Ursula K. Le Guin

By Logan Wright

Science fiction and comedy might be rare, but female science fiction authors are scarcer than rap songs about plastic forks or spider monkeys. Ursula K. Le Guin is not only a female science fiction writer though; she’s a damn good one! She is known as a master of soft science fiction. “Soft” doesn’t refer to Moh’s hardness scale, but to the sciences the fiction is based around. Instead of focusing on “hard” sciences like physics and chemistry, Le Guin successfully created stories around concepts derived from “soft sciences” like psychology and political science.

Like Kurt Vonnegut’s alter-ego Kilgore Trout (who was disqualified from this list for being a little too unreal), Le Guin often uses strange alien cultures to make statements about our own way of life or tendencies. Her novels The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness have each won both a Nebula and a Hugo award. The latter explores conflict and politics in an alien world with altered gender divisions. Both stories are based in the world known as the Hainish Cycle, a recurring setting in Le Guin’s science fiction.

Le Guin also has several popular and acclaimed fantasy books set in the region she calls Earthsea. She has been in literature critics’ good books for most of her career, boasting an impressive collection of awards including a Gandalf Grand Master award and a Library of Congress Living Legends award. Her talents have limits, though. In spite of her Gandalf award, she has yet to grow any semblance of a beard or learn any obvious magic.

A top title from Le Guin:
Ursula K Le Guin (1993), The Earthsea Quartet: 'A Wizard Of Earthsea', 'The Tombs Of Atuan', 'The Farthest Shore', 'Tehanu', Puffin, ISBN: 0140348034

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