
Where is the place to suggest a book for a bonus episode? I think Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky would be a really interesting read.
As long as everyone is suggesting bonusodes, you mentioned The City and The City, so…
@austin mentioned Le Guin's translation of the Tao Te Ching at the start; I think the moral he talked about at the end maps somewhat plausibly to the Taoist concept of Wu Wei, and that might not be a coincidence? There are definitely bits of clear Taoist influence in Le Guin's later books, not sure how early it shows up.
(And when you get to the fifth book, one of the stories has this bad wizard who loves cinnabar; that one I view as Le Guin taking a shot at Taoist alchemists who could be (unfairly, but still) characterized as saying "the Tao Te Ching and other Taoist canon books are all metaphors about Qi and building your Dantian and so forth, and your Dantian is the field of cinnabar (Dan = cinnabar) and so you should make a pill out of that to become immortal".)
Reading it for the first time and very excited to have y'all as a companion podcast!