I was a little disappointed that she tried to find some kind of synthesis between her own fawning opinion and Kim Stanley Robinson’s critical view of Always Coming Home.

Ursula’s concern with erasure due to sexism is warranted, but everyone’s star must fade. No one is completely correct, and while Le Guin was ahead of her time, no one has a perfect vision of the future or even a clear vision of their own present. Sincere criticism is a form of flattery, and many authors long gone continue to be referenced not just because they had a prescient view, but because their critics keep them alive. Tolstoy was the most famous author in the Soviet Union because despite being banned to print, the publishing of rebuttals and counter-apologetics were subsidized by the central soviet, so that everyone knew his name and anarchist views.

In this cast, DeFreitas celebrates Le Guin in a way that is effusive but neither hot nor cold. It’s exactly this kind of inoffensive praise that reduces the great to symbols of greatness, and from there to cliché, mediocrity, and obscurity. Good authors deserve trenchant praise, or at least honest criticism.