for World is Forest. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:08, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

I think it a fine quote, that gets at yet another issue. I suppose the ray-gun thing is at least obliquely covered but I'd have thought a direct mention would do the job better. However, we have covered "the main points" as required. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:40, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Comments

It's a pleasure to see such a well-constructed article.

Cheers, Chiswick Chap. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:44, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

• "best novel". Maybe say "science fiction novel"?

  Well, the awards are "[] award for best novel". I've expanded the link to make that clear.

• "Philosophical Taoism had a large role in Le Guin's world view," - it did, so why is it not mentioned in the life section? Would we not expect to be told how she came across it, and at what age, and what effect it had on her personal life (as opposed to writing)?

  That's an excellent point; unfortunately, I have no good answer. The influence of Taoism on Le Guin is discussed very widely, but there's no detail beyond her writing, except 1) she acknowledged said influence, 2) it impacted her writing, and 3) she translated the Tao Te Ching. So, depending on your response, I could add a sentence to "Life"; but there isn't much material there.

  Well, translating the Tao Te Ching would be well worth mentioning in her life, along the lines that she was sufficiently committed to Taoism that ...

  Okay, added.

  Excellent. The jackrabbit quote works well, as does the whole paragraph actually.

• In the Themes section you might like to consider linking Biology in fiction which discusses her. You could mention the 'biological parable' concept discussed there, or just add a 'further' link. I declare an interest!

  So linked.

• Equilibrium, an important theme in its own right, and a key component of Taoism, is linked to Taoism only in the lead section (?!) and then only mentioned in 'Critical attention'. Shomeshing wrong here, as Sean Connery would have said. It needs some development and a couple of examples from her books (both Earthsea and outside that, I'd suggest).

  Good point, and something I should have caught. I'll work on this, but I have to go back to the sources and I'm busy for the next many hours.

  Added some material about Earthsea and equilibrium. Outside that series, scholars tend to focus on slightly different concepts, such as the reconciliation of opposites/light and dark, which I've mentioned in connection with TLHoD.

  Thanks, that works well for me.

Minor details

• " more than twenty novels and more than a hundred short stories" - perhaps vary this with "over a hundred...".

  Done.

• "and she also explored" - no need for the "also".

  Done.

• Hugo and Nebula are overlinked in lead.

  I don't think they are; the first links are to the specific awards (best novel), the second to the sets (

• "Le Guin met historian Charles Le Guin." This comes across as a tangle. We could avoid it just by saying "She..", or logically by saying "Kroeber". When she met him she certainly didn't have his surname, but worse, it just sounds weird.

  I've gone with "Ursula"; "she" would sound strange at the beginning of a subsection to me.

• What's a commencement address?

  That would be a Commencement speech; I'd forgotten it was Americanese. I've linked it.

• " speeches by Margaret Atwood, Molly Gloss, and Walidah Imarisha" - perhaps "by the writers ...".

  Done.

• "A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness were described by critic Harold Bloom as Le Guin's masterpieces.[4] The novel ..." Well I guess you mean TLHoD but they're both novels...

  Yep, fixed.

• " Her 1974 novel The Dispossessed, also won " - something wrong with the punctuation. Suggest "...The Dispossessed again won"

  Changed.

• " making her the first person to win both for the same two books." Do you mean "for the same book"? Couldn't parse the sentence.

  It's that she was the first to win the Hugo+Nebula combination for two books. I've tweaked it, let me know if something further is required.

• George Slusser needs a gloss ("scholar and critic"...).

  Done.

• I think slavery should be linked somewhere.

  Added

• Please link speculative fiction.

  Done.

• "Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley". A bit clunky. "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" might be better, and it probably needs a date, too.

  Added.

• "Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell," doesn't quite work. Mitchell was shortlisted, indeed, but probably best just to add him to the "as well as" list, though I'm not sure that phrase will work if there's only one name before it.

  Yes. Adjusted.

• Kenneth Morris is a dab page.

  Fixed.

• Do we have to have that portal bar before the citations? Maybe it could go atop External links. It feels like the final fence before the river Styx to me.

  Honestly I kind of like it; both as a visual separator between prose and all our additional stuff, and because I prefer to separate within-Wikipedia links from external stuff.

• I've added a couple authorlinks; I think a bit more would be useful, not least in Sources as it makes looking people up a whole lot easier.

  A number of the scholars in this article don't have their own articles. I'll look into what else I can link.

That's about it from me as I'm happy with prose, structure, images, and sources. As always I'd love a few more images but am well aware of the difficulty of finding such.