Current LeGuinesque SF

November 8, 2021 5:04 AM

What current writers do you feel are following in Ursula K. Le Guin's footsteps?

I was recently reading The Expert System's Brother by Adrian Tchaikovsky and the way he describes village life, especially at the beginning, gave me a Le Guin vibe. Who else do you feel has elements of this in their writing?
I'd appreciate if you mentioned why as well as who.
For current lets say past 10 years.

posted by signal to Writing & Language (12 answers total)

Ted Chiang
posted by sol at 5:49 AM on November 8, 2021 [2 favorites]

Oops didn’t mean to post without the Why. Why: Chiang, like LeGuin, simultaneously holds the mundane. His characters and their motivations are made more human, not less, by the inclusion of alternate and fantastic sci-fi circumstances.
posted by sol at 5:51 AM on November 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Something about Ancillary Justice reminded me of The Left Hand of Darkness a whole bunch - there's a focus on one character navigating an unfamiliar world, and an interesting combination of personal identities colliding with political realities.
posted by entropone at 6:08 AM on November 8, 2021 [8 favorites]

I remember Rachel Swirsky's The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Windows (published in 2010; 2011 Nebula Award for Best Novella, so it's just at the far edge of your window) reminding me of LeGuin--specifically the later Earthsea books.
posted by pullayup at 6:16 AM on November 8, 2021

NK Jemisin, for worldbuilding skill and deep thoughts about individuals and their societies. Her SF and magical realism (which I guess is where I put the first City book) strike me as more LeGuinnish than her fantasy, which is more gods-and-monsters, less magic/fairytale than LeGuin's.

If I weren't fairly sure neither of them would go for this... I wouldn't hate Jemisin writing in the Hainish universe, not one bit.
posted by humbug at 7:15 AM on November 8, 2021 [7 favorites]

I was just about to say the same thing about Jemisin! In particular, the way she writes family relationships and stages of life reminds me a lot of Le Guin — both of them feel to me like they understand Real Stuff about what it's like to be a kid or a parent, even in a setting where those relationships look really different.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:19 AM on November 8, 2021 [3 favorites]

Nnedi Okorafor, in particular Lagoon.
posted by nickggully at 7:30 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

Nthing Jemisin for the reasons noted above. I will say that the energy is Jemisin's books is very different from that in Le Guin's--more action and less introspection--but the way they situate their protagonists amid societal change, their skepticism of shiny technological solutions, & their deep humanism are all similar. (Also: The first story in NKJ's How Long 'Til Black Future Month is a direct response to Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," and feels to me like a sort of ars poetica or manifesto; it's called "The Ones Who Stay and Fight.")

Another writer who's quite different from Le Guin on the surface but who's also, I think, serious about grappling with and continuing her style of thoughtful & political SF/F is China Mieville. This Census Taker and The City and The City are a couple that I'd put in that category. (The City and The City includes a big wink at Le Guin's Orsinian Tales.)
posted by miles per flower at 8:08 AM on November 8, 2021 [5 favorites]

Isaac Fellman, in particular Breath of the Sun. The writing and characters are introspective in a way that lets the story go to unexpected places, and the setting integrates religion and beliefs and climate in a way that felt Le Guinish to me. Fellman is trans and this book was originally published under the name Rachel Fellman.

Sofia Samatar's A Stranger in Olondria. Even the cover feels very Ursula Le Guin to me, and the theme of an outsider coming to a new place and learning the customs had a similar feel to me.
posted by lizard music at 9:15 AM on November 8, 2021 [4 favorites]

I am still reading it, so maybe my opinion will change later in the book, but so far Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire is reminding me of Le Guin's work, particularly the anthropological feel. It was named as one of the "50 best of the last decade" in the list NPR put out a little while back, which is where I heard of it.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:36 AM on November 8, 2021 [7 favorites]

I've been enjoying Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series greatly (or at least the first two books, as I've not quite finished the second), set in an earthbound but technologically advanced 25th Century where religion and gender have been removed from public life. The first is Too Like the Lightning. Stylistically it's a bit florid to be like LeGuin, but the world-building feels very much akin to hers, in which a futuristic society has taken both technological and cultural leaps away from us, but it is presented matter-of-factly to the reader as it unfolds as a coherent world, not just a set of things that are explained.
posted by lhputtgrass at 10:32 AM on November 8, 2021

Seconding A Stranger in Olondria.

The feel is very different, but Rachel Hartman's YA fantasy novel Tess of the Road seems to me to owe a lot to Le Guin - it's interested in the way language shapes and subverts our assumptions about gender, identity, and the world. Also there are dragons.

Charlie Jane Anders' The City in the Middle of the Night has some of the same concerns, as well as providing an anthropological lens on culture and politics that reminded me of the Hainish novels.
posted by toastedcheese at 12:16 PM on November 8, 2021 [3 favorites]