Ursula K. Le Guin recently passed away. Lots of people have mentioned how she touched their lives with her prose fiction, her advice, her politics, and many other things. Like so many others, I’m saddened at her death, but glad that she got to do so much good in her time. And like so many others, I want to share a couple ways she touched me.

A Wizard of Earthsea was one of the biggest influences on my aesthetic preferences for fantasy. I think I read a lot of other fantasy fiction before I encountered it, but when I finally did, something clicked. That stark but flavorful style is pretty much exactly what I like in fantasy, both when I read it and when I create it. “Mysterious, powerful and rare” describes much of the magic systems she created there; and no wonder (cause, or effect?), that’s also how I like magic in RPGs to be. I’ve always wanted to create a name-based magic system for a game, perhaps B&C, but never gotten around to it. That desire comes directly from reading A Wizard of Earthsea. If I’ve been lucky, some of the aesthetics of Earthsea have rubbed off on B&C.

Maybe an even bigger influence on me, though, is Always Coming Home. Not enough people know about this book. It’s always a pleasure when I meet someone who likes it. Always Coming Home is a great, deeply flavorful mix of fiction and fictional nonfiction. Recipes, songs, myths… I think it was the first time I’d ever seen plot and thoroughgoing exposition mixed so evenly, and so well. I’d seen the genre before, but I think it was one of the first examples that reveled in being fictional nonfiction. Always Coming Home gives the worldbuilding-sans-plot equal footing with the plot; really, in some ways, the worldbuilding is the focus, not the plot. That was kind of mind-blowing to experience. And of course the worldbuilding itself is lovely, with a very lived-in feel, yet also great amounts of wonder. Like my other favorite books, Always Coming Home inspired a lot of ideas to percolate.

Goodbye, Ursula. You will definitely be missed.