Ursula K. Le Guin

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Ursula K. Le Guin
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See first quotes from Ursula K. Le Guin

29 Quotations from Ursula K. Le Guin

Aldebaranian n. 1 1971 U. K. Le Guin Lathe of Heaven in Amazing Science Fiction May x. 57/2 ‘Dr Haber,’ her husband said, ‘have you ever talked to an Alien about dreaming?’ ‘An Aldebaranian, you mean? No. Forde in Washington tried out a couple of our tests on some of ’em, along with a whole series of psychological tests, but the results were meaningless. We simply haven’t licked the communications problem there.’
alternate universe n. 1971 U. K. Le Guin Lathe of Heaven (1973) iv. 50 Dual time-tracks, alternate universes.
ansible n. 1966 U. K. Le Guin Rocannon’s World 113 Noting the coordinates at which the ansible sender was set, he changed them to the coordinates of the League HILF Survey Base for Galactic Area 8, at Kerguelen, on the planet New South Georgia—the only coordinates he knew without reference to a handbook.
ansible n. 1974 U. K. Le Guin Dispossessed (1975) ix. 222 They print Reumere’s plans for the ansible.
clone n. 1969 U. K. Le Guin Nine Lives in World’s Best Science Fiction (1970) 294 The clone, five males and five females, had got done in a couple of minutes what a man might have got done in twenty: greeted Pugh and Martin, had a glance at Libra, unloaded the boat, made ready to go. They went, and the dome filled with them, a hive of golden bees. They hummed and buzzed quietly, filled up all silences, all spaces with a honey-brown swarm of human presence. Martin looked bewilderedly at the long-limbed girls, and they smiled at him, three at once. Their smile was gentler than that of the boys, but no less radiantly self-possessed. ‘Self-possessed,’ Owen Pugh murmured to his friend, ‘that’s it. Think of it, to be oneself ten times over. Nine seconds for every motion, nine ayes on every vote. It would be glorious!’
empath n. 1971 U. K. Le Guin Vaster Than Empires & More Slow in E. S. Rabkin Science Fiction: Historical Anthology (1983) 496 Mr Osden, being an empath, feels it. Feels his feelings, and yours, and is hard put to say which is which.
fix-up n. 2002 U. K. Le Guin Birthday of World Foreword p. xi There’s a sneering British term ‘fix-up’ for books by authors who, told that collections ‘don’t sell’, patch unconnected stories together with verbal duct tape.
Galactic n. 2 1964 U. K. Le Guin Semley's Necklace in T. Shippey Oxford Book of Science Fiction (1992) 336 ‘She say, Hail, Lord of Stars,’ growled one of her squat escorts in Pidgin-Galactic.
generation ship n. 2002 U. K. Le Guin Birthday of World Foreword p. xiii, In this version of it, Earth sends forth ships to the stars at speeds that are, according to our present knowledge, more or less realistic, at least potentially attainable. Such a ship takes decades, centuries, to get where it’s going. No Warp Nine, no time-dilation—just real time. In other words, this is a generation-ship story.
heroic fantasy n. 1973 U. K. Le Guin From Elfland to Poughkeepsie in U. K. Le Guin & S. Wood Language of Night (1982) 75 There would be no use at all in talking about what is generally passed off as ‘heroic fantasy’, all the endless Barbarians, with names like Barp and Klod.
light-century n. 1971 U. K. Le Guin Vaster Than Empires & More Slow in E. S. Rabkin Science Fiction: Historical Anthol. (1983) 501 We're two light-centuries past the limit of the Hainish Expansion.
lightspeed n. 1 1994 U. K. Le Guin Fisherman of Inland Sea Introd. 7 If we're going to a world a hundred light-years from here at near lightspeed, we spend according to our own perceptions, only a few minutes doing so and arrive only a few minutes older.
NAFAL adj. 1969 U. K. Le Guin Nine Lives in Best SF: 1969 (1970) 97 No, they’ll have the mass problem in NAFAL shipping licked by now, remember it’s been sixteen years since we left Earth last Tuesday.
NAFAL adj. 1990 U. K. Le Guin Shobies’ Story in Universe 1 62 They went from world to world, and each time they lost the world they left, lost it in time dilation, their friends getting old and dying while they were in NAFAL flight.
off-planet n. 1976 U. K. Le Guin Word for World Is Forest in H. Ellison Again, Dangerous Visions 37 There were two possibilities. One: an attack from another camp. Some officer on King or New Java had gone spla and was trying a coup de planète. Two: an attack from off-planet.
offworlder n. 1974 U. K. Le Guin Dispossessed (1975) i.2 The aliens, the off-worlders, stayed hiding in their ship.
postholocaust adj. 1994 U. K. Le Guin Fisherman of Inland Sea Introd. 5 Finally, some people tell me that they avoid science fiction because it’s depressing. This is quite understandable if they happened to hit a streak of post-holocaust cautionary tales or a bunch of trendies trying to outwhine each other, or overdosed on sleaze-metal-punk-virtual-noir Capitalist Realism.
sentience n. 2 2002 U. K. Le Guin Social Dreaming of the Frin in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct.—Nov. 185 The duty of the strong-minded person, she holds, is to strengthen dreams, to focus them—not with a view to practical results or new inventions, but as a means of understanding the world through a myriad of experiences and sentiences (not only human).
skiffy n. 2004 U. K. Le Guin Thinking about Cordwainer Smith in Wave in Mind 60 Dr. Linebarger had to be respectable and responsible and had to guard his tongue. Cordwainer Smith wrote skiffy and babbled whatever he pleased.
solar system n. 1995 U. K. Le Guin Four Ways to Forgiveness 211 The Werel-Yeowe solar system consists of 16 planets orbiting a yellow-white star (RK-tamo-5544-34).
space dock n. 1972 U. K. Le Guin The Word for World is Forest in H. Ellison Again, Dangerous Visions 37 He saw the golden tower of the space-dock at Central.
space flight n. 1974 U. K. Le Guin Dispossessed (1975) vii. 187 Where’s our instantaneous spaceflight?
spaceship n. 1974 U. K. Le Guin Dispossessed (1975) i. 2 She was wearing the Defense armband, a sight almost as rare as a spaceship.
starfleet n. 1972 U. K. Le Guin The Word for World is Forest in H. Ellison Again, Dangerous Visions 64 A Starfleet ship’s commander bootlicking two humanoids.
Terra n. 1974 U. K. Le Guin Dispossessed (1975) i. 10, I was given the honor of attending you because of my experience with other visitors from offworld, the ambassadors from Terra and from Hain.
Terran n. 1 1974 U. K. Le Guin Dispossessed (1975) iii. 57 The Hainish call it materialism, and the Terrans call it mysticism.
time track n. 1971 U. K. Le Guin Lathe of Heaven (1973) vii.103 But I knew you did, as soon as I thought about it, because they weren’t in that other—time-track or whatever it is.
viewscreen n. 1974 U. K. Le Guin Dispossessed (1975) i. 14 On the viewscreen the brilliant curve of Urras hung still against black space.
xenobiologist n. 1971 U. K. Le Guin Lathe of Heaven (1973) x. 160 They're intelligent but Irchevsky, our best xenobiologist, thinks they may not be rational at all.