Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin at an informal bookstore Q&A session, July 2004
Born: October 21, 1929
Berkeley, California, United States
Occupation: Novelist
Nationality: American
Genres: Science fiction, fantasy
Website: http://www.ursulakleguin.com

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin [ˈɝsələ ˈkʁø:bɐ ləˈgɛ̃] (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, 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.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Le Guin was born and raised in Berkeley, California, the daughter of the anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kroeber. 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, historian Charles Le Guin. They were married in 1953.

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.

Le Guin has lived in Portland, Oregon since 1958. She has three children and four grandchildren.

[edit] 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 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, which forms an important plank in the canon of feminist science fiction.

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. Novels such as The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest, 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.

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.

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 traditional faster-than-light travel (the Ekumen are developing "churten" technology, a form of instantaneous 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 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 collapsed catastrophically. Thousands of years passed, during which time the populations of many outlying planets became so isolated from the central galactic civilization that they lost all knowledge of their origins, reverting to more archaic forms of civilization and technology.

[edit] Fiction

[edit] Earthsea (fantasy)

[edit] The Earthsea novels

Note: The story Dragonfly from Tales from Earthsea fits between Tehanu and The Other Wind and is "an important bridge in the series as a whole" according to Le Guin in this note on her website.

[edit] The Earthsea short stories

[edit] Ekumen (science fiction)

[edit] Novels of the Hainish Cycle

[edit] 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) - in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)
  • Vaster Than Empires and More Slow (1971) - in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)
  • The Day Before the Revolution (1974) - in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) (winner of the Nebula Award and Locus Award)
  • The Shobies' Story (1990) - in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)
  • Dancing to Ganam (1993) - in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)
  • Another Story OR A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) - in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994)
  • The Matter of Seggri (1994) - in The Birthday of the World (2002) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award)
  • Unchosen Love (1994) - in The Birthday of the World (2002)
  • Solitude (1994) - in The Birthday of the World (2002) (winner of the Nebula Award)
  • Coming of Age in Karhide (1995) - in The Birthday of the World (2002)
  • Mountain Ways (1996) - in The Birthday of the World (2002) (winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award)
  • Old Music and the Slave Women (1999) - in The Birthday of the World (2002)

[edit] Miscellaneous novels and story cycles

[edit] Short story collections

[edit] Books for children and young adults

[edit] The Catwings Collection

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

[edit] The Western Shore

  • Gifts, 2004
  • Voices, 2006
  • Powers, (not written yet)

[edit] Other books for children and young adults

[edit] Nonfiction

[edit] Prose

  • The Language of the Night, 1979, revised edition 1992
  • Dancing at the Edge of the World, 1989
  • Steering the Craft, 1998 (about writing)
  • The Wave in the Mind, 2004

[edit] 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

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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; while the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy were adapted into the miniseries Legend of Earthsea in 2004 by the Sci Fi Channel. This "adaptation" was extremely poorly received by both readers of the books and LeGuin herself, who reports that she was "cut out of the process".

The animated feature film Tales from Earthsea (ゲド戦記 Gedo Senki?), based on characters and events from the 3rd and 4th Earthsea books, was produced by Studio Ghibli (スタジオジブリ?) in 2005 under the direction of Miyazaki Gorō. Le Guin was generally disappointed with the film, if not as outrightly disapproving as she been of the Sci Fi miniseries, as both adaptations added major characters and events which she felt were unfaithful to her work in terms of both content and spirit. Most of all, she was saddened that Goro's father Miyazaki Hayao missed his chance to direct an Earthsea film. (The elder Miyazaki had asked permission to create an Earthsea adaptation back in the early 1980s, but Le Guin, not knowing his work, or indeed animé in general, turned him down. After viewing My Neighbour Totoro, she then came to the idea that if anyone should be allowed to direct an Earthsea film, it should be Miyazaki Hayao.)[1]

One of Le Guin's best-known novels, The Left Hand of Darkness, is being developed by Zoetrope production as a feature film to be released in 2008.

[edit] 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.

Le Guin was honored by The Washington Center for the Book for her distinguished body of work with the Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers October of 2006.

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:


Persondata
NAME Le Guin, Ursula K.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Le Guin, Ursula Kroeber
SHORT DESCRIPTION American novelist
DATE OF BIRTH October 21, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Berkeley, California, United States
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
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