Just realized the guy who wrote my favorite sci-fi novel never went to college

I was digging into the author bio for one of our book club picks last month, and I found out the guy behind The Left Hand of Darkness only had a high school diploma. Ursula K. Le Guin's dad was an anthropologist and her mom was a writer, so she grew up around books but never got a formal degree. It surprised me because her worldbuilding is so detailed and academic feeling. Has anyone else found a weird fact about an author that changed how you saw their work?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugo_hayes18d ago

People make too much out of this stuff. Tons of great writers never went to college, it just means they learned on their own or had other experiences that shaped them. The work stands or falls on its own regardless of the author's background, so who cares if Le Guin skipped university?

samthompson18d ago

Found out Stephen King was high as a kite when he wrote most of his early stuff. Makes the clown in the sewer hit different now.