‘She is unique. She is legend’ THE TIMES
‘Le Guin is a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller with the humor and the force of a Twain’ BOSTON GLOBE
‘Her stories will pass into legend, to touch many generations to come’ GUARDIAN
THE UNREAL AND THE REAL is a two-volume collection of stories, selected by Ursula Le Guin herself, and spans the spectrum of fiction from realism through magical realism, satire, science fiction, surrealism and fantasy.
Volume Two, OUTER SPACE, INNER LANDS, showcases Le Guin’s acclaimed stories of the fantastic, originally appearing in publications as varied as AMAZING STORIES, PLAYBOY, the NEW YORKER and OMNI, and contains 20 stories, including modern classics such as the HUGO AWARD-winning ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’, NEBULA-nominee ‘Nine Lives’; JAMES TIPTREE, JR MEMORIAL AWARD-winner (and HUGO and NEBULA-nominee) ‘The Matter of Seggri’; NEBULA AWARD-winner ‘Solitude’; and the secret history ‘Sur’, which was nominated for the HUGO AWARD and included in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES.
‘Le Guin is a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller with the humor and the force of a Twain’ BOSTON GLOBE
‘Her stories will pass into legend, to touch many generations to come’ GUARDIAN
THE UNREAL AND THE REAL is a two-volume collection of stories, selected by Ursula Le Guin herself, and spans the spectrum of fiction from realism through magical realism, satire, science fiction, surrealism and fantasy.
Volume Two, OUTER SPACE, INNER LANDS, showcases Le Guin’s acclaimed stories of the fantastic, originally appearing in publications as varied as AMAZING STORIES, PLAYBOY, the NEW YORKER and OMNI, and contains 20 stories, including modern classics such as the HUGO AWARD-winning ‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’, NEBULA-nominee ‘Nine Lives’; JAMES TIPTREE, JR MEMORIAL AWARD-winner (and HUGO and NEBULA-nominee) ‘The Matter of Seggri’; NEBULA AWARD-winner ‘Solitude’; and the secret history ‘Sur’, which was nominated for the HUGO AWARD and included in THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES.
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Reviews
Her worlds have a magic sheen . . . She moulds them into dimensions we can only just sense. She is unique. She is legend
Second of a two-volume set, this bare-bones collection focuses on SFWA GRAND MASTER Le Guin's overtly fantastic visions. Settings of 20 stories, all previously anthologised, include both the science fictional Ekumen, a community of worlds populated by humans shaped by the hubristic Hain of the distant past, to such fantastical realms as the West Reach, "where dragons breed on the lava isles." Le Guin's imagination ranges widely; the most interesting sequence involves the world Seggri, whose gender politics are charmingly different from ours but equally constrained. This short collection, offering samples from across Le Guin's career to date, shows why she has been a major voice in science fiction and fantasy since the 1960s
A tour de force
I read her nonstop growing up and read her still. What makes her so extraordinary for me is that her commitment to the consequences of our actions, of our all too human frailties, is unflinching and almost without precedent for a writer of such human optimism. She never turns away from how flinty the heart of the world is. It gives her speculations a resonance, a gravity that few writers, mainstream or generic, can match
THE REAL AND THE UNREAL as a pair is brilliant to read, provocative, and handsomely written
The metaphorical language of fantasy has the capacity to touch us in the most profound ways. But many otherwise great fantasy writers, including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, fall too easily into the traps of dogma and moral superiority, making their medicine sometimes hard to swallow. The stories of Ursula K. Le Guin manage the sublime trick of touching our hearts while also satisfying our cynical, modern minds. For this reason her stories will pass into legend, to touch many generations to come
Ursula Le Guin is a chemist of the heart