Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin Documentary (and trailer)

Few writers deserve a Documentary more than she does, beyond doubt. Behold the trailer for the Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin. (It is also of note that the film director's name is Arwen Curry, leading me to think that her parent's were considerable fans of the Fantastic)

Ursula K. Le Guin meant much to me. Tolkien shaped my inner language, yes, yet Le Guin helped chisel it into strong, philosophical clarity.

As I said when she died in January, she was one of the best. I remember first reading The Earthsea Cycle in elementary school, hearing Ogion of Re Albi say “To hear, one must be silent.” And I still remembered those words when I took the series up for a second and third time. While the rest of my generation went to Hogwarts with Harry, (after I left Tolkien's Middle-earth) I traveled by ship to the School of Roke with Ged.

Some say that Rowling was the first master Fantasy author who dealt with death and the those who will burn the world if need be to cheat it. They are wrong; for, long before Voldemort fashioned his horcruxes, the wizard Cob's reckless quest for immortality halted the words of power, tearing a rift between life and death – endangering the living. Long before Harry the Chosen One fought Voldemort, Archmage Ged fought Cob.
“You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood.”

And she remains one of the few master Fantasists whose primary world and cast of characters are non-White (with the exception of Tenar from the Kargad lands). Indeed, Le Guin has criticized what she describes as the general assumption in fantasy that characters should be White and that the society should resemble the Middle Ages.

I owe Ursula K. Le Guin my own Fantasy series, the one I wrote and am still in the process of editing, for without Earthsea it would never have existed.

"It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end." - Ursula K. Le Guin

"People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within." - Ursula K. Le Guin