Top all-time · #3702
Ursula K. Le Guin
Personal blog · ursulakleguin.com/blogwritingculture
Ursula K. Le Guin's personal blog at ursulakleguin.com covers writing and culture. Since 2016, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 23 times, most often “Ursula K. Le Guin – A Rant about "Techonolgy"”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ursula K. Le Guin's site for her blog essays on technology and fiction, her Tao Te Ching translation, her maps, and her remarks on adapting Earthsea. Her essays are often cited as sources.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Ursula K. Le Guin was author of 21 novels, 11 volumes of short stories, 4 collections of essays, 12 children’s books, six volumes of poetry and 4 of translation.
Most-linked posts?
- Ursula K. Le Guin – A Rant about "Techonolgy"6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2023-12-06
- /blog/91-the-inner-child-and-the-nude-politician2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-11
- Ursula K. Le Guin on Serious Literature2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-03-30
- Ursula K. Le Guin: Tales from Earthsea or Gedo Senki2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-06-15
What Hacker News says?
Locus promises a more extensive obit later. I'll guess they don't have writers on staff whose job is to write obits in advance and update periodically. ;-) Similarly, the LeGuin site currently directs readers to the NYTimes obit: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/UKL_info.html We shall miss her.
Comment linking /UKL_info.html
on “Ursula Le Guin has died”Submitted Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor (2011) as a story · 158 points
HN discussionThis reminds me of my favorite note [1] from Ursula Le Guin on technology: > Its technology is how a society copes with physical reality: how people get and keep and cook food, how they clothe themselves, what their power sources are (animal? human? water? wind? electricity? other?) what they build with and what they build, their medicine — and so on and on. Perhaps very ethereal people aren’t interested in these mu…
Comment linking /a-rant-about-technology
on “Gemini Robotics”Submitted The Absent Silence (2010) as a story · 80 points
HN discussionLink for those interested: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/a-rant-about-technology
Comment linking /a-rant-about-technology
on “Ask HN: Do you also marvel at the complexity of everyday objects?”Submitted Ursula K. Le Guin: A Rant About "Technology" (2005) as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI highly recommend Ursula Le Guin's translation. https://www.ursulakleguin.com/lao-tzu-the-tao-te-ching
Comment linking /lao-tzu-the-tao-te-ching
on “How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity”Submitted Ursula K. Le Guin – A Rant about "Techonolgy" as a story · 4 points
HN discussionWhat an amazingly snobby reply to an article about someone writing good fiction. I'll leave a much better writer than me to do the arguing, Ursula K. LeGuin, although I realize you won't read either of these articles because you're too busy "working on [your] own things now," but I'll post them because they're great. Ursula K. Le Guin talks to Michael Cunningham about genres, gender, and broadening fiction. [1] > An…
Comment linking /Note-ChabonAndGenre.html
on “Ted Chiang's Soulful Science Fiction”Submitted Ursula Le Guin: Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2014) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThink about why your examples work: We only see the base area and immediate surroundings on Hoth, and only for a short while. These planets work in Star Wars because they're each a single small part of a whole. The planets are monobiomes, but the story moves between enough of them that while it may look silly, the setting is still varied. It's very different to a story that takes place predominantly in one biome. No…
Comment linking /Maps/Map-Gethen.html
on “Worldbuilding”Submitted The Archive of Ursula K. LeGuin's Blog has been brought back online as a story · 2 points
HN discussionShe may be calling for zero growth or even degrowth. In her first blog post, where she fill a questionnaire [1] "Question 13: “What will improve the quality of life for the future generations of your family?”—with boxes to rank importance from 1 to 10. The first choice is “Improved educational opportunities”—fair enough, Harvard being in the education business. I gave it a 10. The second is “Economic stability and g…
Comment linking /blog/in-your-spare-time
on “Clinging Desperately to a Metaphor (2011)”Submitted Ursula K. Le Guin: Tales from Earthsea or Gedo Senki as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor the Wizard of Earthsea books, there's an afterword (at least in the later editions I have around the house) where she says she just sketched out the map first even before any characters, and filled it in with the stories as she went. (How many more stories would she have written in that world? I wonder) Also: collection to her maps http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Maps/Index.html as well.
Comment linking /Maps/Index.html
on “How Writers Map Their Imaginary Worlds”Submitted A Rant About "Technology" (2005) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFolks who are curious about the Le Guin angle on _Tales of Earthsea_ should read: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/adaptation-tales-of-earthsea It really is unfortunate that this went the way it did --- I'd dearly love for Earthsea to have a film version worthy of the fact that it was one of the first books to ask the question, "Can there be fantasy which is not a retelling of _The Lord of the Rings_?" and to answer wi…
Comment linking /adaptation-tales-of-earthsea
on “Studio Ghibli marks 40 years, but future looks uncertain”Submitted Ursula K. Le Guin on Serious Literature as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> There are certain bodies of human knowledge and practice which aren't usually referred to as "technologies", and I think that leads us to underestimate their complexity and importance. “Technology is the active human interface with the material world.” — Ursula K. Le Guin, https://www.ursulakleguin.com/a-rant-about-technology
Comment linking /a-rant-about-technology
on “Rope, twine and thread: Invisible technologies of the Stone Age”Submitted A Rant About “Technology” as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMaybe there's something in this essay by LeGuin that helps. https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/91-the-inner-child-and-th...
Comment linking /blog/91-the-inner-child-and-the-nude-politician
on “I'm a 12 year old boy in a 36 year old body”She wrote a short essay on her blog about this: https://www.ursulakleguin.com/a-rant-about-technology The TLDR is technology is how we cope with reality and for her it was more interesting to describe this reality and how it makes her subjects feel rather than describe the technology they use to address their problems.
Comment linking /a-rant-about-technology
on “Curating a Show on My Ineffable Mother, Ursula K. Le Guin”I enjoyed the Le Guin quote... until I searched for its source and found her even better blog post where she demolishes it, 'The Inner Child and the Nude Politician' [0]. Every once in awhile I'm reminded that she blogged and that I owe it to myself to read her. [0] https://www.ursulakleguin.com/blog/91-the-inner-child-and-th...
Comment linking /blog/91-the-inner-child-and-the-nude-politician
on “What powers artists who reach old age? The work”
