The Wind's Twelve Quarters

These are LeGuin's earliest short stories but already there is a confident authorial voice on the page. The familiar themes are already in place: man's place in the universe; the battle between ignorance and knowledge; the nature of “alien” and man's relationship to it.

This volume contains two of her best stories (The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas and The Day Before The Revolution, the former a visceral metaphor for living in a Capilatist society, the latter a prelude to one of her finest novels, The Dispossessed) as well as a couple of stories from the Hainish cycle. In particular Winter's King is the first appearance of the planet Gethen, or Winter, which she would explore in more depth in her classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness.

There are only a few so called “genre” writers who transcend genre and LeGuin is one of them. Her stories speak to the human condition, how we live and our place in the world. They are universal in every sense of the word.