Ursula K. Le Guin (1929– ) is an iconic and award-winning US writer known mostly for fantasy and science fiction, and a towering figure in American literature. Leading an intensely private life, Le Guin sporadically engages in political activism and remains a steady participant in the literary community in Portland, Oregon, where she has lived since 1958.
Three of Le Guin’s books have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award. She has received many honors for her writing, including a National Book Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the PEN/Malamud Award, five Hugo Awards, five Nebula Awards, SFWA’s Grand Master, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Margaret A. Edwards Award, the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award, and in 2014 the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, among others.
Le Guin’s rigorous artistry and serious devotion to science fiction and other allegedly subliterary genres has been met with rapturous critical reception. She has garnered praise from John Updike, Gary Snyder, Grace Paley, Salman Rushdie, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman, and Carolyn Kizer. Harold Bloom counts her among the classic American writers, and many critical studies have been written on Le Guin’s work, including book-length treatments by Elizabeth Cummins, D. R. White, B. J. Bucknall, B. Selinger, and K. R. Wayne.
Throughout her sixty-year career and up to the present day, Le Guin has been more than willing to engage in discussions and arguments about fiction, science fiction, gender issues, and the future of publishing. Her incisive essays and blog posts display a sharpness and clarity that continue to make her viewpoints relevant. She has also edited major anthologies (including coediting The Norton Book of Science Fiction [1993]) and in all ways her life has reflected a commitment to books and book culture as a true “person of letters.”
First published in the 1960s, Le Guin’s fiction has often depicted futuristic or imaginary alternative worlds in stories that grapple with important issues such as politics, gender, and the environment. After a first story was submitted to and rejected by the magazine Astounding Science Fiction when she was eleven, Le Guin continued writing but did not attempt to publish for a decade. In 1969, her career began its steep upward trajectory with the publication of The Left Hand of Darkness, which won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel. Shortly thereafter, The Dispossessed also won the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
“Vaster Than Empires and More Slow” (1971) is both classic Le Guin and a good example of a story that has become only more topical and relevant with the passage of time. This story of unusual alien contact carries forward environmental themes present in such other stories in this anthology as James H. Schmitz’s “Grandpa,” F. L. Wallace’s “Student Body,” and Dmitri Bilenkin’s “Where Two Paths Cross.”