Influences.

Ursula K. Le Guin died on Monday. She was 88 so you cannot really say it was unexpected, but it was still unexpected.

I wrote a Facebook post when Sue Grafton died last month. About how surprised I was at how hard it hit me. It felt like losing a friend. Kinsey (and understand that Kinsey was Sue and Sue, Kinsey) had been in my life since I was 18. I was younger than her then aged past her as I read the books. When I got Y I was thrilled and disappointed because that meant that only Z was left and then I would be saying goodbye to my adult lifelong friend. Little did I know I would be saying goodbye much sooner.

Sue's death felt personal. Like a friend. Like a companion. Because of her books.

Ursula K. Le Guin was not my friend. She was something entirely different.

I read science fiction as a child because that's what my brother read. Much like at 9-10 years old I was probably more well versed in the world of Louis L'Amour and Harlequin Romances than any other child my age. Because those are the books my parents read. Both of my parents were voracious readers. Don's Paperback Book Exchange was a monthly trip. And when we finished our own books we pillaged the other books around the house. My father always had a book in his back pocket and my mother one in her purse. A habit I picked up as well. Before Kindle and the Kindle app on my phone I always had a physical book with me. Traveling with a client and he needed to step in to the restroom for a minute, he came back out to find me leaning against a nearby pillar with a book in hand. "I wasn't gone that long!" Long enough for a couple of pages. I've always been surrounded by my books and everyone else's books.

So I read a lot of science fiction, westerns, and romances as well as cereal boxes and anything else with words on them. I read and re-read my own books. I had a constant stream of library books going in and out as well. I read a ton. My world view has been shaped by my reading. I've mentioned that I got as much of my moral code from ElfQuest as I did the church. Going back this year and reading the books by years I have been alive and seeing my childhood again through Judy Blume and SE Hinton. And yes, Ursula K. Le Guin was there as well. And when I saw her books on the lists I smiled. Because she was not science fiction I read because it was a book of my brother's. She was mine. My choice. My books. Written for me.

But she was not my friend. I didn't view her that way.

She was more. More. MORE.

Ursula K. Le Guin shaped my view of what a woman could be. What it even meant to be a woman. Why in the world we needed to have such distinctions. Her work was the first time I was ever introduced to the ideas of gender fluidity. Her take on races was also the same, but I don't remember that as much. I do remember genderless beings, and strong, smart women. And later in life when I read her essays and her poetry I got even more. Ursula K. Le Guin was a woman of knowledge. A woman of imagination. A woman of understanding. A woman of strength. She was so much MORE than a few books.

She also shaped my thoughts on writing. On what could be "allowed." Her books blended the normal and the magical into everyday life. She wrote in different genres. She wrote long form and short stories and poetry and fiction and non-fiction. Are you seeing a pattern here? I could never hope to be as good as she was, but she wrote in such a way that left no doubt in my mind that I could be as good as I can be.

When Sue died I felt a loss. A friend left this world and left a hole that aches because it will never be finished.

When Ursula K. Le Guin died I felt as if I should say of course. Not because she was 88 and so of course she would go before I did, but of course because if there is something beyond our time here, if there is another life after this life, Ursula K. Le Guin should be there first to help me, and so many others of us, understand it. And to already be seeing ways to make it better, more, expanded. Ursula K. Le Guin went first because she always did. She lead the way.

Peace to her family and to her friends and to all of us whole were shaped by her life. She was just so much more.