is course correcting as she grew older.
As a child I loved the first 3 Earthsea books. As an adult, I was excited when I saw she was publishing sequels. And then when I read those, mind blown, because she wasn't just continuing the world as is. She was redefining various things, as she herself worked out internalised messages about who gets to be a hero, what it means to be heroic, and so on.
There's a movement from the lone male hero wielding power and wisdom, to Ged becoming humbled, vulnerable and more human, to women and girls having power too, to relationships and community being the saving grace, rather than the lone male hero striding into the world and changing it around him with his power. I don't want to give out spoilers, because you should all enjoy the books freshly if you haven't. But if I think about the process of decolonising narratives over time, it's like that: the strength to reassess what were less consciously held values and beliefs about "how the world works" or "what is possible in fiction" or "who gets to be the hero" or "what is even heroic", and then to be able to go back on possibly her most well-known, most well-loved series, and do a fresh take on it.
She course corrected, because she had moved on in her own life and thinking, and she had realised that her old POV was constrained in ways it didn't have to be, by the messages she had internalised about gender roles (who men and women get to be in fantasy books), or about lone heroes, or what constitutes power, etc, etc.
It's the author getting older, growing in maturity, being able to interrogate her earlier work, developing her own perspective, rather than continuing to repeat tropes from the genre at the time about lone male hero wizards. And you know, the earlier books aren't terrible either! At least Ged is a person of colour. And people resonate to some of the messages in those books in honest terms too - like power that isn't connected to wisdom is gonna muck things up. We are more complete when we can embrace our shadow selves too. Some of the messages of the early books continue to hold weight. She could have left well enough alone, and left her earlier books as is. They are still classics in their own right.
But clearly she wasn't satisfied in herself about it at that point. And the later books are a good read because she had so much more to say. You can feel someone correcting course not just on a superficial level, but doing it with verve. The writing is more terse in style, but also there are simple, beautiful, very humane moments that make the characters feel less like mythic heroes, and more like people who are stumbling through worlds that are sometimes incomprehensibly difficult (people are capable of being terrible to each other), and yet connection and simple kindness, and goodness impart meaning. If anything saves the day, it's those relationships between people. Beautiful stuff.
So really, and returning to current discourse, if someone is saying something like: "Hey, why is this piece of media you're making set in this place, or this culture"? It's not necessarily a terrible thing. Often people who saying that, are saying it from a place where they were at least interested enough in what you were making to have feelings about it. In good faith, they're usually hoping that whatever you make next is even better. They want to feel excited about your work.
(In bad faith, it's a different thing, and yeah, by all means if someone is doing bad faith takes just to tear you down, discard at will. Like if someone is hating what you make because they hate the entire genre anyway, there's not much point engaging is there? Ursula K. Le Guin probably wouldn't have gotten much useful criticism from people who poo-poo fantasy writing in general! But there's a difference between people who would like to like a thing, asking those questions, and people who are looking for a way to dismiss something they dislike out-of-hand. And no one is well served by treating those two groups as if they are the same.)
Ursula K. Le Guin could have sat on her literary and genre laurels, and no one would have batted an eyelash. But she had a hunger to move her own world on, and so she just went out and... Did it. No drama. The Earthsea universe expanded. The old books are still wonderful reads. The new books are also wonderful reads in a whole other way. Everyone wins.
Course correcting is about... drumroll correcting course, which implies continual, future movement. It's hopeful stuff. We were lucky enough to have Ursula K. Le Guin writing over a long lifetime, and thinking and growing over a long lifetime, and therefore her books only get better as time goes by. I rate her for that. She was able to grow, and her work grew with her.
