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Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929) is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, most notably in the fantasy and science fiction genres. First published in the 1960s, her works explore Taoist, anarchist, ethnographic, feminist, psychological and sociological themes.
Awards
Le Guin 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.
Discussion
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Quotations
If civilization has an opposite, it is war.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
It is good to have an end to journey towards, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
There are things that outweigh comfort, unless one is an old woman or a cat.
The Left Hand of Darkness Chapter 5. The Domestication of Hunch (1969)
To hear, one must be silent.
Spoken by Ogion, A Wizard of Earthsea
To light a candle is to cast a shadow..
Spoken by the Master Hand, A Wizard of Earthsea
Encyclopedia
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929) is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, most notably in the fantasy and science fiction genres. First published in the 1960s, her works explore Taoist, anarchist, ethnographic, feminist, psychological and sociological themes.
Awards
Le Guin 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. She has received eighteen Locus Awards for her fiction, more than any other author. Her novel The Farthest Shore won the National Book Award for Children's Books in 1973.
Le Guin was the Professional Guest of Honor at the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, Australia. She 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. In 2004, Le Guin was the recipient of the Association for Library Service to Children's May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award and the Margaret Edwards Award. She was honored by The Washington Center for the Book for her distinguished body of work with the Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers on 18 October 2006. Robert Heinlein in part dedicated his 1982 novel Friday to Le Guin.
Biography
Le Guin was born and raised in Berkeley, California, the daughter of anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and writer Theodora Kroeber. In 1901 Le Guin's father earned the first Ph.D. in anthropology in the United States from Columbia University and went on to found the second department, at the University of California at Berkeley. Theodora Kroeber's biography of her husband, Alfred Kroeber: A Personal Configuration, is a good source for Le Guin's early years and for the biographical elements in her late works, especially her interest in social anthropology.
Le Guin 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, historian Charles Le Guin. They were married in 1953.
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. Her earliest writings, some of which she adapted to include 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 received wide recognition for her novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1970.
In later years, Le Guin did some work in film and audio. She contributed to The Lathe of Heaven, a 1979 PBS Film based on her novel of the same name. In 1985, she collaborated with avant-garde composer David Bedford on the libretto of Rigel 9, a space opera.
Le Guin has lived in Portland, Oregon, since 1958. She has three children and four grandchildren.
Themes
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 alien cultures to convey a message about human culture in general. An example is the exploration of sexual identity through an androgynous race in The Left Hand of Darkness. Such themes place her work in the category of feminist science fiction. Her works are also often concerned with ecological issues.
Le Guin makes use, in her writing, of 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. While she has often used otherworldly perspectives to explore political and cultural themes, she has also written fiction set much closer to home; many of her short stories are set in our world in the present or near future.
Several of Le Guin's science fiction works, including her novels The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness, belong to her Hainish Cycle, which details a future, galactic civilization loosely connected by a organizational body known as the Ekumen. Many of these works deal with the consequences of contact between different worlds and cultures. The Ekumen serves as a framework in which to stage these interactions. For example, the novels The Left Hand of Darkness and The Telling deal with the consequences of the arrival of Ekumen envoys (known as "mobiles") on remote planets and the culture shock that ensues.
Unlike those in much mainstream hard science fiction, none of the civilizations Le Guin depicts possess reliable faster-than-light travel. Instead, Le Guin created the ansible, a device that allows instantaneous communication over any distance. The term and concept have been subsequently borrowed by several other well-known authors.
Adaptations of her work
Few of Le Guin's major works have yet been adapted to film or television. Her 1971 novel The Lathe of Heaven has been adapted twice. First, in 1980 by thirteen/WNET New York, with her own participation, and again in 2002 by the A&E Network.
In the early 1980s animator and director Hayao Miyazaki asked permission to create an animated adaptation of Earthsea. However, Le Guin, who was unfamiliar with his work and anime in general, turned down the offer. Several years later, after seeing My Neighbour Totoro, she reconsidered her refusal, believing that if anyone should be allowed to direct an Earthsea film, it should be Hayao Miyazaki. Eventually The third and fourth Earthsea books were used as the basis of the 2005 animated film . The film, however, was directed by Miyazaki's son, Goro, rather than Hayao Miyazaki himself, and Le Guin has expressed mixed feelings toward it.
In 2004 the Sci Fi Channel adapted the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy as the miniseries Legend of Earthsea. Le Guin says that she was "cut out of the process" of this adaptation and that the miniseries was a "far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned." As a result of copyright issues stemming from miniseries, the animated film cannot be released in the United States until 2009.
In the 1980s, the CBC Radio anthology program 'Vanishing Point' adapted 'The Dispossessed' into a series of six 30 minute episodes and 'The Word for World Is Forest' as a series of three 30 minute episodes.
Fiction
Note: The short story "Dragonfly" from Tales from Earthsea, 2001, is intended to fit in between Tehanu and The Other Wind and, according to Le Guin, is "an important bridge in the series as a whole".
The Earthsea short stories
Hainish Cycle (science fiction)
The Hainish Cycle novels
- Rocannon's World, 1966
- Planet of Exile, 1966
- City of Illusions, 1967
- The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969 (winner of the Hugo Award and Nebula Award)
- The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, 1974 (winner of the Hugo Award and Nebula Award)
- The Word for World is Forest, 1976 (winner of the Hugo Award)
- Four Ways to Forgiveness, 1995 (Four Stories of the Ekumen)
- Worlds of Exile and Illusion, 1996 (omnibus of Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions)
- The Telling, 2000 (winner of Endeavour Award)
The Hainish Cycle short stories
- "Dowry of the Angyar", 1964 (appears as "Semley's Necklace" in The Wind's Twelve Quarters; also used as the prologue of Rocannon's World)
- "Winter's King", 1969 (in The Wind's Twelve Quarters)
- "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow", 1971 (in The Wind's Twelve Quarters)
- "The Day Before the Revolution", 1974 (in The Wind's Twelve Quarters; winner of the Nebula Award and Locus Award)
- "The Shobies' Story", 1990 (in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea)
- "Dancing to Ganam", 1993 (in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea)
- "Another Story OR A Fisherman of the Inland Sea", 1994 (in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea)
- "The Matter of Seggri", 1994 (in The Birthday of the World; winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award)
- "Unchosen Love", 1994 (in The Birthday of the World)
- "Solitude", 1994 (in The Birthday of the World; winner of the Nebula Award)
- "Coming of Age in Karhide", 1995 (in The Birthday of the World)
- "Mountain Ways", 1996 (in The Birthday of the World; winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award)
- "Old Music and the Slave Women", 1999 (in The Birthday of the World)
Miscellaneous novels and story cycles
Note: Le Guin has said that The Eye of the Heron might form part of the Hainish cycle. The other tales are unconnected with any of her other works, except that Malafrena takes place in the same realistic-but-imagined part of Europe as Orsinian Tales.
Short story collections
- The Wind's Twelve Quarters, 1975
- Orsinian Tales, 1976
- The Compass Rose, 1982
- Buffalo Gals, and Other Animal Presences, 1987
- Searoad, 1991
- A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, 1994
- Unlocking the Air and Other Stories, 1996
- The Birthday of the World, 2002, ISBN
- Changing Planes, 2003, ISBN
Books for children and young adults
- Gifts, 2004
- Voices, 2006
- Powers, 2007
Other books for children and young adults
- Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, 1976, ISBN 0-15-205208-9
- Leese Webster, 1979, ISBN 0-689-30715-2
- Solomon Leviathan's Nine Hundred and Thirty-First Trip Around the World, 1984, ISBN 0-399-21491-7
- A Visit from Dr. Katz, 1988, ISBN 0-689-31332-2
- Fire and Stone, 1989, ISBN 0-689-31408-6
- Fish Soup, 1992, ISBN 0-689-31733-6
- A Ride on the Red Mare's Back, 1992, ISBN 0-531-07079-4
- Tom Mouse, 2002, ISBN 0-7613-1599-3
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
- Lao Tzu : Tao Te Ching, a Book about the Way & the Power of the Way, 1997 (a rendition and commentary) ISBN 1-57062-333-3
- Kalpa Imperial, 2003, from Angélica Gorodischer's Spanish original.
- Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral, from Gabriela Mistral's Spanish originals.
- 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.
Scholarship
- Brown, Joanne, & St. Clair, Nancy, Declarations of Independence: Empowered Girls in Young Adult Literature, 1990–2001 (Lanham, MD, & London: The Scarecrow Press, 2002 [Scarecrow Studies in Young Adult Literature, No. 7])
- Cart, Michael, From Romance to Realism: 50 Years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature (New York: HarperCollins, 1996)
- Davis, Laurence & Peter Stillman, eds, The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" (New York: Lexington Books, 2005)
- Erlich, Richard D. Coyote's Song: The Teaching Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). Digital publication of the Science Fiction Research Association (2001 f.):
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- Egoff, Sheila, Stubbs, G. T., & Ashley, L. F., eds, Only Connect: Readings on Children’s Literature (Toronto & New York: Oxford University Press, 1969; 2nd ed., 1980; 3rd ed., 1996)
- Egoff, Sheila A., Worlds Within: Children’s Fantasy from the Middle Ages to Today (Chicago & London: American Library Association, 1988)
- Lehr, Susan, ed., Battling Dragons: Issues and Controversy in Children’s Literature (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995)
- Lennard, John, Of Modern Dragons and other essays on Genre Fiction (Tirril: Humanities-Ebooks, 2007)
- Reginald, Robert, & Slusser, George, eds, Zephyr and Boreas: Winds of Change in the Fictions of Ursula K. Le Guin (San Bernadino, CA: Borgo Press, 1997)
- Rochelle, Warren G., Communities of the Heart: The Rhetoric of Myth in the Fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001)
- Sullivan III, C. W., ed., Young Adult Science Fiction (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999 [Contributions to the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy 79])
- Trites, Roberta Seelinger, Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000)
- Wayne, Kathryn Ross, Redefining Moral Education: Life, Le Guin, and Language (Lanham, MD: Austin & Winfield, 1995)
- White, Donna R., Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Critics (Ontario: Camden House, 1998 [Literary Criticism in Perspective])
External links
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- , April 22, 2008, Powell's City of Books, Portland, Oregon.
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- conducted by Steve Lafreniere - January 2009
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