Fiction and the Fantastic: Two Novels by Ursula K. Le Guin

Nov 17, 2025

Chloe Ridges, a novelist and short story writer, joins to explore Ursula K. Le Guin's innovative contributions to literature. They delve into Le Guin's rebellion against genre limitations and her radical political vision. The discussion highlights the Taoist influences in her writing and the impact of her anthropologist parents on her work. Ridges distills key concepts from *The Left Hand of Darkness* and *The Dispossessed*, examining themes of gender roles and societal structures, providing insights into how Le Guin's narratives challenge conventional norms.

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INSIGHT

Le Guin Reclaimed Genre's Literary Status

Ursula K. Le Guin reclaimed respect for fantasy and science fiction within serious literature.
She framed genre writers as excluded peers deserving equal literary recognition.

INSIGHT

Form And Politics Intertwined

Le Guin's work merges political thought with detailed imaginative systems and style choices.
Chloe Ridges notes her grammar choices (like semicolons) and dialectical thinking shape those worlds.

ANECDOTE

Semicolons As Taoist Bridges

Chloe Ridges describes the semicolon as creating unity between independent thoughts.
She links that punctuation choice to a Taoist tension-holding approach in Le Guin's work.

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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.