Welcome

 Welcome to The Carrier Bag, a podcast about the life, work, and influence of Ursula K. Le Guin, hosted by Stentor Danielson. Stay tuned for our first episode!

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Rocannon's World, Part IV

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/AXH8FtkJaHb Today we'll be looking at chapters seven, eight, and nine and the epilogue of Le Guin's first published novel, Rocannon's World , from 1966. Last time, we left Rocannon and his companions in the city of the Winged Ones, a previously unknown humanoid species that turns out to eat people. Raho has been killed. Rocannon runs away from the building where he saw them feeding, trying to figure out how he will rescue his friends. He runs into a small fuzzy creature that turns out to be capable of speech, which calls itself a Kiemhrir. The Kiemhrir help Rocannon find his remaining companions, summon their windsteeds, and escape from the city. The group retrieves their gear from their campsite and resumes their trek southward. Kyo reveals that the Fiia have stories about the Kiemhrir, but not the Winged Ones. He describes his own race as "half-people" who remember the good and forget the bad. Crossing the mountains, the grou...
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Folk Song from the Montayna Province, and An die Musik

 Welcome to the Carrier Bag, a podcast about the life, work, and influence of Ursula K. Le Guin. I'm your host, Stentor Danielson (they/them). In this episode I'll be talking about Le Guin's first two published works. "Folk Song from the Montayna Province" is a short poem published in the Fall 1959 issue of the Prairie Poet , and "An die Musik" is a short story published in 1961 in the Western Humanities Review . She was not paid for either of them, so they predate her career as a professional writer. They were both republished in the Library of America collection The Complete Orsinia , which is the easiest place to find them today. Both of these works are set in the first major fictional world that Le Guin created, the central European country of Orsinia. I'll have a lot more to say about Orsinia when we get to the publication of her story collection Orsinian Tales and her novel Malafrena . For now, we can say that Orsinia is a quasi-realist setti...
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Rocannon's World, Part III

  Today we'll be looking at chapters five and six of Le Guin's first published novel, Rocannon's World , from 1966. We begin with Yahan finding Rocannon being burned at the stake in Zgama's fortress. Yahan loosens the chains holding Rocannon and gives him a drink, but there are too many of Zgama's people around, and Rocannon is too weak, for them to make a break for it yet. Rocannon spends the following day preparing himself, then just as Zgama is about to escalate his torture, Rocannon breaks free. He intimidates his captors with his technological superiority and they allow him to walk out. Rocannon is rejoined by Yahan, who explains that after leaving Mogien, he had tried to join Zgama's people, believing them to be a free Olgiyor society. However, he was quickly disillusioned. But having abandoned his master Mogien, he has no way to reintegrate into the Angyar-ruled world either. So Rocannon offers to accept Yahan's pledge of service, giving him a place i...
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