
Ursula K. Le Guin Was a Creator of Worlds - samclemens
https://www.neh.gov/article/ursula-k-le-guin-was-creator-worlds
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tildedave
Great eassy. I read a few of her novels last year (Left Hand of Darkness, the
Dispossessed, and some of her Earthsea novels). What struck me is even with
the amount of effort that goes into building her worlds, she turns her lens
back on her characters near the end, with them either figuring out something
about themselves or how they relate to other people.

The "fate of the world" gets evoked a lot in popular fantasy/scifi nowadays
but I really appreciate the way she chose to make her protagonists the final
focus of her narratives. Don't want to spoil anything ;) so I'd encourage
anyone that's interested to seek her work out.

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MordodeMaru
In "The Left Hand of Darkness" I really struggled with naming, maybe because
they didn't have a latin-based structure. But I really appreciated on the
other hand her effort to make sense of the language, toponomy and so on all
together.

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tigerlily
I read The Left Hand of Darkness last year. I found the names and place names
quite tricky too, but it helped reinforce the alieness of the setting.
Ursula's writing is so earnest and immersive. Rigorous world building coupled
with veritably human characters made for a wholly engaging and pleasurable
read.

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k__
I read it last year too.

[SPOILER ALERT]

. . . . .

I liked that she convinced me that the main character was a women in the
beginning, but later revealing it's actually a man.

Otherwise the whole book read more like a fantasy novel than sci-fi. I found
it rather boring too.

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yeahitslikethat
Uh... spoiler alert!

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detritus
I'm a bit confused by OP here - I didn't at all have that impression. I
thought it was fairly clear from the start what the gender of the main
protagonist was. Perhaps I misread...

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k__
The name didn't sound female to me "Genly Ai"... I know Ai as from Japanese,
meaning "love" and I know a girl called that.

The story starts from his first-person perspective, and he talks about how he
feels insecure and about his fancy robes.

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RosanaAnaDana
The protagonist in Left Hand of Darkness is 100% a human male (and a bit of a
man's man to boot).

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k__
I know, I just didn't think this for the first few pages.

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thedaniel
Such a legend - for an easy intro definitely the short stories in Birthday of
the World are worth a read

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LifeLiverTransp
I always had that feeling, that while she was a few steps ahead, on the outset
of the journey through one of her worlds- neither me nor her knew where this
would end. This whole journey was never there to put me, the reader in any
state, not a ride through emotions heading for a foregone conclusion. I loved
the dispossesed. Sun is mine, and always will be.

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jmickey
Perhaps unrelated - is there anywhere a repository of fictional worlds that
creators can use for their projects at cost of free of charge?

This would be great for many industries - computer game development, board
game development, movie creators, writers, etc. :)

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themodelplumber
That's a really interesting idea. I know there are lots of generators out
there for worldbuilding purposes and I have made my own on the go for things
like conceptual art or short fiction. But to your question, you might ask at
/r/worldbuilding on Reddit, which has some really neat stuff going on a lot of
the time. /r/rpg might also be helpful.

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stillworks
I hope this doesn't end up opening a horrid can of worms. What are the
implications if the worlds and concepts overlap ?

At a personal level, I would be be very interested in learning/finding out
such things though. Even more so if it is possible to automate this
"discovery"

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themodelplumber
Resolving overlap might be the fun part, depending on your psychology. For
these types of people there's really no use for predictive anticipation as it
can spoil the opportunity to solve unique problems :-)

BTW I "automatically" created a planet while sitting in a boring church
meeting last Sunday. I used a kind of "dice gradient" method with the dice app
on my phone. "How hospitable is this planet?" OK, so a 2. Not very. What's the
temperature? 2 again. Geez, it's freezing.

Anyway after about 15 rolls the planet turned out to be used as some sort of
ancient computing device, channeling surface air as a cooling method. The ~20
person exploration team was struggling to get past even the most rudimentary
underground security, with indications that the past custodians of this world
had significant leverage over physical objects, perhaps through technological
means.

A lot of fun, working this up :-)

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ves
You should read the short story “Glacial” in “Galactic North” by Alastair
Reynolds.

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themodelplumber
Thanks, I just skimmed the Wikipedia summary out of curiosity. It looks like
an interesting and pretty intense story!

My own idea was that the planet I rolled up hosted a sort of cargo-cult
experiment, where the beings that hosted the computing infrastructure were
using it for really basic tasks that were easily perceptible to their sensing
skills, not understanding what it was, really. Their technological skills
included rudimentary large-mass manipulation, and after making a place for
this equipment and securing it, they had long since died out, while their
"data center" was still flourishing and had stored extremely valuable data.

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ves
Oooh that’s real nice. I use a lot of those themes in fiction I write /
blueprint (probing the limits of understanding, the interpretation of legacy
by the inadequate living, etc)

