Le Guin grew up in Berkeley in a secure and intellectually stimulating environment. Her parents were progressive and nonsexist in childrearing. The house was filled with books, and her father was frequently visited by major figures in anthropology and other fields. She claims that her parents' interest in anthropology strongly influenced her writing: "My father studied real cultures and I make them up-in a way, it's the same thing."
As a child, Le Guin wanted to be a biologist and a poet. She read widely as a youngster, preferring Frazer's Golden Bough, Norse myths, and science-fiction magazines, though she temporarily lost interest in science fiction as she matured. As she explained in The Language of the Night (1979), "it seemed to be all about hardware and soldiers." Lord Dunsany's A Dreamer's Tales, which she encountered at age twelve, was a revelation to her, making her realize that grown-ups were still creating myths. It opened up to her "the Inner Lands" which she calls "my native country."
Le Guin wrote her first fantasy story at nine, about a man persecuted by evil elves, and submitted her first science fiction, a story about time travel that she wrote when she was ten or eleven, to Amazing Stories.
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