70 Fun Facts About Ursula K. Le Guin

In which California city was Ursula Kroeber born in 1929?

Her father Alfred Kroeber was an anthropologist at the University of California there, and the family summered in Napa Valley.

Le Guin's mother Theodora Kroeber wrote a 1961 biography of which man, the last known Yahi?

Elements of his story have been traced in Planet of Exile, City of Illusions and The Word for World Is Forest.

Which famous physicist, a visitor to the Kroeber home, was Le Guin's model for Shevek in The Dispossessed?

Shevek is a physicist from the anarchist moon Anarres who travels to the wealthy planet Urras.

How old was Le Guin when she submitted her first short story to Astounding Science Fiction?

It was rejected, and she did not submit anything else for another ten years.

Le Guin took her bachelor's degree in Renaissance French and Italian literature from which college?

She went on to a master's in French at Columbia and a Fulbright to France, where she met her husband.

Aboard which ocean liner did Ursula meet historian Charles Le Guin in 1953?

They married in Paris that December, which she later said meant 'the end of the doctorate'.

In which city did the Le Guins settle in 1959 and live for the rest of their lives?

Charles took a history job at Portland State University; their son Theodore was born there in 1964.

Le Guin's earliest fiction, including five rejected novels, was set in which invented European country?

Her first published poem and first published story were both Orsinian; the realistic Orsinian Tales finally appeared in 1976.

What was Le Guin's first professionally published story, which appeared in Fantastic in 1962?

Seven more stories followed in Fantastic and Amazing Stories, including the ones that introduced Earthsea and the Hainish universe.

Which publisher released Le Guin's debut novel Rocannon's World in 1966?

It came out as half of an 'Ace Double', bound back-to-back with Avram Davidson's The Kar-Chee Reign.

Which magazine ran Le Guin's 'Nine Lives' in 1968 as 'U. K. Le Guin' after asking to hide her first name?

She later called it the only time she experienced prejudice as a woman writer from an editor, and the story was reprinted under her full name.

Which small press published A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968?

Le Guin had not planned to write for young adults, but the editor saw a market with great potential.

On which island of Earthsea is Ged born?

He is nicknamed Sparrowhawk as a boy; his true name is revealed by the mage Ogion.

What is Ged's childhood name before Ogion reveals his true name?

Names carry real power in Earthsea, and a wizard's true name is guarded closely.

Which fellow student's taunts provoke Ged into the duel that looses the shadow?

Ged's pride is the flaw the whole book turns on; the shadow is often read as a Jungian Shadow archetype.

What kind of small animal is Hoeg, the pet Ged keeps at Roke and later loses to the shadow?

The otak is an invented Earthsea creature; its loss is one of Ged's several bitter lessons about the cost of power.

Which prize did A Wizard of Earthsea win in 1969?

It was also one of the last recipients of the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1979.

Which author called A Wizard of Earthsea one of the 'wellsprings' of fantasy literature?

Modern writers credit the book with the idea of a wizard school long before Hogwarts.

Tenar, heroine of The Tombs of Atuan, is raised as high priestess to which unseen deities?

Ged comes to the Tombs to steal half of the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, and Tenar traps him in the labyrinth.

The broken Ring of Erreth-Akbe in The Tombs of Atuan is inscribed with how many runes?

The breaking caused the Bond-Rune, needed for peace in Earthsea, to be forgotten.

What recognition did The Tombs of Atuan receive in 1972?

It had first appeared in the Winter 1970 issue of Worlds of Fantasy magazine before Atheneum published it as a book.

Which young prince accompanies Ged in The Farthest Shore?

His true name is Lebannen, and he ends the book as the king who reunites the fractious islands.

What is the name of Ged's boat in the Earthsea books?

In The Farthest Shore he sails it south to Hort Town and on to the far Reaches with Arren.

Which dark mage, obsessed with escaping death, is the antagonist of The Farthest Shore?

Ged spends all his wizardly power sealing the breach Cob made between the living and the dead.

The Farthest Shore won which prize in 1973?

Its exploration of death drew special praise, and Studio Ghibli later built its Earthsea film mostly on this book.

Tehanu, published in 1990, was initially given what subtitle?

Two more Earthsea books followed anyway in 2001: Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind.

In Tehanu, Ged arrives on Gont near death on the back of which dragon?

He has spent all his power sealing the gap between the worlds of the living and the dead.

What does the name Therru, given to the burned child Tenar adopts in Tehanu, mean?

The novel won the 1990 Nebula for Best Novel and shifted Earthsea toward a feminist reading of an aging hero and heroine.

The Other Wind, the last Earthsea book, took which prize in 2002?

Its protagonist Alder is a humble mender tormented by dreams of the wall of stones between the living and the dead.

In The Left Hand of Darkness, envoy Genly Ai is sent to which ice-covered planet?

Its own people call it Gethen; the Ekumen calls it Winter. Ai's mission is to bring it into the Ekumen.

What is the name of the monthly period in which Gethenians become sexually male or female?

The rest of the time they are 'somer', neither sex, which Le Guin used to imagine a society without fixed gender roles.

Karhide and which other nation are the two great states on Genly Ai's planet?

Estraven's supposedly soft handling of a border dispute with that neighbor is the pretext for his exile.

What is the name of the intricate code of unspoken rules and courtesy that governs behavior in Karhide?

Genly's failure to grasp it keeps him from understanding Estraven, the deposed prime minister who rescues him.

The Left Hand of Darkness made Le Guin the first woman to win which two awards for the same novel?

She repeated the double in 1974 with The Dispossessed, becoming the first person to do it twice.

Which 1964 short story introduced the Hainish universe?

It reappeared as the prologue 'The Necklace' in Rocannon's World and has been described as a retelling of a Norse myth.

What subtitle did Le Guin give The Dispossessed?

It is one of very few novels to win the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards for best novel.

The Dispossessed is set on the twin worlds Anarres and Urras orbiting which star?

The anarchist settlers of Anarres call themselves Odonians after the founder of their philosophy.

What name did Le Guin coin in 1966 for a device allowing instantaneous interstellar communication?

Orson Scott Card borrowed it for the Ender books, and Neil Gaiman used it in a Doctor Who script.

In Le Guin's 1971 novel, what is the profession of George Orr, whose dreams rewrite reality?

The name has been read as a nod to George Orwell; his manipulative therapist is Dr. William Haber.

The novel about George Orr's reality-altering dreams is set in which city in the year 2002?

Le Guin's version has three million inhabitants and continuous rain.

Le Guin's 1971 novel about George Orr is titled from a mistranslation of which Chinese philosopher?

Joseph Needham wrote to tell her 'It's a lovely translation, but it's wrong' — there were no lathes in China at the time.

Le Guin published her own translation of which Taoist classic in 1997?

She said Taoism gave her 'a handle on how to look at life' as a teenager, though she was 'raised as irreligious as a jackrabbit'.

Which Le Guin novel did she call an homage to Philip K. Dick, who attended her high school?

The two attended the same high school but never knew each other.

The Word for World Is Forest first appeared in 1972 in which Harlan Ellison anthology?

Its anti-colonial fury came from Le Guin's opposition to the Vietnam War; it won the 1973 Hugo for novella.

On which planet do Terran colonists enslave the peaceful natives in The Word for World Is Forest?

Reviewers have noted the many similarities between the book and James Cameron's 2009 film Avatar.

'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' won which prize in 1974?

The utopian city's happiness depends on the perpetual misery of a single child locked in a basement.

Le Guin refused a Nebula Award in 1977 to protest the SFWA's treatment of which writer?

She said she could not accept an award 'for a story about political intolerance from a group that had just displayed political intolerance'.

Always Coming Home (1985) is an anthropological portrait of which fictional future people?

They live in California's Napa Valley long after a great flood; the book mixes stories, poems, drawings and field reports.

Le Guin's Catwings picture books follow kittens born with what unusual feature?

Illustrated by S. D. Schindler, the four books were published by Scholastic between 1988 and 1999.

Le Guin's last novel, Lavinia (2008), retells the story of a minor character from which epic poem?

Lavinia converses with the shade of the dying poet Virgil, aware she may exist only inside his poem.

Which volume of the trilogy Annals of the Western Shore won the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novel?

The trilogy began with Gifts in 2004 and Voices in 2006.

Which director's animated adaptation Tales from Earthsea (2006) disappointed Le Guin?

She had turned down Hayao Miyazaki in the early 1980s, relented after seeing My Neighbor Totoro, then found the film handed to his son.

Le Guin called which 1979-80 production 'the only good adaptation to film' of her work?

She objected to the 2004 Sci Fi miniseries for casting white actors as her red-, brown- and black-skinned characters.

Le Guin resigned from the Authors Guild in 2009 over its endorsement of which company's book-digitization project?

'You decided to deal with the devil', her resignation letter said; five years later she used a National Book Awards speech to attack Amazon.

Which company did Ursula K. Le Guin criticise in her 2014 National Book Foundation medal speech?

She cited its treatment of the Hachette Book Group in a dispute over ebooks; NPR broadcast the speech twice.

How many Hugo Awards did Le Guin win over her career?

She also collected six Nebulas and twenty-five Locus Awards, and became SFWA's second female Grand Master in 2003.

Le Guin's 1986 essay arguing that the first tool was a container, not a weapon, is known by what title?

Critic Siobhan Leddy says it shifts the story of humanity 'from a narrative of domination to one of gathering, holding, and sharing'.

Le Guin's 1976 essay defending The Left Hand of Darkness against feminist critics was titled what?

She revisited it in 1988, conceded gender was central to the novel, and apologized for showing Gethenians only in heterosexual relationships.

Which 2000 novel was Le Guin's final Hainish novel?

She had returned to the Hainish universe in 1990 with 'The Shobies' Story' after a long hiatus.

The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, first awarded in 2022, is worth how much?

The inaugural winner was Khadija Abdalla Bajaber for The House of Rust.

Which critic wrote that Le Guin, 'more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature'?

He later listed The Left Hand of Darkness in The Western Canon (1994).

Le Guin died in January 2018 at her home at what age?

Margaret Atwood was among the speakers at her public memorial in Portland that June.

Le Guin proposed the term 'social SF' as a replacement for which label often applied to her work?

She has been called the 'patron saint' of that sub-genre but argued the label was divisive and dismissive.

Which of Le Guin's later works did she describe as her first genuinely woman-centered book?

Published in 1978, it continued the exploration of human freedom she had begun in The Dispossessed.

What was the subject of Le Guin's 1952 master's degree from Columbia University?

Her marriage to Charles Le Guin in 1953 marked, in her words, 'the end of the doctorate'.

Le Guin's first published work, a 1959 poem set in her invented Orsinia, was a 'Folksong from' where?

Her first published story, 'An die Musik', followed in 1961; five Orsinian novels written in the 1950s were all rejected as inaccessible.

How many Nebula Awards for Best Novel did Le Guin win, more than any other writer?

She won six Nebulas in all from eighteen nominations, and eight Hugos from twenty-six.

Which pacifist anarchist did Le Guin cite as an influence on The Dispossessed?

The novel's planned society on Anarres is portrayed as materially poorer than Urras but neither perfect nor static.

In 2003 Le Guin became only the second woman named a Grand Master by which organisation?

She had earlier been voted a Gandalf Grand Master by the World Science Fiction Society in 1979.

Which author said of Le Guin, 'I learn more from her books at every stage of life than from any other writer'?

He also borrowed her word 'ansible' for a Doctor Who script, as Orson Scott Card did in the Ender books.