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Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula K. Le Guin at an informal bookstore Q&A session, July 2004

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929) is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books and essays, and is best known for her science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.

First published in the 1960s, she is now regarded as one of the best modern science fiction and fantasy authors, noted for her exemplary style and for her exploration of Taoist, anarchist, feminist, psychological and sociological themes. She has received several Hugo and Nebula awards, and was awarded the Gandalf Grand Master award in 1979 and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award in 2003.

In 1953, she married historian Charles A. Le Guin. Le Guin has lived in Portland, Oregon, since 1958. She is the daughter of the anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kroeber. She has at least three children and three grand-children.

Biography

Le Guin was born and raised in Berkeley, California. She became interested in literature when she was very young. At the age of eleven she submitted her first story to the magazine Astounding Science Fiction (it was rejected).

She received her B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa) from Radcliffe College in 1951, and M.A. from Columbia University in 1952. She later studied in France, where she met her husband, Charles Le Guin. Her earliest writings (little was published at the time, but some was published in adapted form much later in Orsinian Tales and Malafrena), were non-fantastic stories of imaginary countries. Searching for a publishable way to express her interests, she returned to her early interest in science fiction and began to be published regularly in the early 1960s. She became famous after the publication of her 1969 novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards.

Much of Le Guin's science fiction places a strong emphasis on the social sciences, including sociology and anthropology, thus placing it in the subcategory known as soft science fiction. Her writing often makes use of unusual alien cultures to convey a message about our own culture; one example is the exploration of sexual identity through the hermaphroditic race in The Left Hand of Darkness.

A number of Le Guin's science fiction works, including her award-winning novels The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, are set in a future, post-Imperial galactic civilization loosely connected by a co-operative body known as the Ekumen. The Ekumen is very specifically not in any sense a governing body, but rather a conduit for the exchange of information, goods, and mutual cultural understanding.

A notable feature of her conception that sets her work apart from much of mainstream 'hard' science fiction is that neither the old Empire nor the Ekumen possesses faster-than-light travel, although the politically progressive Ekumen thrives where the old Empire has failed mainly because it possesses a means of instantaneous interstellar communication, through a device called the ansible, the invention and consequences of which form the main plot of The Dispossessed.

In this loose background scenario, the human species originated on the planet Hain in the distant past, near the galactic center. A Galactic Empire had expanded far out across the galaxy over many millennia but, because it lacked faster-than-light (FTL) travel or communication, the Empire was finally stretched beyond its limits by the vast distances involved and it collapses catastrophically.

Thousands of years pass, during which time the populations of many outlying planets become so isolated from the central galactic civilisation that they lose all knowledge of their origins, reverting to more archaic forms of civilisation and technology.

A number of Le Guin's works including The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World Is Forest deal with the consequences of the arrival of Ekumen envoys (known as "mobiles") on these remote planets and the culture shock that ensues.

Technique

Le Guin is known for her ability to create believable worlds populated by strongly sympathetic characters (regardless of whether they are technically 'human'). Le Guin's worlds are made believable by the attention she pays to the ordinary actions and transactions of everyday life. For example in 'Tehanu' it is central to the story that the main characters are concerned with the everyday business of looking after animals, tending gardens and doing domestic chores. Her works often explore political and cultural themes from a very "un-Earthly" perspective. Le Guin has also written fiction set much closer to home; many of her short stories are set in our world in the present or the near future.

Fiction

Earthsea (fantasy)

The Earthsea novels

Note: Tales from Earthsea fits between Tehanu and The Other Wind, according to this important note on Le Guin's website.

The Earthsea short stories

Ekumen (science fiction)

Novels of the Ekumen

Short stories from the Ekumen

  • Dowry of the Angyar (1964) - appears as Semley's Necklace in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)
  • Winter's King (1969) - appears in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)
  • Vaster Than Empires and More Slow (1971) - appears in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)
  • The Day Before the Revolution (1974) - appears in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)
  • The Shobies' Story (1990) - appears in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)
  • Dancing to Ganam (1993) - appears in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)
  • Another Story OR A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) - appears in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)
  • The Matter of Seggri (1994) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award)
  • Unchosen Love (1994) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002)
  • Solitude (1994) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) (winner of the Nebula Award)
  • Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995) (Four Stories of the Ekumen)
  • Coming of Age in Karhide (1995) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002)
  • Mountain Ways (1996) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award)
  • Old Music and the Slave Women (1999) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002)

Miscellaneous novels and story cycles

Short story collections

Books for children and young adults

The Catwings Collection

  • Catwings, 1988
  • Catwings Return, 1989
  • Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, 1994
  • Jane on Her Own, 1999

Gifts Voices Powers (not written yet)

Other books for children and young adults

  • Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, 1976, ISBN 0152052089
  • Leese Webster, 1979, ISBN 0689307152
  • The Beginning Place, 1981, 0553262823
  • Solomon Leviathan's Nine Hundred and Thirty-First Trip Around the World, 1984, ISBN 0399214917
  • A Visit from Dr. Katz, 1988, ISBN 0689313322
  • Fire and Stone, 1989, ISBN 0689314086
  • Fish Soup, 1992, ISBN 0689317336
  • A Ride on the Red Mare's Back, 1992, ISBN 0531070794
  • Tom Mouse, 2002, ISBN 0761315993

Nonfiction

Prose

Poetry

  • Wild Angels, 1975
  • Hard Words and Other Poems, 1981
  • Wild Oats and Fireweed, 1988
  • Going Out with Peacocks and Other Poems, 1994
  • Sixty Odd: New Poems, 1999
  • Incredible Good Fortune, 2006

Translations and Renditions

See also: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas

Le Guin is a prolific author and has published many works that are not listed here. Many works were originally published in science fiction literary magazines. Those that have not since been anthologized have fallen into obscurity.

Adaptations to film and television

Despite her many awards and her considerable popularity, Le Guin is also notable as one of the few major science fiction writers of her generation whose major SF and Fantasy works have not as yet been widely adapted for film or television. For television, The Lathe of Heaven has been adapted twice, in 1980 by thirteen/WNET New York, with her own participation, and in 2002 by the A&E Network; The Earthsea trilogy was adapted as a TV miniseries in 2004 by the Sci Fi Channel but was generally very poorly reviewed and received, including by LeGuin herself, who reports that she was "cut out of the process". A cinema adaptation of Earthsea is in production at Studio Ghibli (スタジオジブリ), under the direction of Goro Miyazaki (宮崎吾郎, Miyazaki Gorō), son of renowned anime director Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎駿, Miyazaki Hayao); Gedo Senki: Tales from Earthsea (ゲド戦記, Gedo Senki) is slated for Japanese release in July 2006. [1]

Pronunciation of her surname

In a February 2004 on-line Q&A session organized by The Guardian, Le Guin was asked whether she pronounced her surname the French way (Template:IPA2) or as most of her English-speaking fans did (Template:IPA2). Her reply was Taoist in its duality: "Een zees country we say Luh Gwinn. En France nous disons Le Guin, comme le vin ou le gain; et en Bretagne - c'est un nom breton - je crois que c'est encore Luh Gwinn. (Like Gwyn in Welsh - I think it's the same word.)" [2]

Additional awards

Le Guin received the Library of Congress Living Legends award in the "Writers and Artists" category in April 2000 for her significant contributions to America's cultural heritage.

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