Best known for her works of speculative fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin made her name as the foremost early feminist voice in fantasy and science fiction. She is also notable as one of few to break the imposing barrier of respectable academic disdain for what she has called the "ghetto" genres of fantasy, science fiction, and children's literature. In fact, Le Guin's work is collected more frequently into literature anthologies than that of any other science-fiction author, in the 1980s surpassing that of Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury. She is readily accepted by the establishment as a "serious" literary writer rather than regarded as a mere genre writer. She finds these distinctions problematic, with good reason: no writing exists without some kind of genre, serious or not; and she herself has produced works of serious and unserious literature in all the genres she explores. Le Guin believes...