When the polymorphous writer Ursula K. Le Guin died in 2018, she left behind novels, short stories, poetry, essays, manifestos and French and Chinese translations. The huge and loyal readership among children and older readers that she built during her lifetime has only grown since her death, as has recognition of her work as ‘serious’ literature. Chafing against her confinement in genre fiction, she liberated sci-fi, fantasy and YA literature from the condescension to which they had long been subjected. In 2016, she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetime by the Library of America.

For the final regular episode of Fiction and the Fantastic (though there will be one more special episode) Marina and Chloe read ‘The Left Hand of Darkness’ and ‘The Dispossessed’: works of exceptional imaginative power and intellectual range, passionate idealism and keen-eyed observation. Is Le Guin’s status in both literary and ‘genre’ canons a testament to the force and clear-sightedness of her radical – even prophetic – political vision? And what does it mean for the fantastic if we accept her self-characterisation as a ‘realist of a larger reality’?

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Further reading and listening from the LRB:

Colin Burrow on Ursula K. Le Guin:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n02/colin-burrow/it-s-not-jung-s-it-s-mine

A collection of writing on science fiction from the LRB:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/collections/in-hyperspace

Amia Srinivasan on Le Guin’s experiments with pronouns:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n13/amia-srinivasan/he-she-one-they-ho-hus-hum-ita

Colin Burrow discusses Le Guin with Thomas Jones on the LRB Podcast:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/magical-authority

Next episode: A taxonomy of fantastic literature with Marina, Adam Thirlwell and Edwin Frank.