Ursula Le Guin has found herself sitting comfortably in a place of honour amongst some of the most distinguished authors of all time. The University Press of Mississippi is publishing Conversations with Ursula K. Le Guin, adding to a distinguished series that in the past has featured Ernest Hemingway, Gore Vidal, Isaac Asimov, Jack Kerouac, John Steinbeck, Salman Rushdie and William S. Burroughs. Complete list of The University Press of Mississippi’s Conversations/Interviews series Purchase ... read more

Perennial favourites, from American novelist Philip Roth to Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, top the list of hopefuls for this year’s Nobel Prize in literature. British betting agency Ladbrokes gives Italian scholar and journalist Claudio Magris the edge with 3-1 odds, followed by Israel’s Amos Oz and American author Joyce Carol Oates. Bottom of the Ladbrokes list with odds of 150-1 is singer-lyricist Bob Dylan. But such secrecy shrouds the Nobel committee’s deliberations ... read more

Florence Vilén has published her first novel in Swedish; Tungelblodet (”Blood of the Moon”) is high fantasy, set in a northern archipelago where wind-witches help fishermen to make good catches. Florence cites JRR Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin and Ende as her favourite fantasists (and I concur). The book can be had from Litenupplaga.se (SEK 173) and Adlibris (SEK 177). ... read more

The Endeavour Award, named after the ship of Captain James Cook, is awarded to a distinguished science fiction of fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author(s) and published the previous year.The award in announced yearly at the OryCon and will be presented in November 2008. A $1,000 grant accompanies the award. The finalists for the 2008 awards are as follows The Book of Joby by Mark J. Ferrari Bright of the Sky: Book One of the Entire and the Rose by Kay Kenyon Not ... read more

Harry Harrison, creator of The Stainless Steel Rat and author of the novel that inspired the movie Soylent Green, will be honoured as the next Damon Knight Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America during the 2009 Nebula Awards Weekend in Los Angeles, California. The selection of Harrison was announced by SFWA President Russell Davis after consulting with the Board of Directors and former presidents. The Nebula Awards Weekend will be held between April the 24th and ... read more

The term new wave fantasy was used in the 1960s and 1970s to describe works that featured more surreal, literary and humanistic themes in their content. The authors that were part of this “new wave” include Roger Zelazny and Ursula Le Guin. ... read more

FantasyBookReview.co.uk has now completed the review for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, JK Rowling’s fifth book of seven. The ratings for the books improves with each release and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince receives 8.9 out of 10 which places it at #8 in our list of the top 100 fantasy books of all time. This places the book on a level par with Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged and Ursula Le Guin’s The Other Wind. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood ... read more

There are many fantasy readers that have wondered if JK Rowling took inspiration from the Ursula Le Guin Earthsea books. I do not know what JK Rowling has to say about this but Ursula Le Guin has commented on the Harry Potter series. In an interview with The Guardian she was asked what her opinion was on JK Rowling’s writing style and she replied “When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to ... read more

I read some of CS Lewis’s Narnia books when I was a youngster (The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian) and enjoyed them and have been re-reading them recently as an adult and have become very uncomfortable with their content. I am currently listening to The Last Battle on audio-book and am finding them racist and full of upper class snobbery. I have read criticism before on CS Lewis’s works but that was always based upon the books being labelled as ... read more

After having read and loved Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea books I read that there was a Taoist theme running through them that lead me find out more about Taoism and to see if I could understand what teachings , if any, Le Guin was putting into her work. Taoism is also known as Daoism and a rough translation into English is either “the Path” or “the Way”. That there is a natural balance to all things is mentioned and this is definately something that is clearly part ... read more