The Wind's Twelve Quarters

The Wind's Twelve Quarters is a collection of short stories by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, titled after a line from A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad and first published by Harper & Row in 1975. A retrospective of Le Guin's short stories, it collects 17 previously published pieces of speculative fiction. Four of these were the germs of novels that she wrote later, and a few others shared connections to her novels. At least four stories are set in the Hainish Universe, and two others in Earthsea. Many stories share themes and motifs, including time and utopia; certain images and characters also recur, including isolated scholars or explorers seeking knowledge in a hostile world.