Ursula Le Guin 1929 - 2018

For tweens of a certain stripe, she was the way into more problematically interesting fictive worlds than most of those lauded white-guy authors had to offer -- Earthsea could have been more of the Tolkienesque same, but she made magic a force with consequences as opposed to just another weapon to throw at some menace lumbering in your direction. And that was only the beginning of a canon built on hashing out thorny questions in abstract, one which will no doubt be much-revisited in the coming days. Meantime, NYT obit here.