Ursula K(roeber) Le Guin (1929 - )

Her Life:

Her father was the head of UC-Berkeley's Department of Anthropology, who published work on Native Americans. Le Guin grew up both in an academic atmosphere, but her summers she spent in a ranch in northern California. The family had also an East Coast home. When Le Guin was a child, her parents taught her about myths and legends from around the world. "My father studied real cultures and I make them up," she once said, "in a way, the same thing."

Her first submitted story, to Amazing Stories, was a science fiction story about time-travel. The story was not accepted - but on the other hand, she was eleven years old at the time.

In 1951 Le Guin receivied her B.A.from Radcliffe College and in 1952 got her master's degree in romance languages from Columbia University. She studied on a Fulbright scholarship in France, where she met Charles Le Guin, a historian. They married in 1953 and eventually settled in Portland, Oregon, where they rised their three children. The imaginary central European country, Orsinia, she created already as a young adult. Le Guin's other imaginary worlds include Earthea, Hainish, Orsinia, and the West Coast.

Le Guin wrote after the children went to bed and, when they got older, during their school hours, but initially her work met with little acceptance. Her poems were regularly published, but she couldn't find a market for her short stories or fantastical historical novels set in a fictional analogue of Czechoslovakia, a country she named Orsinia. She describes her earliest work as being "just a bit off," containing some o ddity or fantasy element that prevented editors from labeling her work, putting it in a literary or genre box.

She received love letters about her writing skills and style, but literary editors rejected her stories as "not quite right for us." Le Guin still maintains a dispute with critics and academics who insist only realistic fiction can be literary fiction.

In 1966, her first novel, Rocannon's World, was published. It is about a scientist who tries to save a colony from hostile alien invasion. Her first fantasy tale, 'April in Paris', was published in "Amazing Stories" in 1962. In the story figures from different historical periods travel to 15th-century Paris to meet and marry.

Her Books:

For a full list of her books, check out the Internet Book List

A world shared by three native humanoid races -- the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, elvish Fiia, and warrior clan, Liuar -- is suddenly invaded and conquered by a fleet of ships from the stars. Earth scientist Rocannon is on that world, and he sees his friends murdered and his spaceship destroyed. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this new world -- and finds that legends grow around him even as he fights.

The Earth colony of Landin has been stranded on Werel for ten years — and ten of Werel's years are over 600 terrestrial years, and the lonely and dwindling human settlement is beginning to feel the strain. Every winter — a season that lasts for 15 years — the Earthmen have neighbors: the humanoid hilfs, a nomadic people who only settle down for the cruel cold spell. The hilfs fear the Earthmen, whom they think of as witches and call the farborns. But hilfs and farborns have common enemies: the hordes of ravaging barbarians called gaals and eerie preying snow ghouls. Will they join forces or be annihilated?

Earth, like the rest of the Known Worlds, has fallen to the Shing. Scattered here and there, small groups of humans live in a state of semi-barbarism. They have lost the skills, science and knowledge that had been Earth's in the golden age of the League of Worlds, and whenever a colony of humans tries to rekindle the embers of a half-forgotten technology, the Shing, with their strange, mindlying power, crush them out. There is one man who can stand against the malign Shing, but he is an alien with amber eyes and must first prove to paranoid humanity that he himself is not a creature of the Shing.

Genly Ai is an emissary from the human galaxy to Winter, a lost, stray world. His mission is to bring the planet back into the fold of an evolving galactic civilization, but to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own culture and prejudices and those that he encounters. On a planet where people are of no gender--or both--this is a broad gulf indeed. The inventiveness and delicacy with which Le Guin portrays her alien world are not only unusual and inspiring, they are fundamental to almost all decent science fiction that has been written since.

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

On the planet Athshe, there is no word for war, there is no concept of murder, there is no language of hate. The world is one vast, green, gentle forest full of people who live between the world-time and the dream-time, who resolve their conflicts by means of ceremonial singing. Then the Terran League discovers Athshe's existence and a pattern of "colonization"-very similar to the exploitation of "primitive" cultures on Earth-begins to destroy the planet and its people; and, eventually, one young Athshean named Selver learns how to hate.

A collection of four linked novellas. Two planets - Werel, a slave-owning oligarchy and Yeowe, its colony - are destined for revolution after contact with the sophisticated Ekumen civilization. But one form of oppression can too easily give way to another, and so a new fight for equality begins.

There have been eighty requests to send an Observer into the hinterlands of the planet Aka to study the natives. Much to everyone's surprise, the eighty-first request is granted, and Observer Sutty is sent upriver to Okzat-Ozkat, a small city in the foothills of Rangma, to talk to the remnants in hiding of a cult practising a banned religion. On Aka, everything that was written in the old scripts has been destroyed; modern aural literature is all written to Corporation specifications. The Corporation expects Sutty to report back so the non-standardised folk stories and songs can be wiped out and the people "re-educated". But Sutty herself is in for an education she never imagined.

There is a wide range of stories that are included: from the delightful dargon-and-sorcery fantasy of "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names" (the only comparably charming dragons I can think of appear in some of the fables of Orson Scott Card) to the melancholic, existential "Things" and "The stars below" (where an astronomer whose observatory has been burnt down by a mob, ends up living in a mine where the sparkle of the minerals become "the stars below" for him). Many of the stories really make you think about deep social and ethical issues. And then there are the stories which can be just enjoyed for the sheer joy of reading them, like the dragon stories and the time-travel romance, "April in Paris". All in all, a must-read for any thinking person!

This collection of short fiction ranges from the everyday to the outer limits of experience, where the quantum uncertainties of space and time are resolved only in the depths of the human heart. Included are starships, musical instruments for funerals only, and faster-than-light communication.

Here are eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity. Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history. The first six tales in this spectacular volume are set in the author's signature world of the Ekumen, "my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows," as Le Guin describes it - a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness.

The island of Gont, a single mountain that lifts its peak a mile above the storm-racked Northeast Sea, is a land famous for wizards. From the towns in its high valleys and the ports on its dark narrow bays many a Gontishman has gone forth to serve the Lords of the Archipelago in their cities as wizard or mage, or, looking for adventure, to wander working magic from isle to isle of all Earthsea. Of these some say the greatest, and surely the greatest voyager, was the man called Sparrowhawk, who in his day became both dragonlord and Archmage. His life is told of in the Deed of Ged and in many songs, but this is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made.

When young Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away -- home, family, possessions, even her name. For she is now Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the ominous Tombs of Atuan. While she is learning her way through the dark labyrinth, a young wizard, Ged, comes to steal the Tombs' greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe. But Ged also brings with him the light of magic, and together, he and Tenar escape from the darkness that has become her domain.

Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: the world and its wizards are losing their magic. Despite being wearied with age, Ged Sparrowhawk -- Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord -- embarks on a daring, treacherous journey, accompanied by Enlad's young Prince Arren, to discover the reasons behind this devastating pattern of loss. Together they will sail to the farthest reaches of their world -- even beyond the realm of death -- as they seek to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.

In Tehanu , LeGuin spins a bittersweet tale of Tenar and Ged, familiar characters from the classic Earthsea trilogy. Tenar, now a widow facing obscurity and loneliness, rescues a badly burned girl from her abusive parents. The girl, it turns out, will be an important power in the new age dawning on Earthsea. Ged, now broken, is learning how to live with the great loss he suffered at the end of the trilogy. Tenar's struggle to protect and nurture a defenseless child and Ged's slow recovery make painful but thrilling reading. Sharply defined characterizations give rich resonance to Tehanu 's themes of aging, feminism and child abuse as well as its emotional chords of grief and l oss. Tehanu is a heartbreaking farewell to a world that is passing, and is full of tantalizing hints of the new world to come. Fans of the Earthsea trilogy will be deeply moved.

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.

The sorcerer Alder fears sleep. He dreams of the land of death, of his wife who died young and longs to return to him so much that she kissed him across the low stone wall that separates our world from the Dry Land-where the grass is withered, the stars never move, and lovers pass without knowing each other. The dead are pulling Alder to them at night. Through him they may free themselves and invade Earthsea.

Alder seeks advice from Ged, once Archmage. Ged tells him to go to Tenar, Tehanu, and the young king at Havnor. They are joined by amber-eyed Irian, a fierce dragon able to assume the shape of a woman. The threat can be confronted only in the Immanent Grove on Roke, the holiest place in the world and there the king, hero, sage, wizard, and dragon make a last stand.

"The Word of Unbinding", 1975 (in The Wind's Twelve Quarters) (Originally published in the January 1964 issue of Fantastic.)
"The Rule of Names", 1975 (in The Wind's Twelve Quarters)
"Dragonfly" (in Legends, ed. Robert Silverberg; also in Tales from Earthsea)
Tales from Earthsea, short story collection, 2001 (winner of Endeavour Award)

Down an alley in a dumpster, Mrs. Jane Tabby gives birth to four kittens. But these are no ordinary offspringeach has a pair of wings. Although Mrs. Tabby is unperturbed by her kittens' appearance, her neighbors are not so charitable; when the kittens are old enough to fly, Mrs. Tabby sends her children out into the world. Because both winged and four-footed creatures mistrust them, the kittens have trouble finding a place to live, but eventually discover a loving home. LeGuin, author of the distinguished Earthsea Trilogy and other books, has written a small gem of a book, with convincing and intriguing characters. Dark watercolor etchings by Schindler further convey the plight of these airborne felines and their seeking of a home.

James and Harriet, the youngest and most adventurous of four winged cats, return from the country refuge that they found in Catwings (Orchard, 1988) to the inner-city slum where they were born, to see their mother again. They find a frightened winged kitten before finding their mother, the genteel Mrs. Jane Tabby. She is delighted to see her grown children and grateful that they've brought back her lost kitten. She insists that they take the kitten to safety in the country. Although characterization is slight, there is enough to win readers' sympathy. This gently appealing story will mean more to those who enjoyed the more vigorous first book, but it is hard to resist a story that brings a terrified, lonely kitten home to a loving family.

The third installment in the saga introduces a kitten whose family thinks he is so remarkable that they call him "Wonderful Alexander." One morning, he sets out to explore the world. But soon he finds himself stuck in a tree, and is rescued by Jane, a black kitten with wings. She leads him to her home, and there he meets the other Catwings. His rescuer can only say the words "Me" and, when she's frightened, "Hate." (Readers of Catwings Return [Orchard, 1989] will recall that she had a terrifying experience that left her mute.) Alexander is adopted by the Catwings' human caretaker and finds himself mulling over how to thank Jane for bringing him his good fortune. When he helps her overcome her fear of speaking, all agree that he is truly wonderful. Alexander's appearance in this charming series does more than tie up the loose threads of Jane's muteness; it also sets the stage for further adventures.

Jane, the youngest of the Catwings felines, hungers for adventure. Life on the farm is just too boring, so she takes flight, ignoring her siblings' warnings that the world is dangerous. Jane enjoys her journey though she finds life away from home less than hospitable. One day she flies through a window into the apartment of a man who feeds her. But, as kind as he is to her, he also sees an opportunity to profit from her unique anatomy. He names her Miss Mystery and soon Jane is a television star-trapped indoors, surrounded by cameras and strangers. Unhappy, she eventually escapes and searches for her mother, who lives in the city. Once found, she and her mother live with a kind old woman who understands Jane's need for a home as well as her freedom.

Scattered among poor, desolate farms, the clans of the Uplands possess gifts. Wondrous gifts: the ability--with a glance, a gesture, a word--to summon animals, bring forth fire, move the land. Fearsome gifts: They can twist a limb, chain a mind, inflict a wasting illness. The Uplanders live in constant fear that one family might unleash its gift against another. Two young people, friends since childhood, decide not to use their gifts. One, a girl, refuses to bring animals to their death in the hunt. The other, a boy, wears a blindfold lest his eyes and his anger kill.

In this beautifully crafted story, Ursula K. Le Guin writes of the proud cruelty of power, of how hard it is to grow up, and of how much harder still it is to find, in the world's darkness, gifts of light.

Memer is a child of rape; when the Alds took the beautiful city of Ansul, they desecrated or destroyed everything of beauty. The Waylord they imprisoned and tortured for years until finally he is freed to return to his home. Though crippled, he is not destroyed. His life still has purpose. Memer is the daughter of his House, the daughter of his heart. The Alds, a people who love war, cannot and will not read: they believe that in words lie demons that will destroy the world. All the city's libraries, the great treasure trove of knowledge of ages past, are burned, except for those few volumes secreted in the Waylord's hidden room. But times are changing. Gry Barre of Roddmant and Orrec Caspro of Caspromant have arrived in the city. Orrec is a story-teller, the most famous of all: he has the gift of making. His wife Gry's gift is that of calling; she walks with a half lion who both frightens and fascinates the Alds. This is Memer's story, and Gry's and Orrec's, and it is the story of a conquered people craving freedom.

Young Gav can remember the page of a book after seeing it once, and, inexplicably, he sometimes “remembers” things that are going to happen in the future. As a loyal slave, he must keep these powers secret, but when a terrible tragedy occurs, Gav, blinded by grief, flees the only world he has ever known. And in what becomes a treacherous journey for freedom, Gav's greatest test of all is facing his powers so that he can come to understand himself and finally find a true home.

This third book in the Annals of the Western Shore series is an epic story of survival and self-discovery that speaks to the power of new beginnings, and most importantly, of hope.