Ursula K. Le Guin, “the emissary from Orsinia,” challenges expectations
For someone who was&#x2F;is excited by reading the Orsinia tales: can you share <i>why</i>, besides just telling me repeatedly that you were excited by it?<p>I am someone who has been often disappointed by vaunted authors of the past (Vonnegut, Clarke, etc.), because their work suffers from the &quot;it&#x27;s not novel (anymore)&quot; feeling one often has when watching old movies. I get that these  were ground breaking when they first came out, but they don&#x27;t seem to shine anymore, because <i>I</i> was first exposed to works that have iterated upon them...no nostalgia factor to sweeten the deal for me.<p>Put another way: I totally get that muskets were ground-breaking for the time, but gosh-darnit, I have seen nuclear submarines.<p>When reading the linked article, I felt a lot of the same: a lot of the &quot;amazing&quot; things I have come across in other novels, and they feel like par for the course for a good book.<p>Also the whole spiel about Ursula wanting to change the world, and needing a lever and a place to stand...well, she <i>didn&#x27;t</i> change the world, in hindsight. Did she?<p>------------------<p>A really bothersome quote from the article: &quot;By speaking from Orsinia, as its only authorized emissary, Le Guin reminds us of everything we take for granted and everything we have neglected.&quot;<p>What the heck does that sentence mean? I can&#x27;t imagine everything I have taken for granted and neglected as a single meaningful thought or concept. In fact, if I tried to imagine everything I have taken for granted and neglected, it becomes a thought stretched so thin, that it loses all meaning. It becomes nothing because its too many things.<p>So am I fair in discounting this sentence (and most of the article) as fan gibberish?