Ursula K. Le Guin was born in a fascinating Berkeley household on October 21, 1929. Her parents, Alfred and Theodora Kroeber, were intellectuals of a high order, he a famous anthropologist whose career spanned from Franz Boas at its beginning to Claude Levi-Strauss at its end; she a writer who frequently explored the stories within her husband's career, such as her narrative of the last member of a native American tribe in Ishi: Last of His Tribe (1964). A field worker among California Indians early in his career and a theorist of culture after heart trouble, Alfred Kroeber was a fine storyteller, as were his native American informants. Le Guin's later tales of alien cultures were formed in part through the stories she heard and the people she met while growing up.

Although Le Guin wanted to be a writer from early childhood, she studied French and...