Grand Master Ursula K. LeGuin has been recognised for almost fifty years as one of the most important writers in the SF field - and is likewise feted beyond the confines of the genre. The Wind''s Twelve Quarters was her first collection and it brings together some of finest short fiction, including the Hugo Award-winning ''The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas'', the Nebula Award-winning ''The Day Before the Revolution'', and the Hugo-nominated ''Winter''s King'', which gave readers their first glimpse of the world later made famous in her Hugo- and Nebula-winning masterpiece The Left Hand of Darkness.