cover image 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin

80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin

Edited by Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin, Aqueduct (www.aqueductpress.com), $19 trade paper (238p) ISBN 978-1-933500-43-0

Written as a birthday tribute to one of speculative fiction's most beloved forerunners, this slim volume honors Le Guin with accounts that detail how several friends and former students came to love her work. Evidence abounds of Le Guin's generous, inquiring, and feminist spirit, and her rare ability to show us "our own world, made strange and familiar." Readers who are not well-versed with the writer's bibliography may wonder what this seemingly specialized, celebratory selection could offer; rewardingly, Fowler and Notkin include poetry, short fiction, and essays that build a cumulative portrait extending beyond the basic facts of a life and, less overtly, examines the relationship between reading and writing, twining the pleasures of absorbing language with the act of learning the craft. For those who already admire Le Guin, this is an enchanting accompaniment to her work; for others, it presents a convincing introductory argument about science fiction as an imaginative, literary landscape. (Oct.)