Line #52 Creator/UrsulaKLeGuin


1	[[quoteright:280:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/UKLbyMWK-280x347_9489.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:280:If science fiction is the mythology of modern technology, then its myth is tragic.]]
3
4	->''"If a book told you something when you were 15, it will tell it to you again when you’re 50, though you may understand it so differently that it seems you’re reading a whole new book."''
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6	Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (October 21, 1929 -- January 22, 2018) was a prolific American writer, and is most known for her SpeculativeFiction novels, although she also wrote poetry, nonfiction, and young adult novels. She was the daughter of a well known anthropologist and it shows in her world building which rejects the standard Eurocentric models. Her works often explore cultural, sociological, ecological, or feminist themes; UsefulNotes/{{anarchism}} and UsefulNotes/{{Taoism}} also occasionally show up subtly (she is probably the best-known Western Taoist and has both written a commentary on and translated the ''Tao Te Ching'') or, in the case of ''The Dispossessed'', not so subtly (Anarres is an anarcho-communist society; this is a political book but not an {{anvilicious}} one: the subtitle is ''An '''''Ambiguous''''' Utopia'', and a central theme of the work is that Anarres has decayed in the years since its founding due in no small part to ideology and bureaucracy replacing revolutionary fervour). Her works have greatly influenced modern {{Fantasy}} and ScienceFiction authors, with systems, words, and ideas from her works showing up so often that some have become tropes in and of themselves. One of these was her coining of the word [[SubspaceAnsible ansible]], which has appeared in numerous scifi works since.
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8	Her Earthsea novels have twice been adapted to visual medium. One is the oft-maligned [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci Fi Channel]] miniseries ''Series/{{Earthsea}}'' and the other is the Creator/StudioGhibli film ''Anime/TalesFromEarthsea.'' Le Guin made no secret of the fact that she was [[DisownedAdaptation not particularly fond of either adaptation]], though she was rather more charitable towards Studio Ghibli. She was herself very keen on a planned adaptation of the first Earthsea book with director Creator/MichaelPowell (of ''The Red Shoes'' and ''Black Narcissus'' fame) a screenplay of which was previously published, and regretted that it never received funding. The one adaptation she did work closely on was a popular Creator/{{PBS}} TV movie of ''Literature/TheLatheOfHeaven'' as a creative consultant.
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10	Her story "The Word for World is Forest" was included in Creator/HarlanEllison's anthology ''Literature/AgainDangerousVisions''.
11	----
12	[[folder:Works]]
13	Her works include, but are not limited to:
14	[[index]]
15	* The ''Literature/{{Earthsea}}'' series:
16	** ''A Wizard of Earthsea''
17	** ''The Tombs of Atuan''
18	** ''The Farthest Shore''
19	** ''Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea''
20	** ''Tales from Earthsea''
21	** ''The Other Wind''
22
23	* The ''Literature/{{Hainish}} Cycle''[[/index]]%%Don't index redirects
24	** ''Literature/RocannonsWorld'' (In which the SubspaceAnsible is [[TropeNamers named]].)
25	** ''Planet of Exile''
26	** ''City of Illusions''
27	** ''Literature/TheLeftHandOfDarkness''
28	** ''Literature/TheDispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia''
29	** ''The Word for World is Forest''
30	** ''Four Ways to Forgiveness''
31	** ''The Telling''
32
33	* The Catwings Collection
34	** ''Literature/{{Catwings}}''
35	** ''Catwings Return''
36	** ''Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings''
37	** ''Jane on Her Own''
38
39	* ''Literature/AnnalsOfTheWesternShore'' trilogy:
40	** ''Gifts''
41	** ''Voices''
42	** ''Powers''
43
44	* "Literature/AprilInParis"
45	* ''A Fisherman of the Inland Sea''
46	* "Literature/TheOnesWhoWalkAwayFromOmelas"
47	* ''Literature/TheLatheOfHeaven''
48	* ''The Wind's Twelve Quarters''
49	* ''Very Far Away from Anywhere Else''
50	* ''Literature/TheEyeOfTheHeron''
51	* ''Malafrena''
52	* ''The Beginning Place''
53	* ''Literature/AlwaysComingHome''
54	* ''The Birthday of the World''
55	* ''Literature/ChangingPlanes''
56	* ''Lavinia''
57	[[/index]]
58	[[/folder]]
59	----
60	!!Works by Ursula K. Le Guin contain examples of:
61	* AngstySurvivingTwin: ''Literature/NineLives'': The story is about his attempt to [[RogueDrone come to terms with being an individual after the rest of his "siblings" are killed]] (the clones having been bred and raised as SingleMindedTwins).
62	* CallASmeerpARabbit: In "Paradises Lost", the colonists of a new planet (who are just off the generation ship where they've lived for several generations) dub a certain kind of insect a "dog". They know it's not what the word originally referred to, but no-one's ever seen a dog, so no-one cares.
63	* ChasteHero: In ''Very Far Away From Anywhere Else'', the protagonist mentions that he's never really understood why his high-school classmates are so interested in sex.
64	* CityInABottle: "Paradises Lost" is the generation ship take on this, with the twist that the ship isn't stranded. Some of the people on the ship (by the end of the story, a large majority) believe that there's nothing outside the ship and "the journey is all". A minority remember the original purpose of the voyage, which is to explore and possibly colonize a far-flung planet.
65	* TheConstant: In "April in Paris", the protagonists occupy the same apartment in different centuries. Notre Dame is another Constant.
66	* CutesyNameTown: "Ether, OR" (1995), about a town that moves from place to place.
67	* FatherIWantToMarryMyBrother: "The Birthday of the World" has a royal family in which the eldest boy and girl siblings marry each other, in the manner of many royal dynasties of the ancient world. Ze, the only daughter, knows she is slated to marry her brother Tazu, but when she is little, she isn't overly pleased about this and expresses a desire to instead marry another of her brothers, Omimo. [[spoiler:Tazu grows up wise. Omimo becomes a horrific war criminal.]]
68	* GenerationShips: "Paradises Lost" focuses on the generations who grow up on the ship.
69	* GodEmperor: "The Birthday of the World" is about a civilization where the ruling couple are God. The law is that God must be a man and a woman, and they're referred to as God Himself and God Herself. [[spoiler:The tradition is fractured when Omimo tries to usurp the position of God Himself from his brother, leading to a division in the culture between the original God and the fake God. When the humans arrive, the current God decides to make them God, and when they pass without children the tradition dies out.]]
70	* HumanResources: In "Paradises Lost", when people die their bodies are taken to the "Life Centre" for "recycling". The story takes place on a [[SmallSecludedWorld generation ship]] where all resources must continually be recycled for everyone to survive.
71	* HumansThroughAlienEyes: ''The Birthday of the World'' features several instances of this.
72	* InexplicableCulturalTies: Deconstructed in ''The Pathways of Desire'', where more and more suspicious resemblances to American stereotyped notions of "primitive" tribes turn up in the HumanAliens' culture. In the end [[spoiler:the adolescent fantasies of a boy back on Earth turn out to have [[RealityWarper created the entire planet]]]].
73	* LoveBeforeFirstSight: In ''Lavinia'', there's a sort of case of Destiny Before First Sight: Lavinia knows by her belief in prophetic visions that she will marry Aeneas even before he arrives in Italy, and knows that this is the right thing to do for the sake of her people; she rather loves Aeneas before meeting him, too, but that's a bonus.
74	* {{Lunacy}}: "The Wife's Story" is a twist on [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf]] tales that involves a transformation on ''moonless'' nights. It's made obvious early on that something even weirder than usual is going on. [[spoiler:[[TomatoSurprise The narrator's a wolf]], and the "monster" transforms into a human.]]
75	* MeaninglessMeaningfulWords: Le Guin took many of these on in her essay "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie". The worst, she claimed, was "Ichor", the 'infallible touchstone of the 7th rate'. For the record, "ichor" is properly the blood of angels or gods, not "blood in general" or "any liquid." Le Guin makes a point of noting this.
76	* MentalPictureProjector: In "The Diary of the Rose", a mind viewer is used against a supposedely insane engineer.
77	* MundaneDogmatic: "Paradises Lost" has no aliens, no faster-than-light travel, just a slow generation ship full of humans traveling (mostly out of scientific curiosity) towards a distant, possibly habitable planet.
78	* OppositeSexClone: In "Nine Lives", Earth is in a sorry state, and most people suffer from inborn defects; to remedy the situation, the best people are cloned. Usually the donors are male, since it allows to easily clone both sexes, and mixed-sex groups of clones are proven to function better. The story explores the reaction of normal humans who have to work with a "ten-clone" created from a genius who died young. [[spoiler:And then how the sole survivor reacts to the death of his nine siblings.]] Among other things it's mentioned that clones routinely share sleeping bags and sex seems just as natural for them as breathing.
79	* OurGryphonsAreDifferent: "Darkness Box" features gryphons used as war animals; they are apparently immortal (or near to it) and bond closely to their owners.
80	* RogueDrone: ''Literature/NineLives'': The story is about his attempt to [[AngstySurvivingTwin come to terms with being an individual after the rest of his "siblings" are killed]] (the clones having been bred and raised as SingleMindedTwins).
81	* {{Ruritania}}: ''Orsinian Tales'' - The fictional Central European nation Orsinia fits this trope perfectly, covering several centuries of imagined history.
82	* SanityMeter: "SQ" is a fable about the development of a scientific, accurate method of measuring a person's sanity (the Sanity Quotient score) and the unfortunate effects it has on society.
83	* ScrewYourself: ''Literature/NineLives'': A set of ten clones, five male and five female, join someplace where there were already two normal people working. When the clones have sex with each other, one of the non-clones says, "Oh, let them have their damned incest!" and the other says, "Incest or masturbation?" (The clone-sex wasn't a major plot point, just a part of showing how the clone-group couldn't relate properly to outsiders.)
84	* SingleMindedTwins: ''Literature/NineLives'': 10 clones who were essentially one being. [[spoiler:When nine of them died in an accident, [[AngstySurvivingTwin the survivor considered himself "nine-tenths dead" and nearly lost his will to live]].]]
85	* ThisWasHisTrueForm: Pointedly averted in "The Wife's Story". When the monster that her husband transformed into is killed, the narrator hopes that it will revert and she'll get one last look at her husband, but it doesn't.
86	* TomatoSurprise: In "The Wife's Story", which at first looks like a standard werewolf story, [[spoiler:the narrator's husband ''is'' a werewolf -- but the narrator herself is a wolf, appalled when her husband horrifyingly turns into a human.]]
87	* YearInsideHourOutside:
88	** In ''The Beginning Place'', heroes Hugh and Irene are able spend a week or so in the Evening Land while only being absent from their usual lives for a single night.
89	* YearOutsideHourInside: The nature of space travel in the Ekumen means that while the trip takes decades or even centuries, time dilation makes that much shorter for the travelers. A century's trip could be a month. Thus, while it's possible to undertake long trips, it's not something taken lightly, given how much could change in the time between takeoff and landing.

Context Creator / UrsulaKLeGuin