Writers of the 21st century

In such visionary masterworks as the Nebula and Hugo Award winners The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin redrew the map of modern science fiction, imagining a galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain, an array of worlds whose divergent societies—the result of both evolution and genetic engineering—allow her to speculate on what is intrinsic in human nature. Now, for the first time, the complete Hainish novels and stories are collected in a deluxe two-volume Library of America boxed set, with new introductions by the author. Volume one gathers the first five Hainish novels: Rocannon’s World, in which an ethnologist sent to a bronze-age planet must help defeat an intergalactic enemy; Planet of Exile, the story of human colonists stranded on a planet that is slowly killing them; City of Illusions, which finds a future Earth ruled by the mysterious Shing; and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning masterpieces The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed—as well as four short stories. Volume two presents Le Guin’s final two Hainish novels, The Word for World Is Forest, in which Earth enslaves another planet to strip its natural resources, and The Telling, the harrowing story of a society which has suppressed its own cultural heritage. Rounding out the volume are seven short stories and the story suite Five Ways to Forgiveness, published here in full for the first time. The endpapers feature Le Guin's own hand-drawn map of Gethen, the planet that is the setting for The Left Hand of Darkness, and a full-color chart of the known worlds of Hainish descent.

Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) is widely considered the greatest American science fiction writer of the 20th century. A famous and bestselling author in later life, he started as a navy man and graduate of Annapolis who was forced to retire because of tuberculosis. A left-wing politician in the 1930s, he became one of the sources of Libertarian politics in the USA in his later years. His most famous works include the Future History series (stories and novels collected in The Past Through Tomorrow and continued in later novels), Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land, and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Given his desire for privacy in the later decades of his life, he was both stranger and more interesting than one could ever have known. This first of two volumes covers Heinlein's life up to the midlife crisis that changed him forever.--From publisher description.

The Social Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov / Marjorie Mithoff Miller "Elementary, My Dear . . .": Asimov's Science Fiction Mysteries / Hazel Pierce The Use of Technical Metaphors in Asimov's Fiction /Maxine Moore Asimov's Foundation Novels: Historical Materialism Distorted into Cyclical Psychohistory / Charles Elkins Asimov's Golden Age: The Ordering of an Art / Donald M. Hassler Human Reactions to Technological Change in Asimov's Fiction / Fern Milman A Galaxy Full of People: Characterization in Asimov's Major Fiction / Donald Watt Asimov's Most Recent Fiction / Joseph F. Patrouch Ethical Evolving Artificial Intelligence: Asimov's Computers and Robots / Patricia S. Warrick