Q 01/05

In which California city was Ursula Kroeber born in 1929?

A) Pasadena

B) San Francisco

C) Berkeley

D) Sacramento

Answer · why

C) Berkeley

Berkeley: her father Alfred Kroeber led the University of California's anthropology department there, and the family home was full of visiting academi...

Q 02/05

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

A) Geronimo

B) Ishi

C) Sequoyah

D) Chief Joseph

Answer · why

B) Ishi

Ishi lived out his last years at the University of California's anthropology museum, where Le Guin's father studied his Yahi language and ways.

Q 03/05

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

A) Robert Oppenheimer

B) Albert Einstein

C) Richard Feynman

D) Enrico Fermi

Answer · why

A) Robert Oppenheimer

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

Q 04/05

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

A) 11

B) 9

C) 16

D) 21

Answer · why

A) 11

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

Q 05/05

Ursula K. Le Guin earned her bachelor's degree in 1951 from which women's college?

A) Vassar

B) Smith

C) Bryn Mawr

D) Radcliffe

Answer · why

D) Radcliffe

Radcliffe: she went on to a master's at Columbia, then met historian Charles Le Guin on a transatlantic ship and married him within months.