Ursula K. Le Guin and New Wave Fiction

In my next post I am going discuss the literary movement that Le Guin is a part of. This movement is called New Wave Fiction.

New Wave Fiction focuses on a move towards a more mature version of science fiction. Unlike science fiction in the past that was geared towards teenage boys, these stories are aimed at adults. They drift away from the utopian ideas of past science fiction and distrust man's intelligence, lack a trust of science and technology, and do not believe in the pureness of the human race.

Her role in New Wave Fiction is quite large. She demonstrated much newer techniques in her writing as was seen in the works of the modernists before her. She used such techniques as fragmentation and multiple viewpoints. Another way in which she changed the view on science fiction was how she created her characters. These characters were well rounded, which was quite uncommon of previous science fiction works. She created rich environments in the world that painted massive portraits for readers and could be compared to other works to a much greater extent.

Another way she pushed forward in the New Wave was her feminist style of writing. In this style she put more of a focus on the role of women in these universes, which was uncommon before then. Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness is a great example of her movement into the feminist role. In this book, a man travels to a foreign planet to establish relations to them and his home planet. The people on this planet are sexless, which disorients and even makes him uncomfortable when he sees how feminine some of them act. In the end, though, it is proven that just because they have no gender that does not mean they are not brave, as seen when is rescued from a labor camp by one of the people that he befriended. This made the point that gender plays no role in the identity of a person.

Sources:
"Ursula K. Le Guin." gatech.edu. 2011. Adam Le Doux. 26 April 2012. <http://sciencefictionlab.lcc.gatech.edu/SFL/doku.php/ursula_k_le_guin>

"New Wave Science Fiction." gatech.edu. 2004. Anonymous. 26 April 2012. <http://sciencefictionlab.lcc.gatech.edu/SFL/doku.php/new_wave>

Bacon-Smith, Camille. Science Fiction Culture. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. pg 103.

Picture Source:
<http://forbiddenplanet.com/57811-left-hand-of-darkness/>