Born in 1929, Ursula K. Le Guin has always enjoyed reading, especially poetry and fiction dealing with other times and places. Her parents were both professionals, her father an anthropology professor and her mother a children's literature author, and they both encouraged her literary aspirations. She says that she was lucky to be born in 1929 instead of 1939 because of J. R. R. Tolkien's influence. In her introduction to her critical exploration of science fiction. The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, Le Guin muses, "what would have happened if I had ... first read Tolkien in my teens, instead of my twenties. That achievement might have overwhelmed me." Tolkien's influence is most evident in Always Coming Home in its portrayal of a future possibility as an already established fact and presenting all aspects of this future culture in a scientific, textbook format. She began...