URSULA KROEBER LE GUIN, daughter of A. L. Kroeber (anthropologist) and Theodora Kroeber (author), was born in Berkeley, California in 1929. She attended college at Radcliffe and Columbia, and married C. A. LeGuin in Paris in 1951. The LeGuins and their three children live in Portland, Oregon.

Ursula LeGuin’s previous novels include ROCANNON’S WORLD, PLANET OF EXILE and CITY OF ILLUSIONS, and THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, all published by Ace Books. Like THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, each novel is complete in itself, but they are all part of a greater, growing mosaic of far-future history that is consistent from novel to novel.

Another novel by Ursula LeGuin, A WIZARD OF EARTH-SEA, has been published hi the Ace Science Fiction Specials series; this novel begins a separate group of tales about the planet Earthsea.