Ursula Kroeber Le Guin ( ; October 21, 1929 - January 22, 2018) is an American novelist. He works primarily in the fantasy genre and science fiction. He also wrote children's books, short stories, poems, and essays. His writings were first published in 1960 and often portrayed futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in politics, the natural environment, gender, religion, sexuality, and ethnography. In 2016, The New York Times described him as "America's largest science fiction writer", although he says he prefers to be known as an "American novelist".
He influenced the Booker Prize winners and other writers, such as Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell, and science fiction and fantasy writers including Neil Gaiman and Iain Banks. She won the Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, and World Fantasy Award, each more than once. In 2014, he was awarded the National Books Medal Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In 2003, he was named Grandmaster of Science Fiction, one of the few female writers to gain the highest honor in this genre.
Video Ursula K. Le Guin
Life
Birth and family
Ursula Kroeber is the daughter of anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber of the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Theodora Kracaw.
Childhood and education
Ursula and her three older brothers, Clifton, Theodore, and Karl Kroeber, were encouraged to read and confronted with their dynamic group of dynamic friends, including Native Americans and Robert Oppenheimer, who later became part of the model for her hero. at The Dispossessed . Le Guin states that, in retrospect, he is grateful for the ease and happiness of his upbringing. The encouraging environment cultivated Le Guin's interest in literature; Her first fantasy story was written at age 9, her first science fiction story filed for magazine Science Fiction Science Fiction at age 11. The family spent the academic year at Berkeley, retiring in the summer for "Kishamish" in Napa Valley , "an old farm, collapsed... [and] a gathering place for California scientists, writers, students, and Indians." Although I was not paying much attention, I heard many interesting things, adult conversations. "He is interested in biology and poetry, but hard to find mathematics.
Le Guin attended Berkeley High School. He received a B.A. (Phi Beta Kappa) in French and Renaissance Renaissance literature from Radcliffe College in 1951, and M.A. in French and Italian literature from Columbia University in 1952. Soon after, Le Guin began his Ph.D. worked and won a Fulbright grant to continue his studies in France from 1953 to 1954.
Marriage and family
In 1953, while traveling to France aboard the Queen Mary, Le Guin met her future husband, historian Charles Le Guin. They got married later that year in Paris. After marriage, Le Guin chose not to continue his doctoral studies of the poet Jean Lemaire de Belges.
The couple returned to the United States so he could pursue a Ph.D. at Emory University. During this time, he worked as a secretary and taught French at the university level. Their first child, Elisabeth (1957), was born in Moscow, Idaho, where Charles taught. In 1958 Le Guins moved to Portland, Oregon, where their daughter Caroline (1959) was born, and where they lived afterwards. Charles is Professor of Emeritus History at Portland State University. During this time, he continues to take time to write in addition to maintaining his family's life. In 1964, his third child, Theodore, was born.
Death
Le Guin died on January 22, 2018, at his home in Portland, Oregon; his son declared that his health was bad for several months. The news of his death The New York Times called him "a very popular author who brings feminist depths of literature and feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like The Left Hand of Darkness and Earthsea series ".
Maps Ursula K. Le Guin
Writing career
Le Guin became interested in literature quite early on. At the age of 11, he submitted his first story to an astonishing science fiction magazine. Although rejected, he continues to write but does not attempt to publish it for the next ten years.
From 1951 to 1961 he wrote five novels, which publishers rejected, as they seemed inaccessible. He has also written poems so far, including Wild Angels (1975).
His earliest writings, some of which were adapted in Orsinian Tales and Malafrena , are non-fantastic stories made in the imaginary country of Orsinia. Looking for ways to express his interest, he returned to early interest in science fiction; in the early 1960s his work began to be published on a regular basis. One Orsinian Tale was published in the Summer 1961 edition of The Western Humanities Review and three stories appeared in 1962 and 1963 in the amount of Stories of Imagination <, i monthly edited by Cele Goldsmith. Goldsmith also edited the Amazing Stories , which contained two Le Guin stories in 1964, including the first "Hainish" story.
In 1964, the short story "The Word of Unbinding" was published. This is the first of Earthsea's fantasy series, which includes six books and eight short stories. The three connected adult novels that began with the Wizard of Earthsea (1968), The Tombs of Atuan (1970), and The Farthest Shore (1972), sometimes referred to as The Earthsea Trilogy , in the coming years will join the books Tehanu , Stories from Earthsea and Other Winds .
Le Guin received widespread acclaim for his novel The Left Hand of Darkness, which won the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1970. The next novel The Dispossessed made him the first man to win both Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel twice for the same two books.
In the following years, Le Guin works in movies and audio. She contributed to The Lathe of Heaven , a 1979 PBS film based on her novel of the same name. In 1985 he collaborated with avant-garde composer David Bedford on libretto Rigel 9 , a space opera.
In May 1983, he delivered a well-received start-up address entitled "A-Handed Beginning Address" at Mills College, Oakland, California. It's listed as No. 82 within American Rhetoric '' s Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank). and is included in his nonfiction collection Dancing at the Edge of the World .
In 1984, Le Guin was part of a group together with Ken Kesey, Brian Booth, and William Stafford who founded the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts, now known as Literary Art in Portland.
In December 2009, Le Guin resigned from the Authors Guild in protest at the endorsement of Google Books, Google's book digitization project. "You decided to deal with the devil", he wrote in his resignation letter. "There are principles involved, above all the concept of copyright, and this you have seen fit to leave to the company, on their terms, without a struggle." (See Author Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.)
Influences
Le Guin was influenced by fantasy writers, including JRR Tolkien, by science fiction writers, including Philip K. Dick (who was in his high school class, though they did not know each other), by Western literary central figures such as Leo Tolstoy, Virgil and the BrontÃÆ'Â s sisters, by feminist writers like Virginia Woolf, by children's literature such as Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, The Jungle Books , by Norse mythology, and by books from Eastern traditions such as Tao Te Ching .
When asked about his influence, he replied:
Once I learned to read, I read everything. I read all the famous fantasies - Alice in Wonderland , and Wind in the Willows , and Kipling. I love Kipling's Jungle Book . And as I got older, I found Lord Dunsany. He opened a new world - a world of pure fantasy. And... Worm Ouroboros . Again, pure fantasy. Very, very fattening. And then my brother and I made a blunder to science fiction when I was 11 or 12. Early Asimov, things like that. But that does not really matter to me. It was not until I returned to science fiction and found Sturgeon - but especially Cordwainer Smith.... I read the story "Alpha Ralpha Boulevard", and it just made me go, "Wow! This thing is very beautiful, and very strange, and I want to do something like that."
In the mid-1950s, he read J. R. R. Tolkien Lord of the Rings, which had a great influence on him. But instead of making him want to follow Tolkien's footsteps, it just shows him what's possible with the fantasy genre.
Themes
Le Guin leverages the creative flexibility of science fiction and the fantasy genre to explore the broader dimensions of social and psychological identity and broader cultural and social structures. Thus, he uses sociology, anthropology, and psychology, which leads some critics to categorize his work as soft science fiction. He objected to this classification of his writings, arguing that the term was divisive and implied a narrow view of what constitutes valid science fiction. The ideas underlying anarchism and environmentalism also made repeated appearances throughout Le Guin's work.
In 2014 Le Guin said of attraction contemplating the possibility of a future in science fiction:
anything can be said to happen [in the future] without fear of the contradictions of the natives. The future is a safe and sterile laboratory to try ideas, means of thinking about reality, methods.
Exile Planet Ilusi City to Words for World Is Forest and The Dispossessed .Le Guin's writing primarily uses the usual actions and transactions of everyday life, clarifying how these daily activities inculcate individuals in the context of relationships with the physical world and each other. For example, the involvement of the main character with the daily business of caring for animals, caring for gardens and doing housework is at the core of the Tehanu novel. Jung's theme of psychology is also prominent in his writing.
For example the Hainish Le Guin Cycle, a series of novels that include a loose collection of societies, of various related human species, most of which are separate from each other, provide arrangements for the exploration of intercultural meetings. The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed and The Telling all consider the consequences of contact between different worlds and cultures. Unlike mainstream science fiction, the Hainish Cycle civilization has no faster human journey than reliable light, but has the technology for instant communication. The social and cultural impact of the arrival of the Ecumen (as "mobile") envoy on remote planets, and the cultural shock experienced by messengers, is the main theme of The Left Hand of Darkness. The concept of Le Guin has been borrowed explicitly by several other famous authors, so far using the name of the communication device ("ansible"). The Left Hand of Darkness is well known for the way he explores the social, cultural, and personal consequences of sexual identity through novels involving human encounters with intermittent androgynous races. In addition to androgyny, Le Guin's focus on sexuality breaks down the role of normative gender. "Solitude", one of the stories in The Birthday of the World: and Other Stories follows a young girl, bolder and braver than her brother, to a world dominated by strong territorial women. In Paradises Lost , people from spacecraft generations on the way to the new colony are rescued by the female starter navigator, the archetypal role usually reserved for men.
Environmentalism
Elizabeth McDowell stated in her 1992 master thesis that Le Guin "identifies [the] current dominant American socio-political system as problematic and undermines the health and life of the natural world, their humanity and their interconnectedness." This idea is repeated in some of Le Guin's most famous works, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Word for World Is Forest (1972), The Dispossessed (1974), Always Coming Home (1985), and "Buffalo Gals, Will not Come Tonight" ( 1987). All of these works center on the idea of ​​socio-political organization and value system experiments in both utopia and dystopias. As McDowell explains, "Although much of Le Guin's work is an exercise in fantastic imagination, they are both exercises of political imagination."
In addition to his fiction, Le Guin's book Here: Poems and Pictures from Steens Mountain Country, a collaboration with artist Roger Dorband, is a clear environmental proof of the natural beauty of the Eastern Oregon region. Le Guin also wrote several works of poetry and nonfiction on Mount St. Helens after the 1980 eruption. These works explore local stories and discussions about eruption events in relation to Le Guin's own perspective relating to seeing the eruptions and mountains from his home in Portland, as well as his visits to the blast zone.
Anarchism and Taoism
Le Guin's feelings for anarchism are closely related to his Taoist beliefs and both ideas appear in his work. "Taoism and Anarchism fit together in some very interesting ways and I've been a Tao since I learned what it is." He participated in various peace rallies and although he did not call himself an anarchist, because he did not live his lifestyle, he felt that "Democracy is good but not the only way to achieve justice and fair sharing." Le Guin said: "The Dispossessed is an utopian novel of Anarchy.The ideas derive from the tradition of Pacifism Anarchist - Kropotkin etc. So are some ideas of what is called the counter-culture of the sixties and seventies. "He also said that anarchism" is the ideal that is needed at least.This is an ideal without which we can not continue.If you ask me is anarchism at this point a practical movement, well, then you get into the question of where are you trying to do it and who lives on your border? "
Le Guin has been credited with helping popularize anarchism as his work "saving anarchism from the abandoned cultural ghettos [and] introducing anarchist vision... into the mainstream of intellectual discourse". Indeed, his works are very influential in developing a new anarchist way of thinking; a more adaptable postmodern way of seeing and addressing wider issues.
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Adaptation of his work
Some of Le Guin's major works have been adapted for film or television. His novel in 1971 The Lathe of Heaven has been adapted twice: The first adaptation was made in 1979 by WNET Channel 13 in New York, with his own participation, and a second adaptation was made in 2002 by A & amp. ; E Network. In a 2008 interview, he said that he considered the 1979 adaptation as "the only good adaptation to the film" of his work to date.
In the early 1980s animator and director Hayao Miyazaki asked permission to make an animation adaptation of Earthsea. However, Le Guin, who is unfamiliar with his work and anime in general, declined the offer. Years later, after seeing My Neighbor Totoro, he reconsidered his rejection, believing that if anyone was allowed to direct the Earthsea movie, it should be Hayao Miyazaki. The third and fourth Earthsea books were used as the basis for the 2006 animated film Tales from Earthsea Gedo Senki ) . The film, however, was directed by Miyazaki's son, Gor ?, rather than Hayao Miyazaki himself, which disappointed Le Guin. While he is positive about the aesthetics of the film, writes that "most of it is beautiful", he takes on a big deal by re-imagining the moral sense of books and a greater focus on physical violence. "[E] the villa has been comfortably externalized in the villain," Le Guin wrote, "the Kumo/Cob wizard, who can be easily killed, thus resolving all the problems.In modern fantasy (literature or government), killing people is commonplace. solution to the so-called war between good and evil.my books are not understood in terms of such wars, and do not offer simple answers to simple questions. "
In 1987, the anthology program of CBC Radio Vanishing Point was adapted The Dispossessed into a series of six episodes of 30 minutes, and on an unspecified date The Word for World Is Forest as a series of three 30 minute episodes.
In 1995, the Lifeline Theater in Chicago presented its adaptation with The Left Hand of Darkness . Reviewer Jack Helbig at Chicago Reader writes that "smart and well-made adaptations are ultimately unsatisfactory," in large measure because it's so hard to compress a complicated 300-page novel into a two-hour presentation.
In 2004, Sci Fi Channel adapted the first two books of the Earthsea trilogy as the Legend of Earthsea miniseries . Le Guin is very critical of adaptation, calling it "away from Earthsea I imagine", objecting favorably to the use of white actors for red, brown, or black characters, and the way he "cuts." out of process ".
His novel, Paradises Lost, published in The Birthday of the World: and Other Stories, was adapted into opera by American composer Stephen Andrew Taylor and Canadian Marcia Johnson. The Opera premiered on April 26, 2012, at the Krannert Center for Performing Arts on the campus of the University of Illinois.
In 2013, Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theater produced a stage adaptation of The Left Hand of Darkness, directed and adapted by Jonathan Walters, with a text adapted by John Schmor. The drama opens May 2, 2013, and runs until June 16, 2013, in Portland, Oregon.
In 2015, the BBC commissioned the radio adaptation of The Left Hand of Darkness and three of Earthsea's first novels. The Left Hand of Darkness aired as a two-hour episode, and Earthsea as six half-hour episodes.
In early 2017, Le Guin's award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness was taken by Critical Content, a production company formerly known as Relativity Television, to be produced as a limited television series. Le Guin will serve as consultant producer in this project.
src: www.latimes.com
Awards
Lifetime and career awards
In April 2000, the US Library of Congress made Le Guin a Living Legend in the "Writers and Artists" category for his significant contribution to American cultural heritage. In 2002 he won the PEN/Malamud award for "excellence in a short fictional body". In 2004 he received two American Library Association awards for his enduring contributions: for young adult literature, Annual Margaret Edwards Awards; for children's literature, selection to deliver Annual Annual Hill of Arbuthnot Lecture. The annual Edwards award recognizes one author and one particular piece of work; panel 2004 cites six works published from 1968 to 1990: A Wizard from the Earth , Atuan Mausoleum , The Farthest Shore , and Tehanu (the first four Earthsea books), The Left Hand of Darkness and The Beginning Place . The panel said that Le Guin "has inspired four generations of young adults to read beautifully constructed languages, visit fantasy worlds that tell them about their own lives, and think of their ideas that are not easy or not important".
In Pacific Northwest, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association gave Le Guin a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. The Washington Center for the Book recognizes his famous body working with Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers on October 18, 2006.
At the 2009 convention, Freedom From Religion Foundation awarded the Emperor Has No Clothes Award to Le Guin. The FFRF describes the award as "celebrating 'regular talk' on the lack of religion by community leaders".
In 2014, Le Guin was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation, a lifetime achievement award. His acceptance speech, which criticized the Amazon as "profit-seeking" and praised fellow fantasy writers and science fiction, is widely regarded as the culmination of the ceremony.
Acknowledging his stature in the speculative fiction genre, Le Guin was a Guest of Honor Professional at the 1975 World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, Australia. That year he was also named the fantasy champion of the Gandalf Grand Master Award. The Scientific Fiction Research Association (SFRA) gave it the Pilgrim Prize in 1989 for "lifetime contributions to SF and fantasy scholarships". At the 1995 Fantasy World Convention he won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, a recognition judged from outstanding service to the field of fantasy. Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inaugurated him in 2001, the sixth class of two dead writers and two living writers. Scientific Fiction and Fantasy Writers America made it the 20th Grand Master in 2003. In 2010, Le Guin was awarded the Lyman Tower Sargent Distinguished Scholar Award by the North American Society for Utopian Studies.
Awards for a specific title
Le Guin won dozens of annual "best year" literary awards. For the novel alone he won five Locus, four Nebula, two Hugo, and one Fantasy World Award. ( The Dispossessed won Locus, Nebula, and Hugo.) He also won four awards in the short fiction category, though he rejected the Nebula award for his novel The Diary of the Rose in protest against Scientific Fiction writers about the American treatment of Stanis? aw Lem. His nineteenth Locus Awards, chosen by magazine subscribers, are more than those received by other authors. Her third Earthsea novel, The Farthest Shore, won the 1973 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and she is a finalist for ten Mythopoeic Awards, nine in Fantasy and one for Scholarships. Unlocking the Air and Other Stories is one of three finalists for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She won the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Related Works for a collection of essays entitled Words Are My Matter: Posts On Life and Books, 2000-2016 .
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Selected works
Ursula K. Le Guin has written fictional and nonfiction works for audiences including children, adults, and undergraduates. His most famous works are listed here.
- Earthsea fantasy series
- Wizard of Earthsea , 1968 (named after the Carroll Shelf Lewis List in 1979)
- Death Tomb , 1971 (Newbery Silver Medal Award)
- The Farthest Shore , 1972 (National Book Award)
- Tehanu: Earthsea's Last Book , 1990 (Nebula Award; Locus Fantasy Award)
- The Stories of Earthsea , 2001 (short story)
- The Other Wind , 2001 (Fantasy World Award, 2002)
- Hainish science fiction series
- World Rocanon , 1966
- Isolation Planet , 1966
- Ilusi City , 1967
- The Left Hand of Darkness , 1969 (Hugo Award; Nebula Award)
The Dispossessed , 1974 (Nebula Award; Hugo Award; Locus Award) - Words for World Is Forest , 1976 (Hugo Award, best novels)
- Four Ways to Forgive , 1995 (Four Ecumenical Stories)
- The Telling , 2000 (Locus SF Award; Endeavor Award)
- Miscellaneous
- Latino Heaven , 1971 (Locus SF Award)
- The Wind's Twelve Quarters , 1975
- Orsinian Tales , 1976
- The Eye of the Heron , 1978 (first published in the anthology Millennial Women )
- Startup Place , 1980 (also published as Limit Threshold , 1986)
- The Compass Rose , 1982
- Always Come Home , 1985
- Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand , 1991
- World Anniversary: ​​and Other Stories , 2002
- Annals of the Western Shore , 2004-2007 ( Powers ), the third volume, won the Nebula Award for Best Novels
- Lavinia , 2008 (Locus Fantasy Award)
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