Ursula K. LeGuin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ['ɜrsələ ˈkroʊbər ləˈgwɪn] (Berkeley, California, October 21, 1929-Portland, Oregon, January 22, 2018) was an American author known mainly for her works of speculative fiction and, especially, for works of fantastic literature set in the world. fictional Earthsea, as well as the science fiction series of the Ekumen federation. She published her first work in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, with more than twenty novels and over one hundred short stories, as well as poetry, essays, literary criticism, translations, and children's books.

She was the daughter of writer Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred Kroeber. After earning a master's degree in French, she began her doctoral studies, but abandoned them after her 1953 marriage to historian Charles Le Guin. He began writing full-time in the late 1950s and achieved great critical and commercial success with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The left hand of darkness (The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969), described by the American critic Harold Bloom as his masterpieces. With The left hand of la oscuridad won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the first woman to win both awards.

Cultural anthropology, Taoism, anarchism, feminism, and the writings of Carl Jung strongly influenced his work. Many of his stories used anthropologists or cultural observers as protagonists, and it is possible to identify Taoist ideas about balance and harmony in some of his works. He often subverted some typical speculative fiction clichés, such as the use of dark-skinned protagonists in Earthsea, and also used unusual stylistic or structural devices in some of his books, such as the experimental work The eternal return home (Always Coming Home, 1985). Social and political themes, such as gender, sexuality, and coming of age, figured prominently in his work, and he explored alternative political structures in many stories, such as the parable "Those who move away from Omelas" (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, 1973) and the utopian novel The Dispossessed (The Dispossessed, 1974).

His work was enormously influential in the field of speculative fiction and has received much attention from literary critics. She received numerous awards and recognitions. Among his awards are eight Hugo awards, six Nebula and twenty-two Locus. In 2003 she became the second woman to be honored as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association of America. The United States Library of Congress named her a "Living Legend" in 2000, in 2014 she received the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2017 she was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She influenced many authors, such as Salman Rushdie, David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman or Iain Banks. Following her death in 2018, writer-critic John Clute wrote that Le Guin had "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century," and writer Michael Chabon referred to her as "the most important American writer of her generation." ».

Biography

Ursula Kroeber was born in Berkeley, California on October 21, 1929. Her father, Alfred Louis Kroeber, was an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and her mother, Theodora Kroeber (née Theodora Covel Kracaw), had a degree in psychology; at the age of sixty she achieved success as a writer with Ishi in Two Worlds (1961), a biographical work about Ishi, an Amerindian who became the last known member of the Yahi tribe when the rest of its members were killed by white settlers.

His father, Alfred Kroeber, with Ishi, the last member of the Yahi (1911).

Ursula had three older brothers: Karl, who became a specialist in literature, Theodore, and Clifton. The family had a large library, and all the siblings became interested in reading from an early age. The Kroeber family received numerous visitors, including well-known academics such as Robert Oppenheimer; Ursula would later use Oppenheimer as a model for Shevek, the lead physicist in The Dispossessed. The family divided their time between a summer residence in Napa Valley and a home in Berkeley during the year. academic.

His reading included science fiction and fantasy; both she and her siblings frequently read issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Astounding Science Fiction . She liked myths and legends, particularly Norse mythology, and the Native American legends that her father told. Among her favorite authors were Lord Dunsany and Lewis Padgett, she also developed an early interest in writing; She wrote a short story when she was nine years old and submitted her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction at eleven. After her rejection, she did not attempt to publish anything for the next ten years.

She attended Berkeley High School in high school. As a child, she was interested in poetry and biology, but was limited in her choice of career by difficulties with mathematics. She majored in French and Italian literature from the Renaissance at Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1951, and graduated as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society. his doctoral studies for which he obtained a Fulbright scholarship to continue his studies in France from 1953 to 1954.

In 1953, while en route to France aboard the Queen Mary, Ursula met historian Charles Le Guin; they were married in Paris in December 1953. According to the writer herself, the marriage it was the "end point of the doctorate" for her. While her husband completed his doctorate at Emory University in Georgia and later at the University of Idaho, she taught French and worked as a secretary until the birth of their daughter. Elisabeth in 1957. Their second daughter, Caroline, was born in 1959. That same year Charles obtained a position teaching history at Portland State University and the couple moved to Portland, Oregon, where their son Theodore was born in 1964. The couple lived in this city for the rest of their lives, although Ursula obtained new Fulbright scholarships to travel to London in 1968 and 1975.

Her writing career began in the late 1950s, though caring for her children limited the time she could devote to writing. She spent nearly 60 years writing and publishing, as well as working as an editor and giving classes to university students. She served on the editorial boards of the magazines Paradoxa and Science Fiction Studies , as well as being in charge of literary criticism, and has taught at Tulane University, Bennington College and the Stanford University, among others.

He died on January 22, 2018, at his home in Portland, at the age of 88. His daughter said that his state of health had suffered for several months and that it was likely that he had had a heart attack. Her family held a private funeral service in Portland, and a public memorial service for her was held in June 2018, including speeches by writers Margaret Atwood, Molly Gloss, and Walidah Imarisha.

Work

Le Guin signed a book in 2013.

Le Guin's career as a professional writer spanned nearly sixty years, from 1959 to 2018. Her work includes speculative fiction, realistic fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, scripts, essays, poetry, speeches, translations, literary criticism, chapbook and children's literature. She wrote more than twenty novels, more than one hundred short stories, more than a dozen volumes of poetry, five translations, and thirteen children's books.

His first published work was the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province" in 1959, while his first short story was "An die Musik" in 1961, both set in his imaginary country of Orsinia. Between 1951 and In 1961 he wrote five novels set in Orsinia, but they were rejected by the publishers as they were considered incomprehensible. Some of his poetry from this period was published in the 1975 volume Wild Angels. for his writings that it could easily be classified as such. His first professional publication was the short story "April in Paris" (April in Paris, 1962) in Fantastic Science Fiction, which was followed in the following years by seven other stories published in Fantastic or Amazing Stories. Among these stories were "The Dowry of the Angyar" (The Dowry of the Angyar), which introduced the fictional universe of the Ekumen federation, and "The Rule of Names" (The Rule of Names) and "The Word of Free » (The Word of Unbinding), which introduced the world of Earthsea. These stories did not attract critical attention.

His first published novel was Rocannon's World (Rocannon's World) in 1966, published by Ace Books. Two other Ekumen novels, Planet of Exile (Planet of Exile) and The City of Illusions (City of Illusions), were published in 1966 and 1967, respectively; these books would come to be known as the Hainish Trilogy. The first two were published as part of an "Ace Double", a format that consisted of the publication of two novels in a single low-cost volume. The City de las ilusiones was already published as an independent volume, which meant greater recognition for the writer. These novels received more critical attention than his short stories and were reviewed in various science fiction magazines, but critical response was still tepid. These books already included many themes and ideas that would be present in later works. best known of the author, as the "archetypal journey" of a protagonist who undertakes a journey both physical and self-discovery, contact and cultural communication, identity search and reconciliation of opposing forces.

To publish his novella "Nine Lives" (Nine Lives) in 1968, Playboy magazine asked him if they could publish the story without his full name, to which to which Le Guin agreed: it was published under the name "U. K.LeGuin». The writer later said that it was the first and only time she had experienced prejudice against her as a female writer for a publisher or publisher, stating that "it seemed so silly to me, so grotesque, that I didn't realize it was important as well." In later editions the story was published under her full name.

His next two books brought him sudden and widespread critical acclaim. A Wizard of Earthsea, published in 1968, was a fantasy novel written initially for teenagers. The author had no plans to write for young adults, but the publisher of Parnassus Press asked him to write a novel aimed at this age group, seeing it as a market with great potential. The book, a story of learning in the fictional archipelago of Earthsea, received a positive reception in both the United States and Great Britain.

Her next novel, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), was a story from the Hainish cycle that explored themes of gender and sexuality on a fictional planet where the inhabitants alternate their sexuality periodically. The book was the author's first to address feminist issues, and, according to specialist Donna White, it "shocked science fiction critics"; she won the prestigious Hugo and Nebula awards for best novel, the first woman to win these awards, in addition to other accolades. American literary critic and theorist Harold Bloom considers A Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness like Le Guin's masterpieces. In 1973 he won the Hugo Award again, this time in the short novel category, with The name of the world is Forest (The Word for World Is Forest), a work influenced by the author's rejection of the Vietnam War, which explored themes of colonialism and militarism; Le Guin later described it as the "clearest political statement" he had ever reflected in a work of fiction.

She continued to delve into the themes of balance and maturity in the next two installments of the Terramar series, Las tumbas de Atuan (The Tombs of Atuan) and The Farthest Shore (The Farthest Shore), published in 1971 and 1972 respectively; both books received praise for their literary quality and The Farthest Shore for the exploration of death as a theme. first person to win both awards for two of his books; also set in the Hainish universe, the story explored anarchism and utopia. Professor Charlotte Spivack described it as a shift in the author's science fiction toward confrontational political ideas. Several of her speculative fiction short stories of the time, including her first published story, were later collected in the anthology of 1975 The Wind's Twelve Quarters (The Wind's Twelve Quarters). i>La rueda celeste (The Lathe of Heaven, 1971), the Hugo Award-winning short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas , 1973) and the Nebula winner "The Day Before the Revolution" (The Day Before the Revolution, 1974), constitute the author's best-known work.

In the second half of the 1970s he published works of a different nature, as well as works of speculative fiction such as the novel El ojo de la garza (The Eye of the Heron, 1978) which, according to the author herself, may be part of the Hainish universe. In 1976 she published Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, a realistic novel for adolescents, as well as the collection Imaginary Countries (Orsinian Tales) and the novel Malafrena in 1976 and 1979, respectively; although these two works were set in the fictional country of Orsinia, the tales were realistic fiction rather than fantasy or science fiction. In 1975 he published a volume of poetry, Wild Angels, and in 1979 a collection of essays, The Language of the Night. the 100 Best Speeches of the American Rhetoric American Rhetoric 20th century, and which was later included in his nonfiction collection Dancing at the Edge of the World.

Le Guin, together with Harlan Ellison, at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention "Westercon" of 1984.

Between 1979, the year in which he published Malafrena, and 1994, when the collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea ), he wrote mainly for young readers. In 1985 he published the experimental work El eterno regreso a casa (Always Coming Home). Between 1979 and 1994 He wrote 11 children's picture books, including the Catwings series and The Beginning Place), a fantasy novel for adolescents, published in 1980. Four more collections of poetry were also published during this period, all of them to very positive reception. In 1992 he published Tehanu, which marked his return to Earthsea eighteen years after The Farthest Shore, a period in which Le Guin's ideas had developed considerably and this novel showed a more somber tone than previous works of the series and questioned some of the ideas presented in it; it received critical acclaim and led to recognition of the series among adult literature.

After a long hiatus, he resumed the Hainish cycle in the 1990s, publishing a series of short stories, beginning with The Shobies' Story in 1990. and which included stories such as "Coming of Age in Karhide" (Coming of Age in Karhide, 1995), which addressed the theme of coming of age and was set on the same planet as The Left Hand of Darkness, described by scholar and poet Sandra Lindow as "so transgressively sexual and so morally courageous" that Le Guin "could not have written it in the 1960s". That same year he published the set of stories “Four Ways to Forgiveness” (Four Ways to Forgiveness), followed by “Old Music and the Slave Women” (Old Music and the Slave Women), a fifth story related to the previous ones in 1999; all five dealt with freedom and rebellion in an enslaved society. In 2000 he published the novel The Telling, his last novel in the Hainish cycle., and the following year En el otro viento (The Other Wind) and Tales from Earthsea (Tales from Earthsea), the last two books in the Terramar series.

Several collections and anthologies of his work have been published since 2002. A series of his stories from the period 1994-2002 were published in the collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, 2002, which includes the short novel Paradises Lost; this compilation volume addresses unconventional ideas about the genre as well as themes of lawlessness. Other collections of this period include Changing Planes, also published in 2002 and winner of the Locus Award for Best Short Story Collection in 2004, and anthologies include The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Stories of Ursula Le Guin (2012) and The Hainish Novels and Stories, a two-volume set of works from the Hainish universe published by the Library of America.

In 2008 he published the novel Lavinia, based on a character from Virgil's Aeneid, and the trilogy of novels in the series «Annals of the West Coast» composed of Los dones (Gifts, 2004), Voices (Voices, 2006) and Poderes (Powers, 2007). Although this series of novels was aimed at a teenage audience, the third volume, Powers, received the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 2009.

In his later years he focused more on non-fiction and published several essays, poems and some translations. His latest publications include works such as the essay collections Dreams Must Explain Themselves and Ursula K Le Guin: Conversations on Writing and the volume of poetry So Far So Good: Final Poems 2014-2018, all published after her death. Among her most important works known are the six volumes of the Earthsea series and the many novels of the Hainish Cycle.

Ideas, style and influences

He turned down his Nebula Award nomination for Best Short Story for The Diary of the Rose in 1975, in protest of Stanisław Lem's revocation of honorary membership of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association of America (SFWA). Le Guin considered the revocation due to Lem's criticism of American science fiction and her willingness to live in Poland (then part of the so-called Eastern Bloc) and said she was reluctant to receive an award "for a story about the political intolerance of a group that had just displayed political intolerance" (according to the writer, the SFWA told her that the play would be the winner if it did not withdraw).

She claimed that she had been "brought up as unreligious as a jackrabbit". She expressed a deep interest in Taoism and Buddhism, saying that Taoism gave her a "way of looking at life" during her teenage years In 1997, he published a translation of Lao-Tzu's Dàodé jīng, motivated by his sympathy for Taoist thought.

In December 2009, he left the Authors Guild, America's leading professional advocacy organization for writers, in protest of his support for Google's book digitization project. In her resignation letter, she indicated "They have decided to make a pact with the devil," or "There are principles involved, especially the issue of copyright; principles that you have seen fit to hand over to a corporation, on your terms, without a fight."

In a speech at the 2014 National Book Award, Le Guin criticized Amazon for its control over the publishing industry, referring specifically to the company's treatment of publisher Hachette Book Group during a dispute over the publishing of electronic books; Her speech received extensive media attention inside and outside the United States and was broadcast twice on the American public radio network NPR.

In his youth he frequently read classic and speculative fiction. She later stated that science fiction did not have much of an impact on her until she read the works of Theodore Sturgeon and Cordwainer Smith, and that she had even mocked the genre as a child. Influenced are Victor Hugo, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, Boris Pasternak and Philip K. Dick. Le Guin and Dick attended the same high school, but did not meet; the author described her novel The Celestial Wheel as a tribute to Dick. more than well-known science fiction authors such as Robert Heinlein, whose works she described as traditional "the white man conquers the universe". Some scholars of her work claim that the mythology, which the author claimed to read about as a child, It is also appreciated in a good part of his work, as in the case of the story "The dowry of the Angyar", described as a recreation of a Norse myth.

Once I learned to read, I read everything. I read all the famous fantasies - Alice in Wonderland, and Wind in the Willows, and Kipling. I adored Kipling's Jungle Book. And then when I got older I found Lord Dunsany. He opened up a whole new world - the world of pure fantasy. And... Worm Ouroboros. Again, pure fantasy. Very, very fattening. And then my brother and I blundered into science fiction when I was 11 or 12. Early Asimov, things like that. But that didn't have too much effect on me. It wasn't until I came back to science fiction and discovered Sturgeon - but particularly Cordwainer Smith.... I read the story "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard", and it just made me go, "Wow! This stuff is so beautiful, and so strange, and I want to do something like that.

Once I learned to read, I read everything. I read all the great fantasy stories: Alice in Wonderland, The wind in the willows and Kipling. Adoraba The Book of the Jungle Kipling. And when I grew up, I discovered Lord Dunsany. It opened a whole new world, the world of authentic fantasy. And... The Serpent Uróboros. Again, pure fantasy. Very, very big. Then my brother and I ran into science fiction when I was 11 or 12 years old. The beginnings of Asimov, things like that. However, it did not cause much effect on me. It was not until I resumed science fiction and discovered Sturgeon—although above all Cordwainer Smith—.... I read the story “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard”, and made me say, “Wow! It's so beautiful, and so strange, I want to do something like that. »

Ursula K. Le Guin

Cultural anthropology had an enormous influence on Le Guin's work. His father, Alfred Kroeber, is considered a pioneer in the field and was director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley; As a result of her father's research, the writer lived anthropology and cultural exploration as a child. In addition to myths and legends, she read such works as Elizabeth Grove Frazer's The Leaves of the Golden Bough, a children's book adapted from The Golden Bough, a study in myth and religion by her husband James George Frazer. She described living with her father's friends and acquaintances as giving her an experience of the other. She was particularly influenced by Ishi's experiences and elements of her story have been identified in works such as Planet of Exile, The City of Illusions, The Name of the World is Forest, and The Dispossessed.

Some specialists have pointed out that Le Guin's production was influenced by Carl Jung and, in particular, by the idea of Jungian archetypes. Specifically, the shadow of A Wizard of Earthsea is considered the shadow archetype of Jungian psychology, representing Ged's pride, fear, and desire for power. The author discussed her interpretation of this archetype and her interest in the dark, repressed parts of the psyche in a 1974 lecture, although he stated that he had never read Jung before writing the first Earthsea books. Other archetypes have been identified in his work, such as the mother, the animus, and the anima.

Taoist philosophy occupied an important place in his world view, and the influence of Taoist thought can be seen in many of his works. Many protagonists of his novels and stories, with in the case of The celestial wheel, embody the Taoist ideal of leaving things alone. Anthropologists from the Hainish universe try not to meddle in the cultures they encounter, and one of the first lessons Ged learns in A Wizard of Earthsea is not to use magic unless absolutely necessary. necessary. This influence is also evident in the author's representation of the balance existing in the world of Earthsea, where she depicts the archipelago as based on a delicate balance, which is disturbed by someone in each of the first three novels; a balance between land and sea, implicit in the very name of the world ("Earthsea", Earthsea in English), between people and their natural environment, and a superior cosmic balance, which magicians have a responsibility to maintain. Another ideal of Taoist philosophy is the reconciliation of opposites, such as light and dark or good and evil. Several novels of the Hainish cycle, most notably The Dispossessed, dealt with this process of reconciliation. In Earthsea it is not the dark powers but the characters' lack of understanding of the balance of life, which is described as evil, in contrast to conventional Western stories in which good and evil are in constant conflict.

Although best known for his works of speculative fiction, he also wrote realistic fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and other literary forms, making his work difficult to classify. His works have been the subject of scrutiny by many from general criticism, from criticism of children's literature, and from criticism of speculative fiction. Le Guin herself said that she would prefer to be known simply as an "American novelist". Her transgression of conventional genre boundaries led to that some literary criticism became "balkanized", especially among scholars of children's literature and speculative fiction. Some commentators believe that the Earthsea novels received less critical attention because they were considered children's books. Le Guin was critical of children's literature, which she called "a slum of chauvinistic adults". 'children's literature'", while, in Barbara Bucknall's opinion, Le Guin "can be read, like Tolkien, by ten-year-olds and adults. These stories are ageless because they deal with problems that arise at any age."

Some of her works are premised on sociology, psychology, or philosophy. As a result, her work is often described as "soft" science fiction, and Le Guin has been called the "patron saint" of this subgenre. Several science fiction authors have objected to the use of the qualifier "soft science fiction", describing it as a potentially pejorative term used to dismiss stories not based on problems in physics, astronomy, or engineering, and also as a goal of science fiction writing. women or other underrepresented groups in the genre. Le Guin proposed the term "social science fiction" for some of her works, although she noted that many of her stories were not science fiction at all. She argued that the term "soft science fiction" was divisive, and implied a narrow interpretation of what constitutes legitimate science fiction.

You can appreciate the influence of anthropology in the environment he chose for several of his works. Many of its protagonists are anthropologists or ethnologists exploring a world that is alien to them. This characteristic can be seen especially in stories set in the Hainish universe, an alternate reality in which humans did not evolve on Earth, but on Hain.. The Hainites colonized many planets, later losing contact with them, giving rise to a varied, though related, biology and social structure. Examples of this type are characters such as Gaverel Rocannon in Rocannon's World and Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness; other characters, such as Shevek in The Dispossessed, become cultural observers in the course of their travels to other planets. His works often study alien cultures, particularly human cultures on other planets. of Earth in the Hainish universe. In discovering these alien worlds, Le Guin's characters, and by extension the readers, also take an inner journey, questioning the nature of what they consider to be "alien" and what they consider to be "alien". native".

Some of his works incorporate unusual or even subversive stylistic or structural features. The heterogeneous structure of The Left Hand of Darkness, described as "distinctly postmodern", was unusual at the time of its publication. This was in stark contrast to the structure of traditional science fiction (mostly written by men), which was direct and linear. The novel was structured as part of a report sent to the Ekumen by the protagonist, Genly Ai, after his stay on the planet Gueden, implying that Ai was selecting and ordering the material, consisting of personal narratives, diary excerpts, Gethenian myths, and ethnological reports. In Earthsea he also employed an unconventional narrative form described by scholar Mike Cadden as "indirect free speech", in which the protagonist's feelings are not directly separated from the narration, which makes the narrator seem empathetic to the characters and removes the skepticism toward a character's thoughts and emotions that are characteristic of a more direct narration. Cadden believes this approach resonates with younger readers. directly with the characters, an effective technique for young adult-oriented literature.

Some of his stories, including the Earthsea series, challenged the conventions of epic fantasy and myth. Many of Earthsea's protagonists were dark-skinned individuals, as opposed to the traditionally preferred white heroes; instead some of the antagonists were white-skinned, a racial role reversal that has been noted by many literary critics. In a 2001 interview Le Guin attributed the frequent absence of images of people on the covers of his books to his choice of non-white protagonists. He explained his choice by saying, “Most of the people in the world are not white. Why would we assume that they are in the future?" In his novel Always Coming Home (1985), described by some critics as "His Great Experiment" included a story told from the perspective of a young protagonist, as well as poems, sketches of plants and animals, myths, and anthropological accounts of the matriarchal society of the Kesh, a fictional people living in the valley of Napa after a catastrophic global flood.

Theme

Gender and sexuality

Social issues such as gender and sexuality figured prominently in her work. The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, was one of the first novels in the genre we know today as feminist science fiction and is the most prominent analysis of androgyny in science fiction. is set on the fictional planet Gueden, whose inhabitants are ambisexual humans with no fixed gender identity, who adopt male or female sexual characteristics for brief periods of their sexual cycle; the gender they adopt may depend on context and relationships. Gueden is shown in the novel as a society without wars, as a result of this absence of fixed gender characteristics and also without sexuality as a determining factor in social relations. In the novel, Gethenian culture is shown through the vision of an earthling, whose masculinity becomes a barrier to intercultural communication. Apart from the Ekumen novels, Le Guin's use of a female protagonist in The Tombs of Atuan, published in 1971, it was described as a "remarkable exploration of femininity".

Le Guin's attitude towards gender and feminism evolved considerably over time. Although The Left Hand of Darkness was considered a milestone in the exploration of gender, it was also criticized for not go far enough, and analysts criticized the use of masculine gender pronouns to describe its androgynous characters, the lack of characters portrayed in stereotypical female roles, or the portrayal of heterosexuality as the norm on the planet. Gender in Earthsea was also described as perpetuating the notion of a male-dominated world; according to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction "Le Guin saw men as the actors and makers [of the world], while women remain the stable center, the well from which they drink." Le Guin initially defended her work and, in a 1976 essay titled "Is Gender Necessary?", noted that gender was secondary to the novel's main theme, loyalty, although in 1988 she revised this essay and acknowledged that gender was a key aspect of the novel; he also apologized for depicting Gethenians solely in heterosexual relationships.

Le Guin responded to these criticisms in his subsequent posts. He intentionally used female pronouns for all sexually latent Gethenians in his 1995 short story "Coming of Age in Karhide" and in a reprint of "King of Winter", which had first been published in 1969. "Majority of Age in Karhide" was later included in the 2002 anthology The World's Birthday and Other Stories, which contained six other stories about unconventional sexual relationships and marital structures. He also re-examined gender relations in Tehanu, published in 1990; this work was described as a reformulation or reinterpretation of The Tombs of Atuan, because the power and status of Tenar, the female protagonist, are the opposite of what they were in the previous book, which also focused on her and Ged. During this period she commented that she considered The Eye of the Heron, a novel published in 1978, to be her first work really centered on a woman.

Moral Development

Another common theme in his works is the stage of transition of young people to adulthood and moral development. This can be appreciated particularly in the case of works written for a younger audience, such as the Terramar and Anales de the West Coast. In a 1973 essay he said that he chose to explore the coming-of-age theme in Earthsea because he was writing for an adolescent audience, stating that "The transition to adulthood...was a process that took me many years; I finished it, as far as possible, at the age of 31; That is why I perceive it with great intensity. The same goes for most teenagers. In fact, it is his main occupation.» He also said that fantasy was the most appropriate medium to describe the process towards adulthood, because exploring the subconscious was difficult using the language of «rational everyday life».

The first three Earthsea novels follow Ged from youth to old age, and each also references a different character's coming of age novels. A Wizard of Earthsea focuses in Ged's adolescence, while The Tombs of Atuan and The Farthest Shore explore that of Tenar and Prince Arren, respectively. A wizard of Earthsea is often described as a learning novel, in which Ged's transition to adulthood is intertwined with the physical journey he undertakes throughout the novel. For Mike Cadden the book was a compelling tale "for a reader as young and possibly as headstrong as Ged, and thus empathic with him". Some critics have described the novel's ending, in which Ged finally accepts the shadow as a part of himself, as like a rite of passage. Scholar Jeanne Walker considers that the rite of passage at the end was an analogy for the entire plot of the novel, and that the plot itself plays the role of a rite of passage for an adolescent reader.

The books in the Annals of the West Coast series also describe the process towards adulthood of its protagonists, and describe the experiences of being a slave to one's own power. The process of coming of age is described as the possibility of seeing beyond the narrow options that society offers to the protagonists. In Gifts (2004), Orrec and Gry realize that the powers their people possess can be used in two ways: for control and dominance, or for healing and nurturing; this recognition allows them to make a third choice. This struggle with choice has been compared to the choices the characters are forced to make in his short story "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas". Similarly, Ged helps Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan to value herself and find options that she had not seen, which leads her to leave the Tombs with him.

Political Systems

Alternative social and political systems are a recurring theme in his works. On this subject, critics have paid special attention to The Dispossessed and The Eternal Return Home, although the author explores these themes in other works, such as "Those who move away from Omelas". The Dispossessed is a utopian anarchist novel that, according to the author herself, was inspired by anti-war anarchists such as Pyotr Kropotkin, as well as in the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. He is credited with "[rescuing] anarchism from the cultural ghetto to which it was relegated" and helping integrate it into the mainstream intellectual Writer Kathleen Ann Goonan noted that Le Guin's work confronted the "insularity paradigm towards the suffering of people, other living things and resources" and discussed "life-friendly sustainable alternatives".

The Dispossessed, set on the twin planets Urras and Anarres, depicts a planned anarcho-socialist society described as an "ambiguous utopia". The society created by the Urras colonists is materially poorer than the wealthy Urras society, but ethically and morally more advanced. Unlike classical utopias, Anarres society is neither perfect nor static; the protagonist, Shevek, is traveling to Urras to continue his investigations. The misogyny and hierarchy present in the authoritarian society of Urras do not exist among anarchists, who base their social structure on cooperation and individual freedom. The Eye of the Heron, published a few years after The Dispossessed, was described as a continuation of the author's exploration of human freedom, through a conflict between two societies of opposing philosophies: a city inhabited by descendants of pacifists and a city inhabited by descendants of criminals.

The Eternal Homecoming, set in a California in the distant future, examines a warlike society, similar to modern American society from the perspective of its pacifist neighbors, the Kesh. Kesh society has been identified by scholars as a feminist utopia, which Le Guin uses to analyze the role of technology. Scholar Warren Rochelle considers that it was "neither a matriarchy nor a patriarchy: men and women they just are". "Those Who Stray from Omelas", a parable describing a society in which general wealth, happiness and security are obtained at the cost of the continued misery of a single child, has also been interpreted as a critique of contemporary American society. The Name of the World is Forest addresses how the structure of society affects the natural environment; in the novel the natives of the planet of Athshe have adapted their way of life to the ecology of the planet. The colonizing human society, in contrast, is depicted as destructive and indifferent; In describing it, the author also criticized colonialism and imperialism, prompted in part by her distaste for the United States' intervention in the Vietnam War.

Describes other social structures in works such as the set of stories Four Paths to Forgiveness and the story "Ancient Music and the Women Slaves," occasionally described as a 'fifth path to forgiveness'. sorry'. Set in the Hainish universe, the five stories examine revolution and reconstruction in a slave society. According to Rochelle, the stories examine a society that has the potential to build a "truly humane community," possible thanks to the recognition by the Ekumen of slaves as human beings, thus offering them the perspective of freedom and the possibility of utopia, achieved through the revolution. Slavery, justice and the role of women in society are also dealt with in the Annals of the West Coast series.

Reception, recognition and legacy

Le Guin received wide recognition after the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, and by the 1970s he was among the best-known writers in the genre. Millions of copies were sold. copies of his books and they were translated into more than 40 languages; some remain in circulation many decades after their first publication.His work received intense attention from the academic world; she has been described as the "premier writer of both fantasy and science fiction" of the 1970s, the most debated science fiction writer of the 1970s, and, throughout her career, as intensely studied as Philip K. Dick. In an obituary, Jo Walton stated that Le Guin "was so good that mainstream society could no longer ignore science fiction". According to academic Donna White, Le Guin was "one of the leading Voices of American Letters", whose work has been the subject of numerous volumes of literary criticism, more than two hundred academic articles, and a good number of theses.

A very unusual characteristic of Le Guin was that he received his greatest recognition for his early works, which remain his most popular; in 2018 one commentator noted in his later works a "tendency towards didacticism", and in an article in The Guardian John Clute stated that her late works 'suffer from the need she no doubt felt to speak responsibly to her large audience about important things; a responsible artist can be an artist laden with a crown of thorns.” Of course, not all of her works received a positive reception; The Wind Rose was one of the works that received a mixed reaction, with The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describing The Eye of the Heron as " an overly diagrammatic political fable whose translucent simplicity borders on self-parody". Even the critically acclaimed The Left Hand of Darkness , as well as criticism from feminists, was described by Alexei Panshin as a "resounding failure".

The Los Angeles Times commented in 2009 that after the death of Arthur C. Clarke Le Guin was "arguably the most acclaimed science fiction writer on the planet" and described her as a "pioneer" of literature for young adults. In an obituary, Clute stated that the author "presided over American science fiction for nearly half a century" and described her as an author of "the first order". In 2016 The New York Times described her as "America's greatest living science fiction writer". Praise for Le Guin often focused on the social and political themes her work explores, and on its narrative quality; the literary critic Harold Bloom described her to Le Guin as an "exquisite stylist" and considered that in her works "every word was exactly in her place and every sentence or line had relevance". According to Bloom, Le Guin was a "visionary who opposed all brutality, discrimination and exploitation". Prior to an interview he conducted with her in 2008, Vice magazine described her as the author of "some one of the most amazing [science fiction] and fantasy tales of the last 40 years".

Her fellow authors also praised her work. After the author's death in 2018, Michael Chabon referred to her as "the greatest American writer of her generation" and said that she had "astonished him with the power of boundless imagination". Margaret Atwood praised her " healthy, intelligent, astute, and lyrical expression" and wrote in The Washington Post that social injustice was a powerful motivator in Le Guin's life. Joyce Carol Oates noted his "outspoken sense of justice, decency and common sense" and considered her "one of the great American writers and a visionary artist whose work will endure for a long time". China Miéville described her as a "literary colossus" and that she was a "writer of intense ethical seriousness and intelligence, of wit and fury, of radical politics, of subtlety, of freedom and longing".

Awards and recognitions

Le Guin at a "know the author" event in 2004.

Received numerous literary awards. He won eight Hugo Awards out of twenty-six nominations and six Nebula Awards out of eighteen nominations, including four for Best Novel out of six nominations, more than any other writer. He won twenty-four Locus Awards, an award voted on by subscribers to Locus magazine, which (as of the 2019 issue) ranks it third in total winners, as well as second behind Neil Gaiman for the number of awards for works of fiction In the best novel category, he won five Locus, four Nebula, two Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award, awards that he also won in the short story categories. His third novel in the Terramar series, La costa furthest away, won the 1973 National Book Award in the category of Young People's Literature, and was a finalist for ten Mythopoeic Awards (mythopoeic awards), nine of them in the Fantasy category and one in Erudition. The 1996 compilation, Unlocking the Air and Other Stories, was a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in the Fiction category. It was also the winner of three James Tiptree Jr. Awards and three Jupiter Awards. the last Hugo Award a year after his death, for a complete edition of the Terramar series, illustrated by Charles Vess; the same volume also won a Locus Award.

He has received numerous recognitions and awards for his contributions to speculative fiction. The World Society for Science Fiction awarded him the Gandalf Grand Master Award in 1979. The Science Fiction Research Association awarded him its Pilgrim Award in 1989 for his "lifetime scholarly contributions to science fiction and fantasy". At the 1995 World Fantasy Convention, she was awarded the World Fantasy Award for Body of Work, a jury award for outstanding service to the world of fantasy. She was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2001. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association of America named her its 20th Grand Master in 2003: she was the second and, as of the 2020 edition, one of only six women to receive that honor. In 2013 the University of California at Riverside awarded him the Eaton Prize for lifetime achievement in the field of science fiction.

Although she is best known for her science fiction and fantasy works, she has also received awards in recognition of her contributions to literature in general. In April 2000, the United States Library of Congress named her a "Living Legend" in the Writers and Artists category for significant contributions to America's cultural heritage. The American Library Association awarded her the Margaret Edwards Award in 2004 and appointed her to give the annual May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture; this award recognizes a particular writer and work and in the 2004 edition the committee valued the first four volumes of Earthsea, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Place of the Beginning. The Library of America published a collection of his works in 2016, an honor rarely bestowed on living writers. The National Book Foundation awarded him the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014, considering that he had "challenged the conventions of narrative, language, character and genre and transcended the boundaries between fantasy and realism to forge new paths for literary fiction". She was named a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017.

Legacy and influence

He exerted considerable influence in the world of speculative fiction; writer Jo Walton stated that Le Guin played an important role in both expanding the genre and helping writers in this field gain recognition in the mainstream of literature. The Earthsea books demonstrated notable impact, even outside the field of literature. Margaret Atwood considers A Wizard of Earthsea to be one of the "sources" of fantasy literature, and modern writers have credited the book with the idea of a "school of wizards" later made famous. by the Harry Potter series of books and with the popularization of the character of a boy wizard, also present in Harry Potter. The idea that names can exert power is one of the characteristics of the Terramar series; some critics have suggested that this idea inspired Hayao Miyazaki's 2001 film Spirited Away.

Neil Gaiman is one of the many authors who have recognized Le Guin's influence in his works.

Le Guin invented the term "ansible" for an instantaneous interstellar communication device in 1966; the name was later adopted by other writers, such as Orson Scott Card in Ender's Saga and Neil Gaiman in a script for an episode of Doctor Who. Suzanne Reid in her The book Presenting Ursula K. Le Guin (1997) states that at the time The Left Hand of Darkness was written, Le Guin's ideas on androgyny were exceptional not only in the field of science fiction, but in literature in general. This novel has been the subject of numerous studies; In his analysis of this work, the literary critic Harold Bloom wrote: "Le Guin, like Tolkien, has raised fantasy to the status of high literature, in our times", and included it in his The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994) as one of the books, in his conception of artistic works, that have been important and influential in Western culture. This opinion was shared by the literary magazine The Paris Review, which noted that "No work did more to overthrow the conventions of the genre than The Left Hand of Darkness ", while White considered it to be one of seminal works of science fiction, as important as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818).

Analysts have also considered that the author also influenced the field of literature in general. American activist, writer, literary critic, and academic Elaine Showalter, considered one of the "founding mothers" of feminist literary criticism, stated that Le Guin "paved the way as a writer for women to abandon silence, fear, and doubt." while academic Brian Attebery stated that "[Le Guin] invented us: science fiction and fantasy critics like myself, but also poets and essayists and picture-book writers and novelists". Le Guin's own literary work also proved influential; his 1973 essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" sparked renewed interest in the work of Kenneth Morris and the publication of a posthumous novel by the Welsh author. He also helped bring speculative fiction into the mainstream of literature by supporting the journalists and professionals who studied the genre.

Several prominent authors acknowledge Le Guin's influence on their own works. Jo Walton wrote that "her way of seeing the world had a huge influence on me, not only as a writer but as a human being". Other writers influenced by the author include David Mitchell, Neil Gaiman, Algis Budrys, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Iain Banks or Salman Rushdie. Mitchell, author of books such as Cloud Atlas (2004), said that A magician of Earthsea exerted a strong influence on him, and in an interview he stated that he felt the desire to "wield words with the same power as Ursula Le Guin". Filmmaker Arwen Curry undertook the production of a documentary about Le Guin in 2009, filming "dozens" of hours of interviews with the author and with many other writers and artists who have been inspired by her; Curry launched a successful crowdfunding campaign to finish the documentary in early 2016, after winning a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Adaptations of his works

Some of his works have been adapted for radio, film, television and theater. His novel La rueda celeste (The Lathe of Heaven, 1971) has been made into a film twice, in a 1979 telefilm for WNET, with the participation of Le Guin, and later in 2002 for the A&E Network; in a 2008 interview, Le Guien said that he considered the 1979 version "the only good film adaptation" of his works to date. Years 1980 Hayao Miyazaki proposed the realization of an animated adaptation of Earthsea; the writer, who was unfamiliar with her work or anime in general, initially declined the offer, but later accepted after watching My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988) at the suggestion of her friend Vonda N. McIntyre. The third and fourth Earthsea books were used as the basis for the animated film Tales of Earthsea (Gedo Senki), released in 2006. The film was not directed by Hayao Miyazaki, but by his son Gorō, something that disappointed Le Guin; the writer was positive about the film's aesthetic, stating that "much of it was beautiful", but was critical of its moral sense and its use of physical violence, particularly the use of a villain whose death determined the film's outcome. In 2004 the Sci-Fi Channel adapted the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy into the two-episode miniseries The Legend of Earthsea; Le Guin was highly critical of the miniseries, considering it was " very far from the Earthsea that I imagined" and rejected the use of white actors for his characters with red, brown or black skin.

The Left Hand of Darkness was adapted for the stage in 1995 by the Lifeline Theater in Chicago. The Chicago Reader reviewer Jack Helbig called the "adaptation smart and well done but ultimately unsatisfying," largely because it's extremely difficult to condense a complex 300-page novel into one presentation. two hours on stage. "Paradise Lost" (a short novel included in The World's Birthday and Other Stories) was adapted into an opera, composed by Stephen A. Taylor within the operatic program of the University of Illinois, with a libretto attributed to both Kate Gale and Marcia Johnson; created in 2005, the opera premiered in April 2012. Le Guin described the work as a "beautiful opera" in an interview and expressed her hope that it would be taken up by other producers and also that she was more satisfied with the theatrical versions, including that of Paradise Lost, than with the screen adaptations of her work up to that date. In 2013, the Portland Playhouse and the Hand2Mouth Theater produced a play based on The Left Hand of Darkness, directed and adapted by Jonathan Walters, with a text by John Schmor; the play opened on May 2, 2013 in Portland, Oregon.

Additional bibliography