RETURNING TO A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

This monthly blog post is very late in the day for many reasons. Squirrels. We’ll blame the squirrels. They can’t answer back. Shifty characters. Blame squirrels. That works out for all parties concerned. I was beyond busy in the first week of the month. Luckily, months have spare weeks built into them for safety’s sake.
   The plan, a week later? Blog about a truly atrocious movie. That occupied my thoughts in the second week of the month. Which movie? The film played dress-up, pretending to be the thing it so desperately wanted to be. No, I won’t trouble you by firing up the kinematograph here. Or anywhere.
   I realised, without setting anything down, that I’d go into hellish detail to write of the movie with anything approaching accuracy. Accuracy seemed important, at the time. I can’t imagine why, now. An opinion, peppered with facts, is still just an opinion. Manage your energy well.
   Would I really watch the damned thing again, taking notes as I suffered? No. I abandoned that plan and spent the energy on worthwhile viewing instead. This took me into the third week of the month, and a nefarious scheme to scribble about a truly boring television show.
   What was I thinking? Hell, what were they thinking?!
   Sadly, I worked up a few pages on that folly. I don’t always blog at least 1,500 words. On the other hand, I don’t always limit myself to around that figure. On this televisual opinion, I passed the 1,500-mark and then stopped dead.
   Damn. I’d truly go over the show once more, to confirm a few things, right? Unavoidable? Was this worth the effort? I concluded the endeavour was not worth my continued effort. Task? Avoidable. That’s how I shattered week three on the blogging front.
   And so…
   I steered myself in the direction of mentioning something I liked. Why not blog about Ursula and her creation of Earthsea? Okay. Sounds good. Do it. I turned to my copy of…
   But wait a bit. There is no copy of…
   Check again. I’ve read the books. Have I read the books? There aren’t any here. I borrowed them.
   They were novels. Weren’t they? I had to confirm a vague something or other. Research into Earthsea was a lot easier on me than research into a blasted heath of a movie or a nothingness of a TV show that I hoped would start even as the end credits rolled.
   Ursula K. Le Guin.
   What to say of her? If born the daughter of Henry the Eighth, Ursula would’ve been listed on the announcements as a prince. And no one would go against Ursula for referring to herself as a most excellent prince.
   BILL: Dude, Ursula is a most excellent prince.
   TED: Bodacious.
   But Prince Ursula wouldn’t have given us Atuan or Earthsea or any of her other creations back in the Tudor day. She’d have busied herself with seeing off the Spanish and having people executed.
   We don’t know how many people Ursula executed. But we do know she wasn’t Henry’s daughter. And she wrote stories. Lived them. Breathed them in. Exhaled them on blank pages, magically filling with words as her lungs moved…
   There’s no one quite like Ursula. This is a shame. Her great talent lay in absolutely failing to stay young. I recommend this course of action. Fail at this task for as long as is inhumanly possible. Ursula was slightly ahead of the game. She managed to die before Covid went chasing everyone.
   Timing isn’t everything, but it’s close enough for government work. And a damned sight cheaper. If Ursula survived to see Covid plunder the world in a way no Viking ever could, she’d likely have kept a short diary of her approaching demise.
   If a hacking cough of a death chases me, I like to think of my famous last words as Famous last words.
   She wrote many things. Check them out. I went to check them out and checked again. Must have borrowed them. They were novels, right? No. Ursula produced short stories in the later part of the cycle. The books about Earthsea are divided into two trilogies. Looks as though I only tackled four out of six volumes.
   I suspect a compilation tome was at work, there.
   Ursula walked the same school halls as P.K. Dick. He’s another writer I’ve read, and…no, he isn’t on my shelves. Speaking of him, I’ve seen my share of movie adaptations of his tales. If I misremember rightly, or wrongly, I’ve heard a radio adaptation, too.
   We don’t go near Ursula with talk of adaptations. She was raging at the decidedly bland TV desecration of her work. I left the keyboard behind to examine the fossilised relic of a trailer for said show.
   URSULA K. LE GUIN MARLON BRANDO: Look how they massacred my boy.
   The timing of the TV adaptation carried the stench of many a Tolkien cash-in. Well. Damn. The Lord of the Rings worked its magic at the box office, and a great darkness was rising in the land of adaptation.
   Speaking of Susan Cooper, The Dark is Rising was adapted, rather atrociously, as a movie called The Seeker. This, too, followed in the wake of Tolkien’s movie success. A great blight fell upon popular culture as one century turned into another.
   I left the keyboard behind to examine the fossilised relic of a trailer for said film.
   SUSAN COOPER MARLON BRANDO: Look how they massacred my boy.
   Ursula’s books, and the Susan Cooper volume, didn’t see justice when turned into moving images. On the other hand, if you were Christopher Tolkien staring at Peter Jackson’s Mordor Tourist Board information films, you, too, would reach for a bottle of the Brando.
   CHRISTOPHER TOLKIEN MARLON BRANDO: Look how they massacred my boy.
   The K. in Le Guin’s name is the same K. as in P.K. Dick’s: both stand for KETAMINE. In later life, they would frequent sewers converted to nightclubs under the rainy streets of a whore-ish Berlin. There, Dick would indulge in the drug. Le Guin generated the same level of outlandish storytelling without recourse to the horse tranquiliser.
   I am interrupted in my endeavours. Instead of being called from the tyranny of typing to accept a parcel of books, I am summoned to the news that my parcel of books will arrive at or around sunset tonight.
   It’s a gloomy summer’s day in the Grand Duchy of Scotlandia, and I suspect true sunset will arrive a shade early if the greying of the clouds intensifies. All clouds and no rain. Like waiting for a tooth to be pulled during an appendectomy.
   I’ve been interrupted by parcel news. The parcel will arrive in the next 31 minutes. It’s nice to be told this 29 minutes into the parcel delivery window. I must listen out for an ineffectual knock as I clatter away at the keyboard.
   As I typed that, I was interrupted by an ineffectual knock. The parcel, lurking on my doorstep, refused to be scanned by the delivery system. Ursula, making her presence known. I can’t believe it took seven e-mails to deliver that to me.
   The six books in the parcel are A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, and The Other Wind.
   I could, churlishly, skip the first few and tackle the ones I haven’t read. No. I am here, in this blog post, to revisit Ursula’s work. This raises the question of stories you return to. Earthsea and Narnia, yes. Middle Earth, no. My preference.
   Narnia also benefited by and lost from the resurgence in Tolkien’s fortunes. I cast the weariest eye over the near-criminal output of Walden Media, with the pillaging of Jules Verne’s fiction coming in for a dastardly mention. Dastardly enough to be accompanied by a cartoon dog named Muttley.
   The best version of a writer’s story is almost always the writer’s story. Movies often compress the action. Occasionally, they flatten it. Would any production crew ever earn Ursula’s blessing? Or even go looking for it?
   Earning the original creator’s blessing does not guarantee a good movie or TV show. I am struggling to sear the trailers from my mind. Earthsea envisioned as a TV show comes across as a low-rent nod in the direction of a mighty princess forged in the heat of battle. Xena wore it better.
   And The Seeker is certainly a thing. The problem with adaptations is that they are adaptations. Here’s an enduring rule. If adaptations are bad, they do not destroy the original works. I can go to my shelves and read The Dark is Rising or…once the parcel arrives…any of Ursula’s stories concerned with magical island life, a school for wizards, and a maze.
   Ursula does amaze. To the people who say how can you read books we answer how can you NOT read books…
   That most excellent prince Ursula K. Le Guin is a writer who will get you reading. And keep you reading. Where’s the harm in that?
   Ursula is readable. This is a terrible crime against literature, I know. But the way was signposted long ago. If it’s good literature, it’s not science fiction/fantasy. They steal it in the night, while everyone is looking. Well, they will park under the lamp.