Ursula Le Guin conjured new worlds and and lay them out before my mind's eye -- but that's not what made her special. Many writers have done that. What she could do -- almost uniquely -- was to conjure a new mind's eye. She understood that the world exists at the point of perception, so she built her worlds out of perception itself.
In her 1994 short story, "Solitude" (collected in "The Birthday of the World"), she tells the story of a culture whose world-view is virtually as opposite to my own as it is possible to be. And she made me believe it. To this day, I can feel the pull of that world-view. It's like being haunted by an alien soul. It's still not my world-view -- not remotely -- but being able to cohabitate with such a foreign consciousness feels... valuable. It gives me awareness that my own way of perception is just of many possible ways of perception -- not as a intellectual conceit, but as a visceral, lived understanding.
Thank you for this, Ursula. I am infinitely grateful.