^ Yes. LeGuin can do whatever she wants because her background is anthropology, so she takes an especial interest in cultural ... wossname, not speciation but the other thing.
Also, her writing is exquisite - concise without being terse, evocative without being purple. She is my hero.
My own recommendation is K.J. Parker's Devices and Desires, the first part of a trilogy where both (... all, actually) cultures get upwhopped by the outsider, and then inverted from another character. Parker intentionally sets up characters as mirrors for each other. I wish I'd invented Valens.
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Date: 2010-04-24 07:33 pm (UTC)Also, her writing is exquisite - concise without being terse, evocative without being purple. She is my hero.
My own recommendation is K.J. Parker's Devices and Desires, the first part of a trilogy where both (... all, actually) cultures get upwhopped by the outsider, and then inverted from another character. Parker intentionally sets up characters as mirrors for each other. I wish I'd invented Valens.