Ursula
K. Le Guin
Ursula
K. Le Guin was born in Berkeley, California, as the daughter
of Dr Alfred and Theodora Kroeber Quinn. Le Guin's mother was a
psychologist and writer of children's stories. 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."
Le
Guin attended Radcliffe College, receiving her B.A. in 1951, and
her master's degree in romance languages from Columbia University in
1952. Her thesis dealt with Romance Literatures of the Middle Ages and
Renaissance, particularly French. Le Guin 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.
Before publishing her
first works of non-fiction, Le Guin was an
instructor in French at Mercer University, Georgia, in 1954 and at
University of Idaho, Moscow, in 1956. In 1954 she was a department
secretary at Emory University, Atlanta. Le Guin's first short stories
appeared in the early 1960s. She had also written poetry.
Le Guin has taught
writing at Pacific University, Forest Grove (1971),
University of Washington, Seattle (1971-73), Portland State University,
Oregon (1974, 1977, 1979), in Melbourne, Australia (1975), at the
University of Reading, England (1976), Indiana Writers Conference,
Bloomington (1978, 1983), University of California, San Diego (1979),
and Kenyon College, Tulane University. Among Le Guin's several awards
are five Hugos (1970, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1988) and Gandalf Award (1979),
Nebulas (1969, 1974, 1974, 1990, 1995), Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for
fiction (1986), a Pushcart Prize (1991), a National Book Award (1973)
for the novel The Farthest Shore (1972), part of Le
Guin's Earthsea trilogy, a Newberry Silver Medal (1972), and Harold D.
Vursell Award (1991).
Fiction Series
Earthsea
Cycle
A Wizard of Earthsea
Gray Morrow
|
The Tombs of Atuan
Gail Garraty
|
The Farthest Shore
Yvonne Gilbert
|
Tales from Earthsea
Cliff Nielsen
|
The Other Wind
Cliff Nielsen
|
Tehanu: The Last Book
of Earthsea
Ken Barr
|
Earthsea
Stephen Bradbury |
The Earthsea Trilogy
Leo & Diane Dillon |
The Earthsea Quartet
David Bergen
|
Tal;es of Earthsea &The Other Wind
Gary Lippincott |
A Wizard
of Earthsea (1968)
In
his day Ged, called the Sparrowhawk, became both dragonlord and
Archmage. His story is told in many songs, but this is the haunting
tale of a proud, lonely boy in the time before his fame.
It
is a tale of wizards, dragons and shadows played out in
Earthsea, a world of numberless islands and vast oceans where mages,
looking for adventure, wandered, working magic...
The Tombs of
Atuan (1971)
The took away
everything. Home, family, possessions. They gave her a
name. Arha, the Eaten One. They dedicated her life as high priestess to
the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth. And set her down at the
Place of the Tombs in the deserts of Atuan. Then, suddenly, a thief
came to the dark, endless labyrinth of her kingdom, seeking the
greatest treasure of the Tombs, the broken Ring of Erreth-Akbe. A young
wizard, Ged...
The
Farthest Shore (1972)
The
young prince brought back harsh news. There was no longer true
magic in Enlad—the mages has forgotten their spells. The springs of
wizardry, were running dry...With Arren, Ged set out to meet the
unknown dangers, to confront his own past, and to test the ancient
prophecies...Ged took with him on his journey all the hopes of
Earthsea, moving now into doom or into a new age...
Tales from Earthsea (2001)
The Finder
Set a few hundred years before A
Wizard of Earth
sea, presents a dark andtroubled Archipelago and reveals how the school
on Rake came to be.
The Bones of the Earth
Features the wizards who
taught the wizard who firsttaught Ged and demonstrates how humility, if
great enough, can rein in an earthquake.
Darkrose and Diamond
A delightful story of
youngcourtship showing that sometimes wizards can
pursue alternative careers.
On the High Marsh
The brief but
eventful time of Ged as Archmageof Earthsea, tells of the love of
power-and of the power of love.
Dragonfly
Shows how a woman,
determined enough, can break the glassceiling of male magedom. Taking
place shortly after the last Earthseanovel, it also provides a bridge-a
dragon bridge-to the next Earthseanovel, The Other Wind.
The Other
Wind (2001)
The wizard Alder
comes from Roke to the island of Gont in search of the
Archmage, Lord Sparrowhawk, once known as Ged. The man who was once the
most powerful wizard in the Islands now lives with his wife Tenar and
their adopted daughter Tehanu. Alder needs help: his beloved wife died
and in his dreams she calls him to the land of the dead - and now the
dead are haunting him, begging for release. He can no longer sleep, and
the Wizards of Earthsea are worried. But there is more at stake than
the unquiet rest of one minor wizard: for the dragons of Earthsea have
arisen, to reclaim the lands that were once theirs. Only Tehanu,
herself daughter of a dragon, can talk to them; it may be that Alder's
dreams hold the key to the salvation of Earthsea and all the peoples
who live there.
Tehanu:
The Last Book of Earthsea (1990)/ Tehanu (1993)
Once
she'd been a
priestess, quest-companion to a powerful mage, a
student of high magic. Then she gave it all up to be a farmer's wife on
Gont, content to lead a simple life. But Tenar was not born to live her
days in peace, away from great events. A dying wizard and an abused
child were the first to call her back to the path she had abandoned.
For the end of the aventure beckoned and Tenar would be there along
with the dragons, mages, and the young king himself to share in the
unforgettable fate of the kingdom known as Earthsea.
Earthsea (1977) / The Earthsea
Trilogy (1983)
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of Atuan
The Farthest Shore
The
Earthsea Quartet (1993)
A Wizard of Earthsea
The Tombs of
Atuan
The Farthest
Shore
Tehanu
Tales of Earthsea
& The Other Wind (2001)
The Finder
The Bones of Earth
Dark Rose and Diamond
On the High Marsh
Dragonfly
The Other Wind
Gifts
Gifts
Cliff Nielsen
|
Voices
Larry Rostant
|
Powers
Larry Rostant
|
Gifts (2004)
Orrec, the son of the
Brantor of Caspromant, and Gry, daughter of the
Brantors of Barre and Rodd, have grown up together, running half-wild
across the Uplands. The people there are like their land: harsh and
fierce and prideful; ever at war with each other. Only the gifts keep
the fragile peace. The Barre gift is calling animals. The women of
Cordemant have the power of blinding, or making deaf, or taking away
speech. The Rodds can send a spellknife into a man's heart. The Callems
can move heavy things - even buildings, even hills. The Caspro gift is
the worst and best of all: it is the gift of undoing: an insect, an
animal, a place .Orrec and Gry are the heirs to Caspro and Barre. Gry's
gift runs true, but she refuses to call animals for the hunt. Orrec too
is a problem, for his gift of undoing is wild: he cannot control it -
and that is the most dangerous gift of all.
Voices (2006)
Memer
is a child of
rape; when the Alds took the beautiful city of
Ansul, they descecrated 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 inthe 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 halflion 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.
Powers (2007)
Young
Gavir has had a comfortable life as a house slave for a great
family. He has a power he must keep secret: sometimes, he can see into
the future, but he can not control the strange gift. When tragedy takes
away everything Gavir has ever trusted or known, he must flee in blind
grief. As he undertakes a journey towards a goal he does not
understand, danger lurks around every corner. Gavir must try to figure
out what has happened and where he is going: is he seeking freedom, or
his own people? How do his powers apply?
Hainish
Rocannon's World
Jack Gaughan
|
Planet of Exile
Alex Ebel
|
City of Illusions
Alex Ebel
|
The Left Hand of
Darkness
Alex Ebel
|
The Word for World is
Forest
Peter Elson
|
The Dispossessed
Tony Roberts
|
Four Ways to
Forgiveness
Danilo Ducak
|
The Telling
Hulton-Deutsch
|
Rocannon's World (1966)
Rocannon,
a Terran scientist from the League of
All Worlds, leads an ethnographic survey to the half-known world of
Fomalhaut II. But, only minutes after his expedition arrives, it is
viciously attacked by invaders from Faraday and Rocannon is the sole
survivor.
Marooned
for at least eight years among the humanoids of this alien
planet - the cave-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia and the warrior
Liuar - Rocannon has to find some way to prevent the invaders from
exploiting Fomalhaut II or enslaving its inhabitants. Rallying the
primitive natives around him, Rocannon sets out to prove that
technology is no match for courage and love of freedom.
Guided
by the natives and borne by a magnificent, barely-tamed
windsteed, Rocannon embarks on a quest that takes him from the depths
of caves over mountain peaks in a search for the enemy...
Planet
of Exile (1966)
For
600 years, the powerful Tevar colony has mistrusted and feared the
small group of aliens called the farborns. Marooned on an isolated
planet for reasons now lost to generations, the farborns endure bigotry
and accusations of practicing witchcraft beacuse of their dark eyes and
brown skin and their ability of communicate through mind-speaking.
Now
as the enemy camps prepare for the cruel fifteen-year-long Winter,
there is an even more serious threat. Nomadic tribes from the north
have formed a massive army which is sweeping toward the coast,
beseiging and capturing the Winter cities. Only an alliance between the
farborns and the Tevar colony will enable them to defeat the new enemy
and survive the Winter. But as blood mixes with the snow, an alliance
of another sort determines the outcome...
City of
Illusions (1967)
Scattered
over the earth, small isolated settlements of humanity lived
in a state of semi-barbarity; the knowledge and skills, the glory that
had been Terra's in the golden age of the League of Worlds lost to
ruthless conquerers.
Each time a group of Earthmen began to rise from the ashes, the Shing,
the ravagers of Terra, the Liars, would crush them out.
Only
one man could stand against them, and that man has alien amber eyes.
Before he dared oppose the enemy he had to prove the humanity, and to
himself, that he was not a tool of the Shing...
The Left
Hand of Darkness (1969)
Winter
is an Earth-like planet with two major differences: conditions
are semi artic even at the warmest time of the year, and the
inhabitants are all of the same sex. Tucked away in a remote corner of
the universe, they have no knowledge of space travel or of life beyond
their own world. And when a strange envoy from space brings news of a
vast coalition of planets which they are invited to join, he is met
with fear, mistrust and disbelief.
The Word
for World is Forest (1972)
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.
The
Dispossessed (1974)/ The Dispossessed:
An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)
The
Principle of
Simultaneity - a stupendous concept which will
revolutionize intersellar communications between the nine Known Worlds.
It is the life work of Shevek, a brilliant physicist from the anarchist
world of Anarres. But Shevek's ideas are being stifled by jealous
colleagues. So he goes to the authoritarian hell-planet Urras from
whence his ancestors fled, seeking a different kind of freedom - and
finds himself embroiled in deadly intrigue and bloody revolution.
Four Ways to
Forgiveness (1995)
Betrayals
Forgiveness Day
A Man of the
People
A Woman's
Liberation
At
the far end of the known universe, on the twin planets of Werel &
Yeowe, all humankind is divided into "assets" and "owners," tradition
and liberation are at war, and freedom takes many forms. Here is a
society as complex & troubled as any on earth, people with
unforgettable characters struggling to become fully human. For the
disgraced revolutionary Abberkam, the callow "space brat" Solly, the
haughty soldier Teyeo, and the Ekumen historian and Hainish exile
Havzhiva, freedom & duty both begin in the heart, and success as
well as failure has its costs.
The Telling (2000)
An
Observer from
Earth for the interstellar Ekumen, has been assigned
to a new world-a world in the grips of a stern monolithic state, the
Corporation. Embracing the sophisticated technology brought by other
worlds and desiring to advance even faster into the future, the Akans
recently outlawed the past, the old calligraphy, certain words, all
ancient beliefs and ways; every citizen must now be a
producer-consumer. Their state, not unlike the China of the Cultural
Revolution, is one of secular terrorism. Traveling from city to small
town, from loudspeakers to bleating cattle, Sutty discovers the
remnants of a banned religion, a hidden culture. As she moves deeper
into the countryside and the desolate mountains, she learns more about
the Telling - the old faith of the Akans-and more about herself.
Orsinia
Orsinian Tales
Peter Goodfellow
|
Malafrena
Michael Mariano
|
Orsinian
Tales (1976)
The
place is Orsinia,
a land of medieval keeps standing guard above
walled cities, and of railways stretching across karts to vanish in
mountains where the old gods still live. A country of harsh realities
and gentle dreams whose people feel torn apart by massive forces and
fight courageously to remain whole.
An
die Musik
The
Fountains
The
Lady of Moge
Brothers
and Sisters
The
Barrow
Imaginary
Countries
A Week in the Country
Ile
Forest
Conversations at Night
The
House
The
Road East
Malafrena (1979)
When the fiery,
idealistic Itale Sorde, son and heir to an estate owner
in the beautiful Malafrena valley, is sent away to school, he quickly
falls under the sway of an underground revolutionary movement sworn to
destroy Austria's domination of Orsinia. Itale is prepared to die for
his country's independence and refuses to return home to the complacent
life of a wealthy landowner. He forsakes Malafrena for Krasnoy, a city
in ferment. Here he embarks on a new, exciting life, leaerning the
lessons of love from a beautiful baroness and lessons in life from a
dazzling group of intelligentsia and dissidents. But Itale pays a
bitter price for his convictions: having already given up the secure
life of Malafrena, the respect of his father, and perhaps the love of
his childhood sweetheart, he is jailed by the Austrian secret police.
Though he is brutalized in prison, Itale's spirit and faith in his
cause remain unshaken. And when the Baroness arranges his freedom,
Itale finally returns to Malafrena to fight for his shining destiny.
Novels
The Lathe of Heaven
Colin Hay
|
The Eye of the Heron |
The Beginning Place
Scott M Fischer
|
Always Coming Home
John Wagner
|
A Ride on the Red
Mare's Back
Julie Downing
|
Lavinia
Charles Brock?
|
The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
Reality
is a dream. George Orr is the dreamer. George's dreams come
true. George can change the world. In the hands of a power-mad
psychiatrist George is forced to dream up a new reality, free from war,
disease and overpopulation. But there are terrifying side-effects, and
George must dream and dream again, forever seeking utopia, until the
fabric of existence must itself collapse.
The Eye of
the Heron (1978)
The
savage, lawless prison world is called Victoria. The arriving
exiles, sworn to nonviolence, are called the People of the Peace.
Brutalized and dominated by the City criminals, the People would have
broken vows and shed blood if not for one bold young woman. Her name is
Luz, and she leaves her City father to lead the People on a perilous
quest to discover a world of hope within this world of chaos...a place
they will call Heron.
The
Beginning Place (1980)/ Threshold (1986)
A
magical place across a creek provides sanctuary for two young people
in flight from the banality of their daily lives, until their paradise
turns into a hell on Earth that threatens to destroy them.
Always Coming Home (1985)
A
rich and complex interweaving of
story and fable, poem, artwork, and
music, it totally immerses the reader in the culture of the Kesh, a
peaceful people of the far future who inhabit a place called the Valley
on the Northern Pacific Coast.
A Ride on
the Red Mare's Back (1992)
A young girl tries to find
her brother who was stollen by Trolls.
Lavinia (2008)
In
The Aeneid,
Virgil's hero fights to claim the king's daughter,
Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herslef
never speaks a word in the poem. Now Ursula Le Guin gives her a voice
in a novel that takes readersto the half-wild world of ancient Italy,
when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills. When a fleet of Trojan
ships sails up the Tiber, Lavinia decides to take her destiny into her
own hands. And so she tells us what Virgil did not: the story of her
life, and of the love of her life.
Collections
The Wind's Twelve
Quarters
Deborah Healy
|
The Compass Rose
Ron Walotsky
|
Buffalo Gals and
Other Animal Presences
|
A Fisherman of the
Inland Sea |
Unlocking the Air and
Other Stories
Paul Klee?
|
The Birthday of the
World and Other Stories
Philip Lee Harvey
|
Changing Planes
Beck Stvan
|
The Wind's Twelve
Quarters (1975)
Semley's Necklace
April In Paris
The Masters
Darkness Box
The World
Of Unbinding
The Rules Of
Names
Winter's King
The Good Trip
Nines
Lives
Things
A Trip To The
Head
Vaster thna
Empires and More Slow
The Stars Below
The Field Of Vision
Direction of the
Road
The One Who
Walks Away from Omelas
The Day Before
the Revolution
The Compass Rose (1982)
The Author of the Acacia Seeds
The New Atlantis
Schrodinger's Cat
Two Delays on
the Northern Line
SQ
Small Change
The First Report
of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb
The Diary of the
Rose
The White Donkey
The Phoenix
Intracom
The Eye Altering
Mazes
The Pathways of
Desire
Gwilan's Harp
Malheur County
The
Water Is Wide
The Wife's Story
Some Approaches
to the Problem of
the Shortage of Time
Sur
Buffalo
Gals and Other Animal Presences (1987)
The Wife's Story
Mazes
The Direction of
the Road
Vaster than
Empires
The White Donkey
Horse Camp
Schrodinger's Cat
The Author of
the Acacia Seeds
May's Lion
The Eighth Elegy
from The Duino Elegies
of R. M. Rilke
She Unnames Them
Four Cat Poems
Tabby Lorenzo
Black
Leonard in Negative Space
A Conversation
with Silence
For Leonard,
Darko and Burton Watson
Three Rock Poems
The Basalt
Flints
Mt. St.
Helen's/Omphalos
Five Vegetable
Poems
Torrey Pines
Reserve
Lewis and
Clark and After
West Texas
Xmas Over
The Crown of
Laurel
Seven
Bird and Beast Poems
What is Going on
in the Oaks
For Ted
Found
Poem
Totem
Winter Downs
The Man Eater
Sleeping Out
Le Guin does hear the
animals' voices, and she shows us in this
luminous collection of one novella, ten stories and eighteen poems.
A Fisherman of the
Inland Sea (1994)
Foremost
among that group of writers who have changed science fiction,
Ursula K. Le Guin has created a profound and transformational
literature. These award-winning stories range 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. Here we
have starships that sail, literally, on wings of song...musical
instruments to be played at funerals only...ansibles for
faster-than-light communication...even orbiting arks designed to save a
doomed humanity.
The First Contact
with the Gorgonids
Newton’s Sleep
The Ascent of
the North Face
The Rock That
Changed Things
The Kerastion
The Shobies’
Story
Dancing to Ganam
Another Story,
or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
Unlocking
the Air and Other Stories (1996)
Stories-Half Past Four
The Professor's
Houses
Ruby on the
67
Limberlost
The Creatures on
my mind
Standing Ground
The Spoons In
the Basement
Sunday In Summer
in Seatown
In The Drought
Ether OR
Unlocking the Air
A Child Bride
Climbing to the
Moon
Daddy's Big
Girl
Findings
Olders
The Wise Woman
The Poacher
The Birthday of the
World and Other Stories (2002)
Coming of Age in
Karhide by Sov Thade Tage em Ereb, of Rer, in Karhide, on Gethen
The Matter of
Seggri
Unchosen Love
Mountain Ways
Solitude
Old Music and
the Slave Women
The Birthday of
the World
Paradises Lost
Changing
Planes (2003)
It
was Sita
Dulip who
discovered, whilst stuck in an airport, unable to
get anywhere, how to change planes - literally. With a kind of a twist
and a slipping bend, easier to do than describe, she could go anywhere
- be anywhere - because she was already between planes .and on the way
back from her sister's wedding, she missed her plane in Chicago and
found herself in Choom.
Sita
Dulip's Method
Porridge on Islac
The Silence of the Asonu
Feeling at Home With the Hennebet
The Ire of the Veksi
Seasons of the Ansarac
Social Dreaming of the Frin
The Royals of Hegn
Woeful Tales from Mahigul
Great Joy
Wake Island
The Nna Mmoy Language
The Building
The Fliers of Gy
The Island of the Immortals
Confusions of Uñi
Additional Cover Art
Ursula K LeGuin
Website
Back to Tirptez'
Tales
