Der Tag vor der Revolution

by Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Nölle (Translator)

Fünfundzwanzig Science-Fiction-Geschichten aus vier Jahrzehnten in der Neuübersetzung durch Karen Nölle.

In der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts hat Ursula K. Le Guin das Genre der Science Fiction so tiefgreifend beeinflusst wie sonst kaum jemand. Sie hat ökologische und feministische Themen eingebracht und durch ihren unverwechselbaren Stil und mit ihrer unbegrenzten Imaginationskraft zahlreiche Autor*innen beeinflusst. Viele der hier neu übersetzten Geschichten waren noch nie oder sind schon seit langem nicht mehr auf Deutsch erhältlich. Der vorliegende Band ist ein einzigartiger Zugang zum Werk einer der größten amerikanischen Schriftstellerinnen des 20. Jahrhunderts.

»Wir können Ursula K. Le Guin nicht aus dem Land der unveränderlichen Sterne zurückrufen, aber glücklicherweise hat sie uns ihr facettenreiches Werk, ihre hart erarbeitete Weisheit und ihren grundlegenden Optimismus hinterlassen. Ihre vernünftige, kluge, gewitzte und lyrische Stimme ist heute notwendiger denn je.« Margaret Atwood

773 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 29, 2025

About the author

Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon.

She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.

Reviews

[Totarota · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dieser Band enthält 25 Kurzgeschichten und Novellen mit einem Nachwort der Übersetzerin Karen Nölle. Während sich im ersten Teil noch eher klassische, teils auch kryptische und witzige Science Fiction Stories finden, zeigt der zweite Teil ganz besonders, was Le Guins Schreiben ausmacht. So lässt sie Bewohner verschiedener Welten des Hainish-Universums auf gefühlvolle Weise ihre jeweilige Lebensgeschichte in sozialen und politischen Gefügen erzählen, die sich von unseren unterscheiden und so gezielt gewohnte Denkmuster in Frage stellen. Den beiden Teilen vorangestellt sind Essays über die Sicht der Autorin auf die Themen Genre (Sci Fi als „Was wäre, wenn“-Literatur) und Gender (Le Guin ist ihrer Zeit auch in den vorliegenden Texten einfach weit voraus). „Der Tag vor der Revolution“ würde ich zwar nicht zum Einstieg in das Werk der Autorin empfehlen, als Ergänzung zu den großen Romanen ist die Sammlung jedoch sehr wertvoll.

[Maurice]

I hate it when there's no way to tell from the cover/back/inside flap of the book that it's part of a series or a bigger universe. Half of these stories number-wise/ about three quarters of the book page-count-wise are set in the Hainish universe, with no indication about that anywhere on or inside the book until you get to read the first one of those and notice it's clearly the same world as in The Left Hand of Darkness, and as you read on come to realize that all those stories are set in the same world. I'm almost never a fan of short stories set in the same world as longer novels, even for my favorite series I usually skip additional short story collections and novellas. But even if you don't have an issue with that, these stories seemed like you would get a lot more out of them had you read some of the Hainish novels first. The only one that kind of worked on it's own was The Day Before the Revolution, for all the others I felt like I was missing a lot of background knowledge. So ultimately I gave up with 3.5 stories left unread. And it's a shame, because I loved the stories in the first part of the book, the worlds and concepts this author comes up with are really fascinating, and I definitely want to read the full-length Hainish novels, just not the additional short stories to that universe.

[Maximilian Birkl · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been 23 days since I finished reading this and I'm now finally gonna try and order my thoughts about this short story collection.

First of all let me start out by saying that in my mind Ursula K. Le Guin is the greatest author of all time and if I got to choose a patrong saint, it would be her.
Okay, now that I got this out of the way:

I got the feeling that I tend to rate short story collections lower than full novels. Probably because my rating is mostly based on how much I enjoyed my experience with a book and the deeper connection to characters a novel allows for just resonates with me a lot more.
You thought that would be a tangent, but I don't think it is; let's see if I can make the connection.
This is a very "brainy" read. It's not something passively experienced and enjoyed. The enjoyment comes from engaging with it and thinking about what it presents to you.
The entire planet that is just a juvenile power fantasy.
The idea of a marriage always between four people.
No revolution ever being a clean thing.
"Introducing myself" is a witty critique of the male dominated field Le Guin found herself in.
I will be honest, I'm not sure I remember all the details about the many stories from the Hainish cycle. I just know there was a lot of gender fuckery. I will say that these were my least favorite stories in this collection, though I can't really tell why. They are clever sci-fi with a lot of questioning of societal norms. I don't know. I simply preferd "Introducing myself" or "She unnames them" or "The Day Before The Revolution".
And on that last one specifically:
Leave it to Le Guin to write about an anarchist revolution at the point where it has almsot succeeded through the eyes of one of its great mothers, now an old woman reminiscing about how it all went.


And on this collection specifically:
I think the German translation is actually quite phenomenal. I've made some bad experiences with lackluster translations where there was no regard for the flow of the prose as long as the meaning was conveyed. Though I will say, this leads to some language fuckery in "Winter's King" specifcially with the definite article being gendered in German.

All in all, what can I say, it's Le Guin; she is the greatest author of all time.