It was this generation of American women that fuelled much of the second wave feminism of the late 1960s and 70s, which was when that particular tin can exploded. For those who’d been taught they were grownups, this was like trying to seal a volcano inside a tin can.

But after she married and left academia, she found herself in a society that treated her and all women – from a legal point of view – like an irresponsible 13-year-old. She was taught to think, as they used to say, like a man: widely, curiously, rigorously. She took note, and was not amused.)Īfter Radcliffe she went to graduate school, studying French and Italian literature. (Once she became a writer – a science fiction writer, among other things – the men defending that particular tree house continued the exclusionary bun-pelting. She would have strolled past the dining hall, where – she would have been told – the male students used to pelt with buns any female who dared to show her face. She went to Radcliffe, a liminal space then: it was Harvard but not really, its women allowed some participation but not full access. Le Guin was born in 1929: a child in the depression, a teenager in the second world war, then at college right after the war, in that moment that seemed so filled with the spirit of renewal. It would also have contained mutually enjoyable sex and good food: there was a better chance of that. In all her work, Le Guin was always asking the same urgent question: what sort of world do you want to live in? Her own choice would have been gender equal, racially equal, economically fair and self-governing, but that was not on offer. Were you predicting anything? Not exactly, she answered. What do you think, Ursula? I asked her in my head.

Le Guin was always asking the same urgent question: what sort of world do you want to live in? If judged a danger to the general good you’re deemed persona non grata and exiled to a prison enclave, with no trial or right of reply. In the other society, an oppressive bureaucracy prevails and a secret committee knows what’s best. You’re in the powerful inner circle one day, an outcast the next. In one of its societies, the king is crazy. Consider: the planet of Gethen is divided.

Voices ursula le guin