Search Worlds Without End

Though science fiction has existed as a literary genre for well over a century, a working definition of the term has yet to be determined. Ursula K. Le Guin, who emerged as a popular science fiction and fantasy writer in the 1960s, has not only witnessed, but also experienced first-hand the shifts and transformations of this increasingly popular genre. Delve into her fantastical worlds and investigate several of her famous works in this study ideal for high school and undergraduate students. Learn about the author's life and decade-spanning career, as well as her numerous literary achievements. This comprehensive analysis of Le Guin's work will leave readers anxious for her future endeavors.

After a biography that focuses on Le Guin's interest in science fiction, this study delves into analyses of Le Guin's most well-known works, with emphasis on plot, as well as thematic and character development. Works covered include:

• A Wizard of Earthsea (1968)
• The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
• The Tombs of Atuan (1970)
• The Farthest Shore (1972)
• The Lathe of Heaven (1973)
• The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)
• The Eye of the Heron (1978)
• Tehanu (1990)
• and more.

Hugo Award Finalist for Best Related Work

When the New York Times referred to Ursula K. Le Guin as America's greatest writer of science fiction, they just might have undersold her legacy. It's hard to look at her vast body of work -- novels and stories across multiple genres, poems, translations, essays, speeches, and criticism -- and see anything but one of our greatest writers, period.

In a series of interviews with David Naimon, Le Guin discusses craft, aesthetics, and philosophy in her fiction, poetry, and nonfiction respectively. The discussions provide ample advice and guidance for writers of every level, but also give Le Guin a chance to to sound off on some of her favorite subjects: the genre wars, the patriarchy, the natural world, and what, in her opinion, makes for great writing. With excerpts from her own books and those that she looked to for inspiration, this volume is a treat for Le Guin's longtime readers, a perfect introduction for those first approaching her writing, and a tribute to her incredible life and work.

The award-winning stories in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea 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. Astonishing in their diversity and power, they exhibit both the artistry of a major writer at the height of her powers and the humanity of a mature artist confronting the world with her gift of wonder still intact.

Table of Contents:

• Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea - (1994)
• Dancing to Ganam - (1993)
• Introduction: On Not Reading Science Fiction - (1994) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Newton's Sleep - (1991)
• The Ascent of the North Face - (1983)
• The First Contact with the Gorgonids - (1992)
• The Kerastion - (1990)
• The Rock That Changed Things - (1992)
• The Shobies' Story - (1990)

Contents:

• 9 - Introduction (Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences) - essay
• 14 - Come Into Animal Presence - (1961) - poem by Denise Levertov
• 17 - Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight - (1987) - novelette
• 55 - Three Rock Poems - essay
• 56 - The Basalt - poem
• 56 - Flints - poem
• 57 - Mount St. Helens/Omphalos - (1975) - poem
• 61 - Mazes - (1975) - shortstory
• 61 - "The Wife's Story" and "Mazes" - essay
• 67 - The Wife's Story - (1982) - shortstory
• 75 - Five Vegetable Poems - essay
• 76 - Torrey Pines Reserve - (1980) - poem
• 77 - Lewis and Clark and After - poem
• 77 - West Texas - poem
• 78 - Xmas Over - (1984) - poem
• 78 - The Crown of Laurel - poem
• 83 - "The Direction of the Road" and "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" - essay
• 84 - Direction of the Road - (1973) - shortstory
• 92 - Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - (1971) - novelette
• 131 - Seven Bird and Beast Poems - essay
• 132 - What is Going on in the Oaks Around the Barn - poem
• 133 - For Ted - (1975) - poem
• 134 - Found Poem - poem
• 134 - Totem - (1981) - poem
• 135 - Winter Downs - (1981) - poem
• 135 - The Man Eater - poem
• 136 - Sleeping Out - poem
• 139 - "The White Donkey" and "Horse Camp" - essay
• 140 - The White Donkey - (1980) - shortstory
• 143 - Horse Camp - (1986) - shortstory
• 151 - Four Cat Poems - essay
• 152 - Tabby Lorenzo - poem
• 152 - Black Leonard in Negative Space - poem
• 153 - A Conversation With a Silence - poem
• 154 - For Leonard, Darko, and Burton Watson - poem
• 157 - "Schrödinger's Cat" and "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" - essay
• 158 - Schrödinger's Cat - (1974) - shortstory
• 167 - "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics - (1974) - shortstory (variant of The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics)
• 179 - May's Lion - (1983) - shortstory
• 179 - "May's Lion" - essay
• 191 - Rilke's "Eighth Duino Elegy" and "She Unnames Them" - essay
• 191 - The Eighth Elegy - poem by Rainer Maria Rilke
• 194 - She Unnames Them - (1985) - shortstory

WFA and Hugo Award winning and Sturgeon and Nebula Award nominated novelette.

A lost child tumbles into the confusing world of Southwestern US desert folklore and lives for a while with the trickster Coyote.

The story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1987 and has been reprinted many times. It can be found in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988) edited by Gardner Dozois
• The Year's Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection (1988) edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
• The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 14 (1988) edited by Arthur W. Saha
• The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology (1989) edited by Edward L. Ferman
• Future on Fire (1991), edited by Orson Scott Card
• The New Hugo Winners, Volume II: (1986-88) (1992), edited by Isaac Asimov
• Modern Classics of Fantasy (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois

It is included in these collections:

• Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1987)
• Where on Earth (2012)

It was Sita Dulip who discovered, whilst stuck in an airport, unable to get anywhere, how to change planes - literally. By a mere 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. The author, now armed with this knowledge and Rornan's invaluable Handy Planetary Guide - although not the Encyclopedia Planeria, as that runs to forty-four volumes - has spent many happy years exploring places as diverse as Islac and the Veksian plane. Changing Planes is an intriguing, enticing mixture of Gulliver's Travels and The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a mix of satire, cynicism and humour by one of the world's best writers.

Table of Contents

• Author's Note - essay
• Sita Dulip's Method - short story
• Porridge on Islac - short story
• The Silence of the Asonu - (1998) - short story
• Feeling at Home with the Hennebet - short story
• The Ire of the Veksi - short story
• Seasons of the Ansarac - (2002) - short story
• Social Dreaming of the Frin - (2002) - short story
• The Royals of Hegn - (2000) - short story
• Woeful Tales from Mahigul - novelette
• Great Joy - short story
• Wake Island - short story
• The Nna Mmoy Language - short story
• The Building - (2001) - short story
• The Fliers of Gy - (2000) - short story
• The Island of the Immortals - (1998) - short story
• Confusions of Uñi - short story

Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release of Cheek by Jowl, a collection of talks and essays on how and why fantasy matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin. In these essays, Le Guin argues passionately that the homogenization of our world makes the work of fantasy essential for helping us break through what she calls "the reality trap." Le Guin writes not only of the pleasures of her own childhood reading, but also about what fantasy means for all of us living in the global twenty-first century.

This short story originally appeared in the collection Changing Planes (2003). It can also be found in the anthology Science Fiction: The Best of 2003, edited by Karen Haber and Jonathan Strahan.

Table of Contents:

• vii - Introductory Note (Dancing at the Edge of the World) - essay
• 3 - The Space Crone - (1976) - essay
• 7 - Is Gender Necessary? Redux - (1987) - essay
• 17 - "Moral and Ethical Implications of Family Planning" - essay
• 21 - It Was a Dark and Stormy Night; or, Why Are We Huddling About the Campfire? - (1980) - essay
• 31 - Working on "The Lathe" - (1980) - essay
• 37 - Some Thoughts on Narrative - essay
• 46 - World-Making - (1983) - essay
• 49 - Hunger - essay
• 51 - Places Names - essay
• 75 - The Princess - essay
• 80 - A Non-Euclidean View of California As a Cold Place to Be - (1983) - essay
• 101 - Facing It - essay
• 104 - Reciprocity of Prose and Poetry - essay
• 115 - A Left-Handed Commencement Address - essay
• 118 - Along the Platte - (1983) - essay
• 123 - Whose Lathe? - (1984) - essay
• 127 - The Woman Without Answers - essay
• 130 - The Second Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb - shortstory
• 135 - Room 9, Car 1430 - (1985) - essay
• 138 - Theodora - (1985) - essay
• 142 - Science Fiction and the Future - essay
• 144 - The Only Good Author? - (1985) - essay
• 147 - Bryn Mawr Commencement Address - (1986) - essay
• 161 - Woman/Wilderness - essay
• 165 - The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction - (1988) - essay
• 171 - Heroes - (1986) - essay
• 176 - Prospects for Women in Writing - (1986) - essay
• 179 - Text, Silence, Performance - (1986) - essay
• 188 - "Who is Responsible?" - (1987) - essay
• 190 - Conflict - (1987) - essay
• 192 - "Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?" - (1987) - essay
• 201 - Over the Hills and a Great Way Off - (1988) - essay
• 212 - The Fisherwoman's Daughter - (1988) - essay

REVIEWS:

• 1977 The Dark Tower, by C.S. Lewis
• 1978 Close Encounters, Star Wars, and the Tertium Quid
• 1979 Shikasta, by Doris Lessing
• 1980 Two from "Venom"
• Freddy's Book and Vlemk, by John Gardner
• The Marriage Between Zones Three, Four, and Five, by Doris Lessing
• Kalila and Dimna, retold by Ramsay Wood
• Unfinished Busines, by Maggie Scarf
• Italian Folktales, by Italo Calvino
• 1981 Peak's Progress, by Mervyn Peake
• 1983 The Sentimental Agents, by Doris Lessing
• 1984 Difficult Loves, by Italo Calvino
• "Forsaking Kingdomes": Five Poets
• 1985 The Mythology of North American, by John Bierhorst
• 1986 Silent Partners, by Eugene Linden
• Outside the Gates, by Molly Gloss
• Golden Days, by Carolyn See
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Ballad of Bowsprit Bear's Stead - novelette by Damien Broderick
• Omens - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• Touch the Earth - short story by Scott Russell Sanders
• The Other Magus - short story by Avram Davidson
• Peek-A-Boom - short story by Sonya Dorman
• Suzanne Delage - short story by Gene Wolfe
• The Finger - (1980) - short story by Naomi Mitchison
• Barranca, King of the Tree Streets - short story by Lowry Pei
• Thomas in Yahvestan - novelette by George P. Elliott
• The Vengeance of Hera, or Monogamy Triumphant - short story by Thomas M. Disch
• Falling - short story by Raylyn Moore
• Father Returns from the Mountain - short story by Luis Alberto Urrea
• The Oracle - novella by M. J. Engh

This short story originally appeared in Tin House (2012) and was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

World Fantasy Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, November 1995. The story can also be found in the The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Ninth Annual Collection (1996), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It is included in the collections Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (1996), Where on Earth (2012) and The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Kidd
• The Reason for the Visit - short story by John Crowley
• Set Piece - short story by Jill Paton Walsh
• Everything Blowing Up: An Adventure of Una Persson, Heroine of Time and Space - novelette by Hilary Bailey
• The New Zombies - short story by Avram Davidson and Grania Davis
• Earth and Stone - novelette by Robert Holdstock
• A Short History of the Bicycle: 401 B.C. to 2677 A.D. - short story by Michael Bishop
• Shadows, Moving - short story by Vonda N. McIntyre
• The Trumpeter Swan - poem by Laurence Josephs
• Lose, Place and Show - poem by Laurence Josephs
• The Pastseer - novelette by Philippa C. Maddern
• Hunger and the Computer - short story by Gary Weimberg
• Household Gods - short story by Daphne Castell
• Bender, Fenugreek, Slatterman and Mupp - short story by D. G. Compton
• Precession - short story by Edward Bryant
• A Criminal Proceeding - short story by Gene Wolfe
• For Whom are Those Serpents Whistling Overhead? - short story by Jean Femling
• The Summer Sweet, the Winter Wild - short story by Michael G. Coney
• The Gods in Winter - poem by Sonya Dorman
• Slow Music - novella by James Tiptree, Jr.

In The Aeneid, Vergil's hero fights to claim the king's daughter, Lavinia, with whom he is destined to found an empire. Lavinia herself never speaks a word. Now, Ursula K. Le Guin gives Lavinia a voice in a novel that takes us to the half-wild world of ancient Italy, when Rome was a muddy village near seven hills.

Lavinia grows up knowing nothing but peace and freedom, until suitors come. Her mother wants her to marry handsome, ambitious Turnus. But omens and prophecies spoken by the sacred springs say she must marry a foreigner-that she will be the cause of a bitter war-and that her husband will not live long. 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 Vergil did not: the story of her life, and of the love of her life.

Nebula Award nominated novelette.

On a distant mining planet, two men must work with a group of ten clones, five male and five female, who are completely reliant on themselves and on one another.

It originally appeared in Playboy, November 1969. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

• Best SF: 1969 (1970), edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss
• World's Best Science Fiction: 1970, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr
• Nebula Award Stories Five (1970),edited by James Blish
• Modern Science Fiction (1974), edited by Norman Spinrad
• Bio-Futures (1976), edited by Pamela Sargent
• The World Treasury of Science Fiction (1989), edited David G. Hartwell
• The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• Clones (1998), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
• The Future Is Female!: 25 Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, from Pulp Pioneers to Ursula K. Le Guin (2018), edited by Lisa Yaszek

It is included in the collections:

• The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)
• Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012)
• The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015)

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Finalist for Hugo Award for Best Related Work

Ursula K. Le Guin on the absurdity of denying your age: "If I'm ninety and believe I'm forty-five, I'm headed for a very bad time trying to get out of the bathtub."

On cultural perceptions of fantasy: "The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is 'escapism' an accusation of?"

On breakfast: "Eating an egg from the shell takes not only practice, but resolution, even courage, possibly willingness to commit crime."

Ursula K. Le Guin has taken readers to imaginary worlds for decades. Now she's in the last great frontier of life, old age, and exploring new literary territory: the blog, a forum where her voice -- sharp, witty, as compassionate as it is critical -- shines. No Time to Spare collects the best of Ursula's online writing, presenting perfectly crystallized dispatches on what matters to her now, her concerns with this world, and her unceasing wonder at it: "How rich we are in knowledge, and in all that lies around us yet to learn. Billionaires, all of us."

Locus nominated novella. It originally appeared in the collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (2002). The story is also included in the collection The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016).

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 2002. It can also be found in the anthologies Fantasy: The Best of 2002, edited by Karen Haber and Robert Silverberg, and Year's Best Fantasy 3 (2003), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer. The story is included in the collection Changing Planes (2003).

Locus Award winning and Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The New Yorker, February 1, 1982. The story can be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #12 (1983), edited by Terry Carr, Visions of Wonder (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell and Milton T. Wolf, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, and Women of Futures Past (2016), edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. It is included in the collections The Compass Rose (1982), Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012) and The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015).

Locus Award nominated short story.

The story originally appeared in the anthology Fellowship of the Stars (1974), edited by Terry Carr. It has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction of the Year #4 (1974), edited by Terry Carr
• The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces (1983), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg
• The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell

The story is included in the collections:

• The Compas Rose (1982)
• Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1990)
• Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012)
• The Wind's Twelve Quarters and The Compass Rose (2015)
• The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016)

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.

Locus Award winning and Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2000. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), and Year's Best SF 6 (2001), edited by David G. Hardwell. It is included in the collection The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (2002).

Six of these tales are set in the author's signature world of the Ekumen, a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The title story was hailed by Publisher's Weekly as "remarkable... a standout." Paradises Lost is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness. These stories explore complex social interactions, troublesome issues of gender and sex, and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history.

Contents:

• 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

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction (2001), edited by Al Sarrantonio. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 7 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer. The story is included in the collection Changing Planes (2003).

North to Orsinia and the boundaries between reality and madness... South to discover Antarctica with three ladies from Chile... West to find an enchanted harp and the borderland between life and death... and onward to all points on and off the compass. Twenty astonishing stories from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin that carry us to worlds of wonder and horror, desire and destiny, enchantment and doom.

Table of Contents:

• Preface - (1982) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Gwilan's Harp - (1977)
• Intracom - (1974)
• Malheur County - (1979)
• Mazes - (1975)
• Schrödinger's Cat - (1974)
• Small Change - (1981)
• Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time - (1979)
• SQ - (1978)
• Sur - (1982)
• The Diary of the Rose - (1976)
• The Eye Altering - (1976)
• The First Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb - (1978)
• The New Atlantis - (1975)
• The Pathways of Desire - (1979)
• The Phoenix - (1982)
• The Water Is Wide - (1976)
• The White Donkey - (1980)
• The Wife's Story - (1982)
• Two Delays on the Northern Line - (1979)
• The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics - (1974)

In Victoria on a former prison colony, two exiled groups--the farmers of Shantih and the City dwellers--live in apparent harmony. All is not as it seems, however. While the peace-loving farmers labor endlessly to provide food for the City, the City Bosses rule the Shantih with an iron fist. When a group of farmers decide to from a new settlement further away, the Bosses retaliate by threatening to crush the "rebellion."

Luz understands what it means to have no choices. Her father is a Boss and he has ruled over her life with the same iron fist. Luz wonders what it might be like to make her own choices. To be free to choose her own destiny.

When the crisis over the new settlement reaches a flash point, Luz will have her chance.

This book contains every novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, an icon in American literature, collected for the first time -- and introduced by the legendary author -- in one breathtaking volume.

Ursula K. Le Guin has won multiple prizes and accolades from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud Awards. She has had her work collected over the years, but never as a complete retrospective of her longer works as represented in the wonderful The Found and the Lost.

Table of Contents:

• Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - [Hainish Cycle] - (1971) - novelette
• Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight - (1987) - novelette
• Hernes - non-genre - (1991) - novella
• The Matter of Seggri - [Hainish Cycle] - (1994) - novelette
• Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea - [Hainish Cycle] - (1994) - novelette (variant of Another Story)
• Forgiveness Day - [Hainish Cycle: Yeowe and Werel] - (1994) - novella
• A Man of the People - [Hainish Cycle: Yeowe and Werel] - (1995) - novella
• A Woman's Liberation - [Hainish Cycle: Yeowe and Werel] - (1995) - novella
• Old Music and the Slave Women - [Hainish Cycle: Yeowe and Werel] - (1999) - novella
• The Finder - [Earthsea Cycle] - (2001) - novella
• On the High Marsh - [Earthsea Cycle] - (2001) - novelette
• Dragonfly - [Earthsea Cycle] - (1998) - novella
• Paradises Lost - (2002) - novella

This short story originally appeared in Amazing Stories, Fall 1998 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2011. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection (1999), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Changing Planes (2003).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Language of the Night) - essay by Susan Wood
• 21 - Le Guin Introduces Le Guin - essay by Susan Wood
• 25 - A Citizen of Mondath - [The Profession of Science Fiction - 4] - (1973) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 33 - On Fantasy and Science Fiction - essay by Susan Wood
• 39 - Why Are Americans Afraid of Dragons? - (1974) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 47 - Dreams Must Explain Themselves - (1973) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 57 - National Book Award Acceptance Speech - (1973) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 59 - The Child and the Shadow - (1975) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 73 - Myth and Archetype in Science Fiction - (1976) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 83 - From Elfland to Poughkeepsie - (1973) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 97 - American SF and The Other - (1975) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 101 - Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown - (1976) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 121 - Do-It-Yourself Cosmology - (1977) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 129 - The Book Is What Is Real - essay by Susan Wood
• 133 - Introduction to Rocannon's World - (1977) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 139 - Introduction to Planet of Exile - (1978) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 145 - Introduction to City of Illusions - (1978) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of Introduction (City of Illusions))
• 149 - Introduction to The Word for World Is Forest - (1977) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of Author's Introduction (The Word For World Is Forest))
• 155 - Introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness - (1976) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of Introduction (The Left Hand of Darkness))
• 161 - Is Gender Necessary? - (1976) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 171 - The Staring Eye - (1974) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of Three Views of Tolkien: The Staring Eye)
• 175 - The Modest One - (1976) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of Science Fiction as Prophecy: Philip K. Dick)
• 179 - Introduction to Star Songs of an Old Primate - (1978) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of Introduction (Star Songs of an Old Primate))
• 187 - Telling the Truth - essay by Susan Wood
• 191 - Introduction to The Altered I (excerpt) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of Introduction (The Altered I) 1976)
• 195 - Talking About Writing - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 201 - Escape Routes - (1974) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 209 - Pushing at the Limits - essay by Susan Wood
• 211 - The Stalin in the Soul - (1973) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• 223 - The Stone Ax and the Muskoxen - (1975) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin (variant of The Stone Ax and the Musk Oxen)
• 237 - Bibliographic Checklist of the Works of Ursula K. Le Guin - essay by Jeff Levin

In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr. William Haber, a psychiatrist who immediately grasps the power George wields. Soon George must preserve reality itself as Dr. Haber becomes adept at manipulating George's dreams for his own purposes.

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology The New Atlantis and Other Novellas of Science Fiction (1975), edited by Robert Silverberg. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #5 (1976), edited by Terry Carr, The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery and Tor Double #13: The Blind Geometer/The New Atlantis (1989), with Kim Stanley Robinson. It is included in the collections The Compass Rose (1982) and The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

In the tradition of other groundbreaking Norton Collections, Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery's Norton Book of Science Fiction provides the first truly comprehensive and coherent look at the best of contemporary science fiction.

Successfully used at over one hundred schools nationwide, these sixty-seven stories offer compelling evidence that science fiction is a source of the most thoughtful, imaginative-indeed, literary-fiction being written today.

Readers will be introduced to some rarely anthologized gems from well-known authors-Poul Anderson, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delany, Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Joanna Russ, Theodore Sturgeon, James Tiptree, Jr., Gene Wolfe, Roger Zelazny-as well as starling work by today's rising stars. Students and teachers alike will appreciate the sophisticated range of voices exploring the nature of reality and the condition of the human spirit.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Handler - (1960) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - (1961) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• Tandy's Story - (1961) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• 2064, or Thereabouts - (1964) - shortstory by David R. Bunch
• Balanced Ecology - (1965) - shortstory by James H. Schmitz
• The House the Blakeneys Built - (1965) - shortstory by Avram Davidson
• Over the River and Through the Woods - (1965) - shortstory by Clifford D. Simak
• How Beautiful With Banners - (1966) - shortstory by James Blish
• Nine Hundred Grandmothers - (1966) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• When I Was Miss Dow - (1966) - shortstory by Sonya Dorman
• Comes Now the Power - (1966) - shortstory by Roger Zelazny
• Day Million - (1966) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• The Winter Flies - (1967) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• High Weir - (1968) - novelette by Samuel R. Delany
• Kyrie - (1968) - shortstory by Poul Anderson
• For the Sake of Grace - (1969) - novelette by Suzette Haden Elgin
• As Simple as That - (1971) - shortstory by Zenna Henderson
• Good News from the Vatican - (1971) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• Gather Blue Roses - (1972) - shortstory by Pamela Sargent
• The Women Men Don't See - (1973) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Feather Tigers - (1973) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• The Mountains of Sunset, the Mountains of Dawn - (1974) - shortstory by Vonda N. McIntyre
• The Private War of Private Jacob - (1974) - shortstory by Joe Haldeman
• The Warlord of Saturn's Moons - (1974) - shortstory by Eleanor Arnason
• Making It All the Way into the Future on Gaxton Falls of the Red Planet - (1974) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• The New Atlantis - (1975) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• A Few Things I Know about Whileaway - (1974) - shortfiction by Joanna Russ
• Strange Wine - (1976) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• Lollipop and the Tar Baby - (1977) - novelette by John Varley
• Night-Rise - (1978) - shortstory by Katherine MacLean
• Frozen Journey - (1980) - shortstory by Philip K. Dick
• Precession - (1980) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• Elbow Room - (1980) - novelette by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Tauf Aleph - (1981) - novelette by Phyllis Gotlieb
• Exposures - (1981) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• The Gernsback Continuum - (1981) - shortstory by William Gibson
• The Start of the End of the World - (1981) - shortstory by Carol Emshwiller
• Schrödinger's Plague - (1982) - shortstory by Greg Bear
• "...The World As We Know't." - (1982) - shortstory by Howard Waldrop
• The Byrds - (1983) - shortstory by Michael G. Coney
• Speech Sounds - (1983) - shortstory by Octavia E. Butler
• Distant Signals - (1984) - shortstory by Andrew Weiner
• The Lucky Strike - (1984) - novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Life of Anybody - (1984) - shortstory by Robert Sheckley
• Interlocking Pieces - (1984) - shortstory by Molly Gloss
• The War at Home - (1985) - shortstory by Lewis Shiner
• The Lake Was Full of Artificial Things - (1985) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Snow - (1985) - shortstory by John Crowley
• After the Days of Dead-Eye 'Dee - (1985) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• The Bob Dylan Tambourine Software & Satori Support Services Consortium, Ltd. - (1985) - shortstory by Michael Bishop
• His Vegetable Wife - (1986) - shortstory by Pat Murphy
• The Brains of Rats - (1986) - shortstory by Michael Blumlein
• Out of All Them Bright Stars - (1985) - shortstory by Nancy Kress
• Rat - (1986) - shortstory by James Patrick Kelly
• America - (1987) - novelette by Orson Scott Card
• Schwarzschild Radius - (1987) - shortstory by Connie Willis
• Stable Strategies for Middle Management - (1988) - shortstory by Eileen Gunn
• Kirinyaga - (1988) - novelette by Mike Resnick
• A Midwinter's Tale - (1988) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• (Learning About) Machine Sex - (1988) - shortstory by Candas Jane Dorsey
• We See Things Differently - (1989) - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• Half-Life - (1989) - shortstory by Paul Preuss
• Homelanding - (1989) - shortstory by Margaret Atwood
• And the Angels Sing - (1990) - shortstory by Kate Wilhelm
• Aunt Parnetta's Electric Blisters - (1991) - shortstory by Diane Glancy
• Midnight News - (1990) - shortstory by Lisa Goldstein
• Invaders - (1990) - novelette by John Kessel
• Notes on the Authors

Hugo Award winning short story. It originally appeared in the anthology New Dimensions III (1973), edited by Robert Silverberg. The story has been reprinted many times. It can be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction of the Year #3 (1974), edited by Terry Carr
• The Hugo Winners, Volume 3: (1970-75) (1977), edited by Isaac Asimov
• The Fantasy Hall of Fame (1983) edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg
• Treasures of Fantasy (1999) edited by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman
• Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century (1999), edited by Orson Scott Card
• The Secret History of Science Fiction (2009), edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
• Brave New Worlds: Dystopian Stories (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams

The story is included in the collections The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975), Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012), The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015) and The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016).

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology New Dimensions Science Fiction Number 9 (1979), edited by Robert Silverberg. The story can also be found in the anthology The Night Fantastic (1991), edited by Poul and Karen Anderson and collections The Compass Rose (1982) and The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015).

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared on the webzine Infinite Matrix, June 3, 2002 and was later reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2003. The story can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 8 (2003), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell and Aliens: Recent Encounters (2013), edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane. It is included in the collection Changing Planes (2003).

Read the story for free at Infinite Matrix.

This short story originally appeared in Orion (1998). It has been reprinted in Lightspeed, December 2010. The story can also be found in the anthology Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams and the collections Changing Planes (2003), Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012) and The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 14 (1974), edited by Damon Knight, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2013. The story can also be found in the anthologies Another World: Adventures in Otherness (1977) and Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition (2005), both edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) and The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

Contents:

• Introducing Myself - (2004) - essay
• Being Taken for Granite - (2004) - essay
• Indian Uncles - (2004) - essay
• My Libraries - (2004) - essay
• My Island - (2004) - essay
• On the Frontier - (2004) - essay
• All Happy Families - (2004) - essay
• Things Not Actually Present - (2004) - essay
• Reading Young, Reading Old - (2004) - essay
• Thinking About Cordwainer Smith - (2004) - essay
• Stress-Rhythm in Poetry and Prose - (2004) - essay
• Rhythmic Pattern in the Lord of the Rings - (2001) - essay
• The Wilderness Within: The Sleeping Beauty and "The Poacher" and a PS about Sylvia Townsend Warner - (2004) - essay
• Off the Page: Loud Cows: A Talk and a Poem About Reading Aloud - (2004) - essay
• Fact and/or/plus Fiction - (2004) - essay
• Award and Gender - (2004) - essay
• On Genetic Determinism - (2004) - essay
• About Feet - (2004) - essay
• Dogs, Cats, and Dancers: Thoughts About Beauty - (2004) - essay
• Collectors, Rhymesters, and Drummers - (2004) - essay
• Telling Is Listening - (2004) - essay
• The Operating Instructions - (2004) - essay
• "A War Without End" - (2004) - essay
• A Matter of Trust - (2004) - essay
• The Writer and the Character - (2004) - essay
• Unquestioned Assumptions - (2004) - essay
• Prides: An Essay on Writing Workshops - (2004) - essay (variant of Prides 1990)
• Alone in the Desert of Words - (2004) - interior artwork
• Heading for the Waterhole - (2004) - interior artwork
• The Question I Get Asked Most Often - (2004) - essay
• Old Body Not Writing - (2004) - essay
• The Writer on, and at, Her Work - (2004) - poem

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2002. The story can also be found in the collections The Wild Girls (2011) and Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012).

The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and the Pushcart Prize, Ursula K. Le Guin is renowned for her lyrical writing, rich characters, and diverse worlds. The Wind's Twelve Quarters collects seventeen powerful stories, each with an introduction by the author, ranging from fantasy to intriguing scientific concepts, from medieval settings to the future.

Including an insightful foreword by Le Guin, describing her experience, her inspirations, and her approach to writing, this stunning collection explores human values, relationships, and survival, and showcases the myriad talents of one of the most provocative writers of our time.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Semley's Necklace - (1964)
• April in Paris - (1962)
• The Masters - (1963)
• Darkness Box - (1963)
• The Word of Unbinding - (1964)
• The Rule of Names - (1964)
• Winter's King - (1969)
• The Good Trip - (1970)
• Nine Lives - (1969)
• Things - (1970)
• A Trip to the Head - (1970)
• Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - (1971)
• The Stars Below - (1974)
• The Field of Vision - (1973)
• The Direction of the Road - (1975)
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - (1973)
• The Day Before the Revolution - (1974)

Grand Master Ursula K. LeGuin has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field - and is likewise feted beyond the confines of the genre. The Wind's Twelve Quarters was her first collection and it brings together some of finest short fiction, including the Hugo Award-winning 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas', the Nebula Award-winning 'The Day Before the Revolution', and the Hugo-nominated 'Winter's King', which gave readers their first glimpse of the world later made famous in her Hugo- and Nebula-winning masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness.

This is the omnibus edition of the two short story collections The Wind's Twelve Quarters and The Compass Rose.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Graham Sleight

The Wind's Twelve Quarters

• Foreword - (1975) - essay
• Semley's Necklace - (1964) - shortstory
• April in Paris - (1962) - shortstory
• The Masters - (1963) - shortstory
• Darkness Box - (1963) - shortstory
• The Word of Unbinding - (1964) - shortstory
• The Rule of Names - (1964) - shortstory
• Winter's King - (1969) - novelette
• The Good Trip - (1970) - shortstory
• Nine Lives - (1969) - novelette
• Things - (1970) - shortstory
• A Trip to the Head - (1970) - shortstory
• Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - (1971) - novelette
• The Stars Below - (1974) - shortstory
• The Field of Vision - (1973) - shortstory
• Direction of the Road - (1973) - shortstory
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - (1973) - shortstory
• The Day Before the Revolution - (1974) - shortstory

The Compass Rose

• Preface - (1982) - essay
• The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics - (1974) - shortstory
• The New Atlantis - (1975) - novelette
• Schrödinger's Cat - (1974) - shortstory
• Two Delays on the Northern Line - (1979) - shortstory
• SQ - (1978) - shortstory
• Small Change - (1982) - shortstory
• The First Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb - (1978) - shortstory
• The Diary of the Rose - (1976) - novelette
• The White Donkey - (1980) - shortstory
• The Phoenix - (1982) - shortstory
• Intracom - (1974) - shortstory
• The Eye Altering - (1976) - shortstory
• Mazes - (1975) - shortstory
• The Pathways of Desire - (1979) - novelette
• Gwilan's Harp - (1977) - shortstory
• Malheur County - (1979) - shortstory
• The Water Is Wide - (1976) - shortstory
• The Wife's Story - (1982) - shortstory
• Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time - (1979) - shortstory
• Sur - (1982) - shortstory

Contents:

• Half Past Four - (1987) - novelette
• The Professor's Houses - (1982) - shortstory
• Ruby on the 67 - (1996) - shortstory
• Limberlost - (1989) - shortstory
• The Creatures on My Mind - (1990) - shortstory
• Standing Ground - (1992) - shortstory
• The Spoons in the Basement - (1982) - shortstory
• Sunday in Summer in Seatown - (1995) - shortstory
• In the Drought - (1994) - shortstory
• Ether, OR - (1995) - novelette (variant of Ether OR)
• Unlocking the Air - [Orsinia] - (1990) - shortstory
• A Child Bride - (1988) - shortstory (variant of Kore 87)
• Climbing to the Moon - (1992) - shortstory
• Daddy's Big Girl - (1987) - shortstory
• Findings - (1992) - shortstory
• Olders - (1995) - shortstory
• The Wise Woman - (1996) - shortstory
• The Poacher - (1993) - shortstory

This short story originally appeared in the collection Changing Planes (2003). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2004), edited by Ellen Datlow, Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link.

Hugo-nominated Related Work

"Hard times are coming, when we'll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We'll need writers who can remember freedom -- poets, visionaries -- realists of a larger reality..."

Words Are My Matter collects talks, essays, introductions to beloved books, and book reviews by Ursula K. Le Guin, one of our fore- most public literary intellectuals. Words Are My Matter is essential reading. It is a manual for investigating the depth and breadth of con- temporary fiction -- and, through the lens of deep considerations of contemporary writing, a way of exploring the world we are all living in.

"We need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship."

Le Guin is one of those authors and this is another of her moments. She has published more than sixty books ranging from fiction to nonfiction, children's books to poetry, and has received many lifetime achievement awards including the Library of Congress Living Legends award.

The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductions--and snares--of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural, and political ramifications of Le Guin's multiple award-winning novel remain woefully under explored.

Editors Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman right this state of affairs in the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin's novel. Among the topics covered in this wide-ranging, international and interdisciplinary collection are the anarchist, ecological, post-consumerist, temporal, revolutionary, and open-ended utopian politics of The Dispossessed. The book concludes with an essay by Le Guin written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the development of her own thinking over the past 30 years.

The first book-length treatment of Le Guin's feminism, this text offers a career-spanning look at her engagement with modern gender theory and practice. During the 1970s, Le Guin experienced a paradigm shift to feminism, a change which had profound effects on her work.

This critical examination explores the masculinist nature of her early writing and how her work changed both thematically and aesthetically as a result of her newfound feminism. Of particular interest is her later phase, wherein Le Guin transitions to a more inclusive post-feminism, privileging unity and balance over separatism. A vital addition to Le Guin criticism.

Planet of Exile

The Earth colony of Landin has been stranded on Werel for ten years, and ten of Werel's years are over 600 terrestrial years, and the lonely and dwindling human settlement is beginning to feel the strain. Every winter, a season that lasts for 15 years, the Earthmen have neighbors: the humanoid hilfs, a nomadic people who only settle down for the cruel cold spell. The hilfs fear the Earthmen, whom they think of as witches and call the farborns. But hilfs and farborns have common enemies: the hordes of ravaging barbarians called gaals and eerie preying snow ghouls. Will they join forces or be annihilated?

Mankind Under the Leash

Ever since the alien Masters had taken control, domesticating mankind with their energy-technology and the all-powerful mental Leash, the human condition had changed from toil and trouble to Total Wish Fulfillment. Only the Dingoes, the obstinate ones who resisted the Masters' Leash, weren't invited to the cosmic party. Poor Dingoes!

Rocannon's World

Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world and finds that legends grow around him as he fights.

The Kar-Chee Reign

It was the distant future of Earth, and the mother planet of a glaxy-wide empire had been forgotten by her far-flung colonies. Forgotten, tired, old and stripped of her ores and natural fuels, Earth and the scattered bands of humans left behind were totally unprepared for the invasion of the strange, monstrous Kar-chee from the depths of the stars.

The Kar-chee had come to strip Earth of the few natural resources the planet had left--to crack the marrow of the aged planet and scavenge whatever of worth was left there. It was a massive, planet-wide operation in which continents were sunk and oceans drained, and if the tiny, insignificant humans died in these holocausts, what did that matter to the Kar-chee?

It mattered to the humans... and, at last, they began to fight.

Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home is a major work of the imagination from one of America's most respected writers of science fiction. More than five years in the making, it is a novel unlike any other. 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.

This short story originally appeared in The Missouri Review, Winter 1984. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Scattered among poor, desolate farms, the clans of the Uplands possess gifts. Wondrous gifts: the ability--with a glance, a gesture, a word--to summon animals, bring forth fire, move the land. Fearsome gifts: They can twist a limb, chain a mind, inflict a wasting illness. The Uplanders live in constant fear that one family might unleash its gift against another. Two young people, friends since childhood, decide not to use their gifts. One, a girl, refuses to bring animals to their death in the hunt. The other, a boy, wears a blindfold lest his eyes and his anger kill.

Ansul was once a peaceful town filled with libraries, schools, and temples. But that was long ago, and the conquerors of this coastal city consider reading and writing to be acts punishable by death. And they believe the Oracle House, where the last few undestroyed books are hidden, is seething with demons. But to seventeen-year-old Memer, the house is the only place where she feels truly safe.

Then an Uplands poet named Orrec and his wife, Gry, arrive, and everything in Memer's life begins to change. Will she and the people of Ansul at last be brave enough to rebel against their oppressors?

Young Gav can remember the page of a book after seeing it once, and, inexplicably, he sometimes “remembers” things that are going to happen in the future. As a loyal slave, he must keep these powers secret, but when a terrible tragedy occurs, Gav, blinded by grief, flees the only world he has ever known. And in what becomes a treacherous journey for freedom, Gav’s greatest test of all is facing his powers so that he can come to understand himself and finally find a true home.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It appeared in Tomorrow Speculative Fiction, August 1994. The story can also be found in the anthologies Timegates (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann, The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century (2004), edited by Harry Turtledove and Martin H. Greenberg, The James Tiptree Award Anthology 2 (2006), edited by Debbie Notkin, Pat Murphy, Karen Joy Fowler and Jeffrey D. Smith and The Time Traveler's Almanac (2014), edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer. It is included in the collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994).

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology New Legends (1995), edited by Greg Bear and Martin H. Greenberg. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF (1996), edited by David G. Hartwell, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection (1996), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction (2005), also edited by Dozois. It is included in the collections The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (2002) and The Hainish Novels & Stories (2017).

Tiptree winning and Hugo nominated novelette in Le Guin's Hainish cycle. First publlished in Asimov's August 1996. Later collected in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (2002). The story was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #90 March 2014.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated novelette in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction December 1994. Later collected in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (2002) and Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012)

Nebula and Locus Award winning and Hugo nominated short story in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction August 1974. Collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975).

Tiptree Winning and Hug and Nebula nominated novelette in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. Originally published in Crank! #3, Spring 1994. Later anthologized in Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twelfth Annual Collection (1995) and Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998), and collected in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (2002) and Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012).

Nebula Award nominated novelette in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. It first appeared in Universe 1 (1990), edited by Karen Haber and Robert Silverberg. The story can also be found in the anthology The Space Opera Renaissance (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collections A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) and Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012)

Tiptree nominated novelette in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. Originally published in Amazing Stories Fall 1994. Later anthologized in Gardner Dozois's Killing Me Softly: Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love (1995) and collected in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (2002).

Hugo Awared nominated short story in Le Guin's Hainish setting. It originally appeared in the anthology New Dimensions 1 (1971), edited by Robert Silverberg. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction of the Year #1 (1972), edited by Terry Carr
• Women of Wonder (1975), edited by Pamela Sargent
• Explorers of Space (1975) edited by Robert Silverberg
• Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons (2000) edited by Gardner Dozois
• The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer

It is included in the collections The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975), Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1987) and The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015).

Hugo Award nominated short story in Le Guin's Hainish setting. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 5 (1969), edited by Damon Knight. The story can also be found in the anthology The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction (1980), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collections The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) and The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015).

A single-volume omnibus of the first three Hainish novels.

Intergalactic war reaches Fomalhaut II in Rocannon's World.

Born out of season, a precocious young girl visits the alien city of the farborns and the false-men in Planet of Exile.

In City of Illusions a stranger wandering in the forest people's woods is found and his health restored; now the fate of two worlds rests in this stranger's hands...

Contents

• Rocannon's World (1966)
• Planet of Exile (1966)
• City of Illusions (1967)

This debut novel from preeminent science-fiction writer Ursula LeGuin introduces her brilliant Hainish series, set in a galaxy seeded by the planet Hain with a variety of humanoid species, including that of Earth. Over the centuries, the Hainish colonies have evolved into physically and culturally unique peoples, joined by a League of All Worlds.

Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world and finds that legends grow around him as he fights.

The Earth colony of Landin has been stranded on Werel for ten years, and ten of Werel's years are over 600 terrestrial years, and the lonely and dwindling human settlement is beginning to feel the strain. Every winter, a season that lasts for 15 years, the Earthmen have neighbors: the humanoid hilfs, a nomadic people who only settle down for the cruel cold spell. The hilfs fear the Earthmen, whom they think of as witches and call the farborns. But hilfs and farborns have common enemies: the hordes of ravaging barbarians called gaals and eerie preying snow ghouls. Will they join forces or be annihilated?

Falk was a fully grown man, alone in the dense forest, with no trail to show where he had come from and no memory to tell who - or what - he was.

The forest people took him in and raised him almost as a child, teaching him to speak, training him in forest lore, giving him all the knowledge they had.

But they could not solve the riddle of his past, and finally he had to set out on a perilous quest to Es Toch, the City of the Shing, the Liars of Earth, the Enemy of Mankind.

There he would find his true self - and a universe of danger....

Genly Ai is an ethnologist observing the people of the planet Gethen, a world perpetually in winter. The people there are androgynous, normally neuter, but they can become male ot female at the peak of their sexual cycle. They seem to Genly Ai alien, unsophisticated and confusing. But he is drawn into the complex politics of the planet and, during a long, tortuous journey across the ice with a politician who has fallen from favour and has been outcast, he loses his professional detachment and reaches a painful understanding of the true nature of Gethenians and, in a moving and memorable sequence, even finds love...

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters.

Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back.

Once a culturally rich world, the planet Aka has been utterly transformed by technology. But an official observer from Earth named Sutty has learned of a group of outcasts who live in the wilderness. They still believe in the ancient ways and still practice its lost religion-the Telling. Intrigued by their beliefs, Sutty joins them on a sacred pilgrimage into the mountains... and into the dangerous terrain of her own heart, mind, and soul.

At the far end of our universe, on the twin planets of Werel and 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 and troubled as any on our world, peopled 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 and duty both begin in the heart, and success as well as failure has its costs.

In this stunning collection of four intimately interconnected novellas, Ursula K. Le Guin returns to the great themes that have made her one of America's most honored and respected authors.

Table of Contents:

• Betrayals - (1994) - novelette
• Forgiveness Day - (1994) - novella
• A Man of the People - (1995) - novella
• A Woman's Liberation - (1995) - novella
• Notes on Werel and Yeowe - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• O Yeowe - poem

Hugo, Nebula and Tipree Award nominated novella in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. Originally published in Asimov's November 1994. Later anthologized in Gardner Dozois The Year's Best Science Fiction, Twelfth Annual Collection (1995), Flying Cups and Saucers: Gender Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy (1998), and collected in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995).

Hugo Award nominated novella in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. Originally published in Asimov's April 1995. Later collected in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995).

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. First published in Asimov's July 1995. Later anthologized in Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection and Willis & Williams' A Woman's Liberation: A Choice of Futures by and About Women (2001). Collected in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995).

Locus nominated novella. It originally appeared in Far Horizons: The Great Worlds of Science Fiction (1999), edited by Robert Silverberg. The story is included in the collections The Birthday of the World and Other Stories (2002), The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016), Hainish Novels & Stories, Volume Two (2017), and Five Ways to Forgiveness (2017).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Nebula Award Stories 11) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Acknowledgements (Nebula Award Stories 11) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Catch That Zeppelin! - (1975) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• End Game - (1975) - novelette by Joe Haldeman
• 1975: The Year in Science Fiction, or Let's Hear It for the Decline and Fall of the Science Fiction Empire! - essay by Peter Nicholls
• Home is the Hangman - (1975) - novella by Roger Zelazny
• Child of All Ages - (1975) - shortstory by P. J. Plauger
• Potential and Actuality in Science Fiction - essay by Vonda N. McIntyre
• Shatterday - (1975) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• San Diego Lightfoot Sue - (1975) - novelette by Tom Reamy
• Time Deer - (1974) - shortstory by Craig Strete
• The Nebula Winners, 1965/1975 - essay by uncredited

The inaugural volume of Library of America's Ursula K. Le Guin edition gathers her complete Orsinian writings, enchanting, richly imagined historical fiction collected here for the first time. Written before Le Guin turned to science fiction, the novel Malafrena is a tale of love and duty set in the central european country of Orsinia in the early nineteenth century, when it is ruled by the Austrian empire. The stories originally published in Orsinian Tales (1976) offer brilliantly rendered episodes of personal drama set against a history that spans Orsinia's emergence as an independent kingdom in the twelfth century to its absorption by the eastern Bloc after World War II. The volume is rounded out by two additional stories that bring the history of Orsinia up to 1989, the poem "Folksong from the Montayna Province," Le Guin's first published work, and two never before published songs in the Orisinian language.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Future Power (1976), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. The story can als be found in the anthology Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Sixth Annual Collection (1977), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections The Compass Rose (1982), Where on Earth (2012) and The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015).

Orsinia... a land of medieval forests, stonewalled cities, and railways reaching into the mountains where the old gods dwell. A country where life is harsh, dreams are gentle, and people feel torn by powerful forces and fight to remain whole. In this enchanting collection, Ursula K. Le Guin brings to mainstream fiction the same compelling mastery of word and deed, of story and character, of violence and love, that has won her the Pushcart Prize, and the Kafka and National Book Awards.

Table of Contents:

• "The Fountains"
• "The Barrow"
• "Ile Forest"
• "Conversations At Night"
• "The Road East"
• "Brothers and Sisters"
• "A Week in the Country"
• "An die Musik"
• "The House"
• "The Lady of Moge"
• "Imaginary Countries"

Malafrena is not a real place. Itale never dreamed of love, nor Piera of him. Estenskar did not live, only his poems. Only the dreams of themselves are real, only their youth, only the wind called Freedom that swept through their lives like a storm unforgettable. A novel set in the imaginary nation of Orsinia in the early nineteenth century.

Newly revised and presented here in book form for the first time, this Nebula Award-winning story tells of two captive "dirt children" in a society of sword and silk, whose determination to find a glimpse of justice leads to a violent and loving end. Also included is the nonfiction essay "Staying Awake While We Read" which demolishes the pretensions of corporate publishing and the basic assumptions of capitalism, and "Outspoken Author Interview," which reveals the hidden dimensions of America's best-known sci-fi author.

Table of Contents:

• The Wild Girls - (2002)
• Staying Awake While We Read - (2008) - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Poems
• The Conversation of the Modest
• A Lovely Art - interview of Ursula K. Le Guin
• Bibliography
• About the Author

Contents:

• 3 - Introduction (The Farthest Shores of Ursula K. Le Guin) - essay by George E. Slusser
• 5 - The Early Hainish Novels - essay by George E. Slusser
• 17 - The Left Hand of Darkness - essay by George E. Slusser
• 31 - The Earthsea Trilogy - essay by George E. Slusser
• 46 - The Dispossessed - essay by George E. Slusser
• 57 - Conclusion (The Farthest Shores of Ursula K. Le Guin) - essay by George E. Slusser
• 59 - Biography & Bibliography (The Farthest Shores of Ursula K. Le Guin) - essay by George E. Slusser

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 1999. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Thirteenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and The Mammoth Book of Fantasy (2001), edited by Mike Ashley. The story is included in the collection Tales from Earthsea (2001).

World Fantasy Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Legends (1998), edited by Robert Silverberg. It was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2012. The story can also be found in the collections Tales from Earthsea (2001) and The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016).

On the High Marsh was first Published in the Collection: Tales From Earthsea, Published in 2001 by Harcourt.

It garnered a 2nd place finish in the 2002 Locus Awards for Best Novelette.

Locus Award winning and Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the collection Tales from Earthsea (2001). The story can also be found in the anthologies Fantasy: The Best of 2001, edited by Karen Haber and Robert Silverberg, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fifteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and The Mammoth Book of Sorcerers' Tales (2004), edited by Mike Ashley.

Locus Award winning and World Fantasy Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the collection Tales from Earthsea (2001). The story can also be found in the anthology Year's Best Fantasy 2 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. It is included in the collection The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016).

Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.

When young Tenar is chosen as high priestess to the ancient and nameless Powers of the Earth, everything is taken away from her-home, family, possessions, even her name. She is now known only as Arha, the Eaten One, guardian of the labyrinthine Tombs of Atuan, shrouded in darkness. When a young wizard, Ged Sparrowhawk, comes to steal the Tombs' greatest hidden treasure, the Ring of Erreth-Akbe, Tenar's rightful duty is to protect the Tombs. But Ged also brings with him the light of magic and tales of a brighter world Tenar has never known. Will Tenar risk everything to escape the darkness that has become her domain?

Darkness threatens to overtake Earthsea: the world and its wizards are losing their magic. Despite being wearied with age, Ged Sparrowhawk -- Archmage, wizard, and dragonlord -- embarks on a daring, treacherous journey, accompanied by Enlad's young Prince Arren, to discover the reasons behind this devastating pattern of loss. Together they will sail to the farthest reaches of their world -- even beyond the realm of death -- as they seek to restore magic to a land desperately thirsty for it.

Book Four of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Cycle

Years ago, they had escaped together from the sinister Tombs of Atuan -- she, an isolated young priestess; he, a powerful wizard. Now she is a farmer's widow, having chosen for herself the simple pleasures of an ordinary life. And he is a broken old man, mourning the powers lost to him through no choice of his own.

Once, when they were young, they helped each other at a time of darkness and danger and shared an adventure like no other. Now they must join forces again, to help another in need -- the physically and emotionally scarred child whose own destiny has yet to be revealed.

Five stories of Ursula K. Le Guin's world-renowned realm of Earthsea are collected in one volume. Featuring two classic stories, two original tales, and a brand-new novella, as well as new maps and a special essay on Earthsea's history, languages, literature, and magic.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Finder - (2001) - novella
• Darkrose and Diamond - (1999) - novelette
• The Bones of the Earth - (2001) - shortstory
• On the High Marsh - (2001) - novelette
• Dragonfly - (1998) - novella
• A Description of Earthsea - (2001) - shortfiction

The sorcerer Alder fears sleep. He dreams of the land of death, of his wife who died young and longs to return to him so much that she kissed him across the low stone wall that separates our world from the Dry Land-where the grass is withered, the stars never move, and lovers pass without knowing each other. The dead are pulling Alder to them at night. Through him they may free themselves and invade Earthsea.

Alder seeks advice from Ged, once Archmage. Ged tells him to go to Tenar, Tehanu, and the young king at Havnor. They are joined by amber-eyed Irian, a fierce dragon able to assume the shape of a woman.

The threat can be confronted only in the Immanent Grove on Roke, the holiest place in the world and there the king, hero, sage, wizard, and dragon make a last stand.

Le Guin combines her magical fantasy with a profoundly human, earthly, humble touch.

This is a collection of short stories by the legendary and iconic Ursula K. Le Guin -- selected by the author, and combined in one volume for the first time.

The Unreal and the Real is a collection of some of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories. She has won multiple prizes and accolades from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud Awards. She has had her work collected over the years, but this is the first short story volume combining a full range of her work.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Brothers and Sisters - (1976) - novelette
• A Week in the Country - (1976) - novelette
• Unlocking the Air - (1990) - shortstory
• Imaginary Countries - (1973) - shortstory
• The Diary of the Rose - (1976) - novelette
• Direction of the Road - (1973) - shortstory
• The White Donkey - (1980) - shortstory
• Gwilan's Harp - (1977) - shortstory
• May's Lion - (1983) - shortstory
• Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight - (1987) - novelette
• Horse Camp - (1986) - shortstory
• The Water Is Wide - (1976) - shortstory
• The Lost Children - (1996) - shortstory
• Texts - non-genre - (1990) - shortstory
• Sleepwalkers - non-genre - (1991) - shortstory
• Hand, Cup, Shell - non-genre - (1989) - shortstory
• Ether, OR - (1995) - novelette
• Half Past Four - (1987) - novelette
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - (1973) - shortstory
• Semley's Necklace - (1964) - shortstory
• Nine Lives - (1969) - novelette
• Mazes - (1975) - shortstory
• The First Contact with the Gorgonids - (1992) - shortstory
• The Shobies' Story - (1990) - novelette
• Betrayals - (1994) - novelette
• The Matter of Seggri - (1994) - novelette
• Solitude - (1994) - novelette
• The Wild Girls - (2002) - novelette
• The Fliers of Gy - (2000) - shortstory
• The Silence of the Asonu - (1998) - shortstory
• The Ascent of the North Face - (1983) - shortstory
• The Author of the Acacia Seeds - (1974) - shortstory
• The Wife's Story - (1982) - shortstory
• The Rule of Names - (1964) - shortstory
• Small Change - (1982) - shortstory
• The Poacher - (1993) - shortstory
• The Map in the Attic - (1983) - interior artwork
• Sur - (1982) - shortstory
• She Unnames Them - (1985) - shortstory

The Unreal and the Real is a major event not to be missed. In this two-volume selection of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories--as selected by the National Book Award winning author herself--the reader will be delighted, provoked, amused, and faced with the sharp, satirical voice of one of the best short story writers of the present day. Where on Earth explores Le Guin's earthbound stories which range around the world from small town Oregon to middle Europe in the middle of revolution to summer camp.

Companion volume Outer Space, Inner Lands includes Le Guin's best known nonrealistic stories. Both volumes include new introductions by the author.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• Brothers and Sisters - (1976) - novelette
• A Week in the Country - (1976) - novelette
• Unlocking the Air - (1990) - shortstory
• Imaginary Countries - (1973) - shortstory
• The Diary of the Rose - (1976) - novelette
• Direction of the Road - (1973) - shortstory
• The White Donkey - (1980) - shortstory
• Gwilan's Harp - (1977) - shortstory
• May's Lion - (1983) - shortstory
• Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight - (1987) - novelette
• Horse Camp - (1986) - shortstory
• The Water Is Wide - (1976) - shortstory
• The Lost Children - (1996) - shortstory
• Texts - non-genre - (1990) - shortstory
• Sleepwalkers - non-genre - (1991) - shortstory
• Hand, Cup, Shell - non-genre - (1989) - shortstory
• Ether, OR - (1995) - novelette
• Half Past Four - (1987) - novelette

Outer Space, Inner Lands includes many of the best known Ursula K. Le Guin nonrealistic stories (such as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," "Semley's Necklace," and "She Unnames Them") which have shaped the way many readers see the world. She gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to power--all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor.

Companion volume Where on Earth explores Le Guin's satirical, risky, political and experimental earthbound stories. Both volumes include new introductions by the author.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - (1973) - shortstory
• Semley's Necklace - (1964) - shortstory
• Nine Lives - (1969) - novelette
• Mazes - (1975) - shortstory
• The First Contact with the Gorgonids - (1992) - shortstory
• The Shobies' Story - (1990) - novelette
• Betrayals - (1994) - novelette
• The Matter of Seggri - (1994) - novelette
• Solitude - (1994) - novelette
• The Wild Girls - (2002) - novelette
• The Fliers of Gy - (2000) - shortstory
• The Silence of the Asonu - (1998) - shortstory
• The Ascent of the North Face - (1983) - shortstory
• The Author of the Acacia Seeds - (1974) - shortstory
• The Wife's Story - (1982) - shortstory
• The Rule of Names - (1964) - shortstory
• Small Change - (1982) - shortstory
• The Poacher - (1993) - shortstory
• The Map in the Attic - (1983) - interior artwork
• Sur - (1982) - shortstory
• She Unnames Them - (1985) - shortstory

The Blind Geometer:

Sight and Insight are two very different things...

A blind mathematician in nearish-future Washington, DC, is approached by a colleague to aid in a strange puzzle in the shape of a woman who draws esoteric geometric diagrams and talks in jumbled phrases.

The New Atlantis: