I like the idea of Ursula K. Le Guin more than I like her writing. These essays are all very well written but I found them dated in style and content. This is my failing, not hers.

Every time I read anything by this brilliant author I have to make sure it's really her, because she's so brilliant that she can portray such wildly different people and situations. After reading these essays, she's even more intriguing. I love how she addresses the people who get her wrong, and how deeply she considers her own output. She was just amazing. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

Unsurprisingly, LeGuin has eternally relevant observations about genre and writing, and I'm genuinely glad that they went out of their way to recollect all the individual nonfiction writings into this one collection. Plus, fantastic intro from Ken Liu.

Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the major voices in science fiction and fantasy spaces and in this collection of essays one can see her deep thinking around the genre and writing in general. What I found most intriguing about this collection is Le Guin’s respect for the genre of fantasy and her insistence on holding the genre to a high standard. As with her novels, her writing in these essays flows well and is well done. The collection also includes some introductions Le Guin had written for her books. One thing to note when reading these books is Le Guin’s use of the term autistic in a negative way which in comparison to the care with which she takes with language and thinking of others was surprising. That said, in researching the time period in which the essays were written I found that the term autistic was used in a different way than it is presently. Thus, this did not take away from Le Guin’s greater messages and writing, but I think it is something that is helpful to be aware of prior to reading these essays. Overall, I found these essays to be well written and that this book gave me a further understanding of Le Guin and her works.

Le Guin's commentary on writing fantasy and science fiction are as relavent today as they were 50 years ago, if not more so. The trend of writing what will sell vs writing what's true is something that is becoming more and more prominent in publishing. Especially in light of readers demanding more representation. Originally I believe the hope was that pushing for representation to create space for authors of different backgrounds thus broadening the scope, we are instead seeing more integration into already established authors works. And while this does have some merit and may seems like a good thing on the surface I've noticed it's created new issues. Namely A) the scope of representation is still widely unbalanced and most pushes for balance are largely ignored. B) the integrations into current works are contrived and shallow. What Le Guin addresses at the heart of the this book is to be true to yourself as an author. To be authentic lyrics you. I can't think of a more important message for authors, and readers in today's world.

i know this is a reprint, but the best part about this one is that it includes added notes from a le guin who is reflecting on her past essays.

many thanks to scribner and netgalley for the advance readers copy.

Such a phenomenal collection of essays! In his introduction, Ken Liu argues that Ursula K. Le Guin's critical work is more relevant than ever, and I absolutely agree. With essays that offer practical writing advice, cultural analysis, self-reflection, and urgently needed criticisms of the publishing industry, there's something for everyone here. Speaking as a huge Le Guin nerd whose favorite book is The Left Hand of Darkness, I loved reading her essay "Is Gender Necessary? Redux". It gives the reader the chance to see how a writer's opinions on their own work can evolve over time, and I personally found that to be a really rewarding experience.
Le Guin's prose is — as always — funny, sharp, incisive, and inspiring. I would recommend this book not only to Le Guin fans, but also to fans of sci-fi and fantasy in general. It's always a pleasure to spend time with Le Guin's writing — I find I always come away from the experience with a renewed passion for literature as a whole.
Many thanks to Scribner and NetGally for providing me with this ARC!

Confession: I've never actually read any of Ursula K. Le Guin's books, but I always enjoy reading about writers and their craft, so I decided to pick this one up. I think maybe if I was more familiar with her work, this would've been a 5 star read. Since I'm not, however, I feel there were a lot of references I missed that could've added to my understanding and enjoyment of the book. This was also a lot more academic, for lack of a better term, than I expected, so I definitely had to be in the right headspace when I was reading it. Overall, I think this would be an interesting read for anyone interested in the worlds of fantasy and science fiction.

Wonderful collection. I think it can be safely said that Ursula K. Le Guin's writing is simply enjoyable and thought provoking whether you're reading her non fiction or fiction. It's just wonderful and marvelously done.

I was first exposed to Le Guin when my father read me the Earthsea books as a bedtime story. And The Left Hand of Darkness was my introduction to the science fiction genre as a whole. But I had never read any of her non fiction until now.

This is a collection of Ursula K Le Guin’s essays discussing science fiction and fantasy, writing, inspiration, and humanity.

Le Guin’s nonfiction is just as insightful and inspiring as her fiction is. She had such a powerful way with words as she discusses the evolution of sci-fi and how her writing has grown. Every single essay made me either want to reread everything of hers, or get started again on my own writing. Her encouragement and no nonsense attitude towards writing was totally inspiring. And I can’t wait to look for more of her essays.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for the opportunity to read and review this arc.

I have said before that I love Ursula K. LeGuin’s nonfiction as much, and sometimes even more, than her fiction works. People who have known this remarkable woman in real life must have been incredibly lucky since I think I would have given up a (non-vital, admittedly) organ to have a long conversation with her.

The Language of the Night is a reprint of a collection of essays (well, essays, speeches, book introductions) originally published in 1979 and then reissued in 1989, with the third reprint now with a new introduction by Ken Liu. It’s a younger LeGuin, with all essays dating from the 1970s, but all with the trademark LeGuin’s wit and erudition and strong emphasis on ethics and humanity in her distinctively deliberate serious narrative voice. (And she’s not afraid to comment on some of her changed opinions between 1979 and 1989 in a few footnotes.)

The themes here are science fiction and its transition from a niche genre to more recognized one (but still somehow snobbily viewed by some as inferior to “literature”), women writers and feminism, Tolkien, gender, ethics and writing integrity. And it’s quite fascinating how the things current in the 1970s remain current today.

4 stars.
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“And then comes the final test, the infallible touchstone of the seventh-rate: Ichor. You know ichor. It oozes out of several tentacles, and beslimes tessellated pavements, and bespatters bejeweled courtiers, and bores the bejesus out of everybody.”

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Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love Le Guin, I love that her work is still being published over and over, I think that there is a lot to learn within this and through her stories and essays. Especially about writing complex worlds and characters.

The Language of the Night: Essays on Writing, Science Fiction, and Fantasy gathers essays, book introductions, articles and speeches of the late, great, Ursula K Le Guin. It is not the first time this work has been published. It first appeared in print in 1979 and was revised in 1989. What’s new for the this edition is an introduction by Ken Liu.

Aside from that introduction, the volume features the 1989 content that is divided in to five thematic sections, not chronologically. Much of it reads like conversations with the author, not surprising as at least one piece is an interview and a few others speeches.

It is a chance to engage with the process and reception of Le Guin’s works as several key themes reappear, especially women writers of science fiction, the impact of the works of Tolkien and writing without the worry of labels. It is the later section all the themes truly coalesce, why bother with genre labels if it is a truly great and influential work?

As it is a revised edition, Le Guin is able to add in the occasional footnote showing her evolving thoughts on a subject, or how she felt about it a decade, or more, after the initial publication.

Recommended for readers of science fiction, fantasy or fans of Ursula K. Le Guin.

Ursula K. Le Guin is a classic for a reason. She was brilliant, and her writing speaks to that. This is a collection of her essays, some talks at various events, introductions to some of her books and other authors', articles, all that. It's also an intriguing look into societal views on SFF during the sixties and seventies, which was also interesting. This whole book is great inspiration to read everything else she's written so that I can learn a smidge of her wisdom.

This was VERY MUCH a case of me being the wrong reader for this book. I think I went in expecting something a bit fluffier -- Le Guin gets fairly scholarly/serious here, Freud and Jung are mentioned numerous times throughout these essays! Tolkien and/or LOtR pop up in nearly every essay as well.

When the essays were good, they were great, otherwise I found it extremely difficult to remain focused and wound up skimming a bit. I really enjoyed Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons?, an essay looking into why fantasy is written off as explicitly for children in the US vs other countries; her thoughts on language in fantasy novels ("You don't have to talk like Henry the Fifth to be a hero."); and her essay on the 'other' in science-fiction ("The people, in SF, are not people. They are masses, existing for one purpose: to be led by their superiors.")

I really wanted to love this one more than I did. I'm positive other readers will get far more out of it!

LeGuin's thoughtful and insightful essays on writing stand the test of time, Three decades after the original publication, they are enhanced by the introduction by Ken Liu, contextualizing her thoughts through an informed perspective that acknowledges the changing landscape of speculative fiction writers and readers.

A newly issued edition of Ursula Le Guin’s classic collection of essays, The Language of the Night, is focused on what makes good fantasy and science fiction writing. I’d read excerpts of some of these essays over the years with the original booking being out of print, so it was a pleasure to revisit them in full. A must-read for writers and readers of fantasy and science fiction.

Thank you SO MUCH to NetGalley and Scribner for my egalley in exchange for my honest opinion.

So, I already love Le Guin and her works. I've read most of her corpus and am still making my way through a few novella collections. All that is to say that I think this revised edition of a previously released book is going to be perfect for lovers of writing, science fiction, fantasy, and (or) Le Guin. The new introduction by Ken Liu did a brilliant job of bringing me right into the "right mood" to jump into this collection of Le Guin's essays. I also happen to love Ken Liu and his speculative fiction, so seeing him introduce this edition and speak to Le Guin's influence felt really serendipitous to read as a Liu and Le Guin lover. After Liu's introduction, we get Le Guin's introduction to the reprint of the original collection, and then finally the introduction to the original 1979 edition by Susan Woods. I loved reading Le Guin's own thoughts on her works and it was lovely reading Susan Woods' kind words.

After the trio of introductions, we have selection of Le Guin's essays from 1973-1977 (her early period) and ruminations on the beginnings of science fiction writings and its evolution as a genre to its eventual acceptance as a legitimate literary genre. She also discusses some of the early science fiction pioneers that brought a seriousness to the genre that led to its literary legitimacy. It was so wildly interesting! I had taken a survey Science Fiction and Fantasy course during my community college days and Le Guin and some of the authors she had discussed were covered in that course, so it felt very cool to read Le Guin's own thoughts on them. And I also felt a bit smarter than usual for recognizing so many of the pioneers and stories. Le Guin writes with such eloquence and her voice is just so engaging. It really kept reminding me of why she's one of my favorite writers and why she's so renowned.

We then have some introductions to Le Guin's novels like Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Word for World is Forest, and The Left Hand of Darkness. I am still working my way through the Hainish Cycle, and I've really only read The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. I've started The Word for World is Forest SO MANY times but have just gotten distracted by school and life. So for me, this particular section was really interesting and cool to read. It's definitely inspired me to try and carve some time out to finish the Hainish Cycle all the way through.

The final two sections are more of Le Guin's essays but these explore her writing and her own writer's journey. Again, Le Guin's voice is so recognizable and the way she speaks about the process of writing is so interesting. I would have loved to take a writing class with her as I think it would have really changed my writing for the better. There's also a lot of theory that she goes into and yet somehow, unlike my literary theory course where I literally call myself a dum dum every meeting, I understood what she was referencing. And even more surprising, I understood the theory from how she wrote about it. I mean, Le Guin just seems like she would have been such a challenging and brilliant teacher and these sections really emphasize that.

I loved reading this and yeah, it's A LOT but my god, it will make you a better reader and a better writer.

We’ve all seen it before: An author signs a six-figure book deal for their debut novel. It’s in all the headlines, and their face is suddenly all over the place. The novel is a hit, topping the bestseller lists, and while it is another case of a book that is just three tropes in a trenchcoat, the Strong Female main character is so sassy, or the Main Male Love Interest is so handsome or so heroic that no one really cares because, like movie theater popcorn, it’s so easy to consume. Then, the author takes those same three tropes, adjusts the trenchcoat a little, and writes a new book featuring, essentially, the same characters with different names. They publish five, ten, fifteen more books like this until the reading public finally twigs to the fact that they’ve been buying the same story over and over again and stop buying it. The popcorn has grown stale. Maybe it was always stale, but there was enough butter and enough salt that the staleness went unnoticed. Or maybe people realized it was stale, and just kept buying the next book because it was a known quantity, and they didn’t want to take a risk on something different.

Throughout her long career as a writer and critic, Ursula K. Le Guin was never fooled by an abundance of butter or salt. If she thought a book was stale, she called it out for being so and demanded better– from writers, from publishers, and from readers themselves. For decades, she warned that publishers would take the easy way out and publish books that would be easy to sell thanks to shallow plots and easy-to-like stock characters. In her 2014 speech to the National Book Foundation, Le Guin declared that we would need “writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art”. Some ten years later, we still need more of those writers who understand what makes a story that will touch readers’ hearts and souls, and fewer of those writers who write for the market while they chase dreams of topping the bestseller lists.

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“When art shows only how and what, it is trivial entertainment, whether optimistic or despairing. When it asks why, it rises from mere emotional response to real statement, and to intelligent ethical choice. It becomes, not a passive reflection, but an act.

And that is when all the censors, of the government and of the marketplace, become afraid of it.

-Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘Privilege, Paranoia, Passivity’ from ‘The Stalin in the Soul, 1973-77’”

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The Language of the Night is a collection of Le Guin’s essays and reviews first published in 1979. It was republished in 1992 with annotations and a new introduction by Le Guin where she plainly states that she had changed and grown quite a bit since the 1960s and 70s, and that she looks back at some of the things she wrote– particularly the 1976 essay, ‘Is Gender Necessary?’-- and cringed at her earlier words. To her credit, she refused to change the essays. She simply added notes to show where she’d changed her mind about this or that. If only more authors were so willing to admit it when they were wrong about something, own their old words, and explain how they’ve changed their minds.

This upcoming reissue of The Language of the Night features a new introduction by Ken Liu, in which he lays out the context of Le Guin’s approach to criticism and her willingness to converse with her own work across the decades of her career. He also points out her desire for both authors and readers to refuse the trivialization of art. Sure, we read for entertainment to escape the anxieties of our lives for a little while, but if stories are food for the mind, what does it mean if we force our minds to subsist on a diet of stale movie theater popcorn and cheap candy? 

Though some of the book reviews are for titles that are rarely read by people in this part of the twenty-first century, Le Guin’s words regarding the genres of science fiction and fantasy remain evergreen. Geek culture may be the hottest thing on the market right now, but getting “serious readers and writers” to regard science fiction and fantasy as important in their own right is as difficult as ever. It doesn’t help when yet another rushed superhero film comes out in theaters, or another shoddily-conceived sexy fantasy novel surges to the top of the bestseller list. 

But there are speculative stories out there that are more than mere marketing ploys with pretty covers. It might take some effort, and it might take some bravery on the reader’s part to look away from the shiny covers, dig deep, and find something that is fresh- regardless of its age- and true, but it is worth it to find a story that speaks to our shared humanity without insulting it, and reawakens that childlike wonder we thought we’d left behind long ago. Trying new things can be hard, but it’s the kind of work that is worth the effort. It is never a bad thing to find something good and true.

This new edition of The Language of the Night will be available May 14, 2024. Thank you to Net Galley and Scribner for an advance copy of the ebook. The free book did not affect my review.

“I write science fiction because that is what publishers call my books. Left to myself, I should call them novels.” Le Guin’s voice is unlike anyone I have ever read before. It was refreshing and honest, and it directly spoke to my inner child, my muse, and the shadow that fuels my imagination and tells my stories.

Reading the insightful point of view from a master fantasy writer like Ken Liu in the introduction, helped to contextualize the merit and gravity of Le Guin’s work. Having read The Grace of Kings and now The Language of the Night, I can see Le Guin's influence on Ken’s writing. It was nice to see his words come full circle and pay respect to someone who had influenced and encouraged him to write. May we all be so lucky to honor our mentors someday with an introduction as witty and kind as his.

Anyone who reads this collection will put the book down with the courage to look inside themselves, find the shadow, and allow it to lead their words into a brand-new world of adventure and discovery.

“If the imagination is nurtured, however, each person can become a truly mature adult: ‘not a dead child, but a child who survived’.” Le Guin cites her motivations as “the desire […] to inspire readers to intelligent responses, and to awaken writers to a ‘sense of responsibility’.” Read The Language of the Night, and you will understand the meaning of both quotes and will be a better reader and writer for it.