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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
Ursula K. Le Guin at an informal bookstore Q&A session, July 2004
Born (1929-10-21) October 21, 1929 (age 94)
Berkeley, California, United States
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican
GenreScience fiction, fantasy
Website
http://www.ursulakleguin.com

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin [/ˈɝsjulə ˈkɹoʊbɚ ləˈgwɪn/] (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.

She was first published in the 1960s. Her works explore Taoist, anarchist, ethnographic, 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. Her novel The Farthest Shore won the National Book Award for Children in 1972.

Biography

Le Guin was born and raised in Berkeley, California, the daughter of the anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber and the writer Theodora Kroeber. Her father was granted the first Ph.D. in Anthropology in the United States in 1901 (Columbia University). Her mother's biography of Alfred Kroeber, 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.

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.

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 (little published at the time, but some appeared 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.

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.[1] 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 limb in the canon of feminist science fiction,[2] and additionally societal/anthropological/historical assumptions that transcend feminism are examined brilliantly. Her works also make strong ecological statements.

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 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 creates 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. Primarily, her works can be seen as anthropological. They examine what humans do on Earth or off. Her interactions between characters are incredibly sympathetic to human expression from the myriad "un-Earthly" perspectives she creates, and explore political and cultural themes. 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 address the main plot of many stories of the Ekumen. "Churten" technology's conception is covered in the novel The Dispossessed, and it's development on Hain and O explored in the stories The Shobies' Story, Dancing to Ganam, and Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea from A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. "Churten" technology's practical use, however, becomes complicated because with it the normal laws of time and space become entwined with human consciousness. In a "churten" field, reality itself warps as consciousness perceives it in a way that makes it very difficult to travel easily instantaneously throughout the universe without consequence to time and perception. The only practical means of instantaneous interstellar travel is through the non-material ansible message transmissions, which play a key role in most of the Hainish Cycle works.

A remarkable thematic element to the Hainish Cycle novels and stories is in relation to the Ekumen's "Mobiles," who give up their connections to their home planets in order to travel in time-dilation (a few days pass for them on board their space ships while decades pass on both the worlds they are leaving behind and on the worlds they are heading towards). Generations pass where they left and are traveling to as they travel, their loved ones long gone back home when they arrive. This dynamic of loneliness creates an incredible pathos for the author's characters (often the protagonist), as they deal with leaving behind all they know and cultures they often do not expect to arrive to.

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, and in some cases developing significant evolutionary differences.

Fiction

Earthsea (fantasy)

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.

The Earthsea short stories

Hainish Cycle (science fiction)

Novels

Short stories from the Hainish Cycle

  • 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)

Miscellaneous novels and story cycles

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

Books for children and young adults

The Catwings Collection

The Western Shore

  • Gifts, 2004
  • Voices, 2006
  • Powers, (September 1, 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
  • The Beginning Place, 1980, 0553262823
  • 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

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.[citation needed]

Adaptations to film and television

Despite her many awards and her considerable popularity, Le Guin's 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 Gorō Miyazaki. Le Guin was generally disappointed with the film, if not as outrightly disapproving as she been of the Sci Fi Channel 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 Hayao Miyazaki 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 anime 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 Hayao Miyazaki.)[3]

Additional awards

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. 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 in October of 2006.

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)
  • 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])

References

  1. ^ Charlotte Spivack, "'Only in Dying, Life': The Dynamics of Old Age in the Fiction of Ursula Le Guin," Modern Language Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Summer, 1984), pp. 43-53
  2. ^ Marilyn Strathern, "Gender as It Might Be: A Review Article," RAIN, No. 28. (Oct., 1978), pp. 4-7.
  3. ^ Ursula K. LeGuin, "Gedo Senki"
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