Reading List

Authors Like Ursula K. Le Guin

Q: What should I read after The Left Hand of Darkness?

Try Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), which argues with it, or Lem’s Solaris (1961), another story of a mind that will not be understood on human terms.

Q: What should I read after Earthsea?

Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) for the tradition it came from, or Jemisin’s The Fifth Season (2015) for where fantasy went next.

Q: Which Ursula K. Le Guin book should I read first?

Start with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) for fantasy or The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) for science fiction.

Ursula Kroeber was born in Berkeley, California, on 21 October 1929, the daughter of the anthropologists Alfred and Theodora Kroeber. Philip K. Dick was in her class at Berkeley High School; they never met there. She grew up to invent whole cultures: the islands of A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), a planet whose people have no fixed sex in The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), and the anarchist moon of The Dispossessed (1974). Both novels won the Hugo and the Nebula, and she was the first person to win both awards for each of two books. In 1997 she published her own version of the Tao Te Ching, and in 2014, accepting the National Book Foundation Medal, she used her speech to criticise Amazon’s hold over publishing. She died in Portland, Oregon, in 2018. The ten writers below share her method: another world built carefully enough to show up the assumptions of this one.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Science fiction · Fantasy · Utopia · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Ursula K. Le Guin, start with Octavia E. Butler, whose Kindred (1979) and Parable novels use speculative fiction to examine power. Stanisław Lem was the writer for whose sake Le Guin refused a Nebula Award, and Philip K. Dick was her high-school classmate, to whom she called The Lathe of Heaven an homage. Further down are a feminist writer who criticised The Left Hand of Darkness and the novelist Le Guin argued with about the term science fiction.

10 authors like Ursula K. Le Guin

Where the line begins

Mary Shelley

British · Frankenstein (1818), The Last Man (1826)

Shelley was born in London in 1797, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and died in 1851. Frankenstein, begun when she was eighteen, follows a scientist who builds a living creature and then abandons it. The Last Man imagines humanity wiped out by plague in the late twenty-first century.

The founding book of the tradition Le Guin worked in, and already a moral argument dressed as a story about science. Both writers care less about the invention than about who is harmed by it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Mary Shelley →

The fantasy Earthsea answered

J. R. R. Tolkien

British · The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954–55)

Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, in what is now South Africa, in 1892 and held the chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945. He invented several languages, above all Quenya and Sindarin. He died in Bournemouth in 1973.

Earthsea belongs to the high fantasy Tolkien made possible, and both writers built their worlds out of language: in Earthsea, magic depends on knowing the true names of things. Le Guin’s books are shorter, quieter and less interested in war.

— Lisanne

The book she spent a life with

Laozi

Chinese · Tao Te Ching (traditionally 6th century BC)

Laozi, “Old Master”, is the honorific of the legendary philosopher traditionally credited with the Tao Te Ching, a founding text of Taoism. Modern scholars generally treat his biography as later invention and the book as the work of several hands. Le Guin published her own version of it in 1997.

Taoist balance, and the idea of wu wei, action without forcing, run under Le Guin’s fiction. Read her version of the Tao Te Ching beside the Earthsea books.

— Lisanne

The writer she stood up for

Stanisław Lem

Polish · Solaris (1961), The Cyberiad (1965)

Lem (1921–2006) was born in Lwów, then in Poland, and became the best-known science-fiction writer of the Eastern bloc. Solaris follows scientists orbiting a planet whose ocean may be a mind. When the Science Fiction Writers of America withdrew his honorary membership, after his criticism of American science fiction, Le Guin left the organisation and refused a Nebula Award for her story “The Diary of the Rose”.

A writer of ideas, as Le Guin was, and the one she put her own career on the line for. Lem is more ironic and more interested in the limits of knowledge; Solaris pairs well with The Left Hand of Darkness, both stories of contact with a mind that will not be understood on our terms.

— Lisanne

Imaginary places as philosophy

Italo Calvino

Italian · Invisible Cities (1972), If on a winter’s night a traveller (1979)

Calvino was born in Cuba in 1923 to Italian parents, grew up in San Remo and fought with the Italian partisans in the Second World War. He collected and retold Italian Folktales (1956), and Invisible Cities is built from Marco Polo’s descriptions of imaginary cities for Kublai Khan. He died in 1985.

Like Le Guin’s Always Coming Home, Invisible Cities describes places that never existed to make readers look again at the ones they live in. Calvino is more playful and abstract; read him for the shortest route to her way of thinking.

— Lisanne

Every book by Italo Calvino →

Her classmate

Philip K. Dick

American · The Man in the High Castle (1962), Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and was in the Berkeley High School class of 1947 with Le Guin, though they did not know each other. The Man in the High Castle, set in an America that lost the Second World War, won the Hugo Award in 1963. From 1974 he wrote about a series of visions that fed his late novels, including VALIS. He died in 1982.

Le Guin called The Lathe of Heaven (1971), about a man whose dreams change reality, an homage to Dick. He is wilder, more paranoid and less careful than she was, and the two together show how wide the field was in the same decades.

— Lisanne

Every book by Philip K. Dick →

The critique of Gethen

Joanna Russ

American · The Female Man (1975), How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983)

Russ was born in New York in 1937 and died in Tucson in 2011. Her story “When It Changed”, set on a planet of women, won the Nebula Award in 1972 and became part of The Female Man. She criticised The Left Hand of Darkness for repeating the gender stereotypes of male-written science fiction.

The writer who argued with Le Guin from inside feminist science fiction. Read The Female Man after The Left Hand of Darkness: one imagines a world without fixed sex, the other is angry about this one.

— Lisanne

Power, examined through other worlds

Octavia E. Butler

American · Kindred (1979), Parable of the Sower (1993)

Butler was born in Pasadena, California, in 1947 and died in 2006. In Kindred, a Black woman in 1976 Los Angeles is pulled back again and again to a Maryland plantation before the Civil War. In 1995 she became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

The closest writer to Le Guin in purpose: speculative fiction used to examine power, community and survival. Butler is harder and more frightening; the Parable novels read as the dark twin of The Dispossessed.

— Lisanne

The argument over a label

Margaret Atwood

Canadian · The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), The Year of the Flood (2009)

Atwood was born in Ottawa in 1939. The Handmaid’s Tale imagines a theocratic American state that forces fertile women to bear children for its ruling class. Reviewing The Year of the Flood in The Guardian in 2009, Le Guin praised it but called Atwood’s refusal of the term science fiction arbitrarily restrictive. Atwood spoke at Le Guin’s memorial in Portland in 2018.

The writer Le Guin argued with about what their work should be called, and the two are closer than the argument suggests: both build future societies to examine women’s freedom. Atwood is more satirical and closer to the present.

— Lisanne

Every book by Margaret Atwood →

Worldbuilding as moral argument

N. K. Jemisin

American · The Fifth Season (2015), The Stone Sky (2017)

Jemisin was born in Iowa City in 1972. Each novel of her Broken Earth trilogy won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, in 2016, 2017 and 2018. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2020 and was named a Grand Master by SFWA in 2025.

The living writer who most clearly continues Le Guin’s work: invented worlds with their own geology, history and injustice, built to make the reader think about this one. Jemisin is angrier and more urgent, which suits readers who found The Dispossessed too calm.

— Lisanne

Every book by N. K. Jemisin →

Where to start if you loved Ursula K. Le Guin

If you want the roots of her fantasy, read Tolkien.

The Hobbit (1937) is the shortest way in, and makes a good companion to A Wizard of Earthsea.

If you want the argument with The Left Hand of Darkness, read Joanna Russ.

The Female Man (1975) is the angry answer to Gethen.

If you want her politics, read Octavia E. Butler.

Parable of the Sower (1993) is the darker twin of The Dispossessed.

If you want her heir, read N. K. Jemisin.

Start with The Fifth Season (2015), the first of three Hugo winners in a row.

If you want Le Guin herself, start with A Wizard of Earthsea or The Left Hand of Darkness.

Earthsea (1968) is the fantasy; The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974) are the science fiction.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Ursula K. Le Guin

Who writes like Ursula K. Le Guin?

The closest are Octavia E. Butler, Stanisław Lem and Philip K. Dick, along with N. K. Jemisin among living writers.

What should I read after The Left Hand of Darkness?

Try Joanna Russ’s The Female Man (1975), which argues with it, or Lem’s Solaris (1961), another story of a mind that will not be understood on human terms.

What should I read after Earthsea?

Tolkien’s The Hobbit (1937) for the tradition it came from, or Jemisin’s The Fifth Season (2015) for where fantasy went next.

Is there a new Ursula K. Le Guin book?

Le Guin died in 2018; her posthumous books include the poetry collection So Far So Good. In September 2026 Titan published Revolution in the Heart, fifteen stories in her honour by writers including Ann Leckie, Kelly Link and Karen Joy Fowler.

Which Ursula K. Le Guin book should I read first?

Start with A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) for fantasy or The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) for science fiction.

Did Ursula K. Le Guin know Philip K. Dick?

They were in the same Berkeley High School class of 1947 but did not know each other there. She later called The Lathe of Heaven (1971) an homage to him.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Ursula K. Le Guin

10 authors like Ursula K. Le Guin

Mary Shelley

J. R. R. Tolkien

Laozi

Stanisław Lem

Italo Calvino

Philip K. Dick

Joanna Russ

Octavia E. Butler

Margaret Atwood

N. K. Jemisin

Where to start if you loved Ursula K. Le Guin

Frequently asked questions about authors like Ursula K. Le Guin

Who writes like Ursula K. Le Guin?

What should I read after The Left Hand of Darkness?

What should I read after Earthsea?

Is there a new Ursula K. Le Guin book?

Which Ursula K. Le Guin book should I read first?

Did Ursula K. Le Guin know Philip K. Dick?

Lisanne Swart

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