Changing Planes

About Ursula Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin was one of the finest writers of our time. Her books have attracted millions of devoted readers and won many awards, including the National Book Award, the Hugo and Nebula Awards and a Newbury Honor. Among her novels The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed and the six books of Earthsea have already attained undisputed classic status; and her latest series, the Annals of the Western Shore is joining them. She live in Portland, Oregon and died in January 18.

Here is a tribute by her publisher, Malcolm Edwards:

You may well already have seen the news – extensively reported in the media – of the death, at 88, of Ursula Le Guin. She had been in poor health for a while.

Ursula joined the Gollancz list in 1971, and stayed with us ever since, making her by some distance our longest serving author (rivalled only by Lady Antonia Fraser on the W&N list). We have two new books scheduled for this year: Dreams Must Explain Themselves, a selection of her best non-fiction, forthcoming on 22nd February (finished copies have arrived, ironically, just this morning); and The Books Of Earthsea, a large omnibus of her famous Earthsea novels, illustrated by award-winning artist Charles Vess.

Along the way, she collected almost every honour possible, most recently the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, awarded by the National Book Foundation. You can see her acceptance speech – typically generous and feisty - here.  It is well worth a few minutes of your time.

She was an SFWA Grand Master, and was awarded a World Fantasy Award for life achievement. She won many awards for specific works, including the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for the third Earthsea novel, The Farthest Shore, and both the major sf awards – the Hugo and the Nebula – for her two best known sf novels, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, both available in our SF Masterworks library.

Those of us who had the pleasure of working with her will remember her as a gracious and good-humoured woman with an iron will, gently expressed. She was by common consent one of the greatest – if not the greatest – contemporary sf and fantasy author. This is a very sad day.