Always Coming Home is a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin published in 1985. This novel is about a race of humans who "might be going to have lived a long, long time from now in Northern California." (p. i) Part novel, part textbook, part anthropologist's record, Always Coming Home explains the life and culture of a people called the Kesh, anarchistic, introspective and bound to their land by ritual. Ursula K. Le Guin at an informal bookstore Q&A session, July 2004 Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (born October 21, 1929), is an American author. ... State nickname: The Golden State Other U.S. States Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) Official languages English Area 410,000 km² (3rd)  - Land 404,298 km²  - Water 20,047 km² (4. ... Anarchy (New Latin anarchia, from Greek ανα–, no + αρχη, rule) is a term that has several usages. ...

The book weaves around the story of a Kesh woman called Stone Telling, who lived for a while with her father's people—the Dayao or the Condor people, whose society is rigid, patriarchal, hierarchical and militarily expansionist. The story fills less than a third of the book's total volume, though; the rest is a mixture of Kesh cultural lore (including poetry, prose of various kinds, mythos, rituals, and recipes), essays on Kesh culture, and the author's own musings under the pseudonym "Pandora". The book is accompanied by a tape of Kesh music and poetry (often not found with used copies of the book, but available on order from the publisher). In Greek mythology, Pandora (all gifted) was the first woman, fashioned by Zeus as part of his punishment of mankind for having stolen the secret of fire. ...

Unlike most books based on a future earth, but like much of Le Guin's work, Always Coming Home follows Native American and Taoist themes. It is set in a time so post-apocalyptic that no cultural source can remember the apocalypse, though a few folk tales refer to our time. The only signs of our civilisation that have lasted into their time are indestructible artifacts such as styrofoam and a self-manufacturing, self-maintaining, solar-system-wide computer network. Native Americans (also Indians, Aboriginal Peoples, American Indians, First Nations, Alaskan Natives, Amerindians, or Indigenous Peoples of America) are the indigenous inhabitants of The Americas prior to the European colonization, and their modern descendants. ... For other uses of the words tao and dao, see Dao (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Civilization (disambiguation). ... Polystyrene is a polymer made from the monomer styrene, a liquid hydrocarbon that is commercially manufactured from petroleum. ... A computer network is a system for communication among two or more computers. ...

Pandora describes the book as a protest against contemporary civilization, which the Kesh call "the Sickness of Man". They use such inventions of civilization as writing, steel, guns, electricity, trains, and the above-mentioned computer network. However, like most neighboring societies, they reject government, a non-laboring caste, expansion of population or territory, disbelief in what we consider supernatural, and human domination of the natural environment. Writing may refer to two activities: the inscribing of characters on a medium, with the intention of forming words and other constructs that represent language or record information, and the creation of material to be conveyed through written language. ... // Steel is a metal alloy whose major component is iron, with carbon being the primary alloying material. ... Look up Gun in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A gun is a mechanical device that fires projectiles at high velocity, using a propellant such as gun powder or compressed air. ... Lightning strikes during a night-time thunderstorm. ... There are various types of trains designed for particular purposes, see rail transport operations. ... A caste system is a rigid system of social stratification, which divides members of a society into different castes. ... The supernatural (Latin:super- exceeding+nature) comprises forces and phenomena that cannot be perceived by natural or empirical senses, and whose understanding may be said to lie with religious, magical, or otherwise mysterious explanation —yet remains firmly outside of the realm of science. ... By natural environment is meant the environment of nature, in contrast to some other environment or external milieu that is man-made (and thus, not natural). Within the biosphere, there exists no straight-forward way to separate what belongs to the natural environment and what does not, partly for the...

Stone Telling's narrative may be seen as a return to the theme of The Dispossessed and The Eye of the Heron, in which a person from an anarchy visits an acquisitive government-ruled society and returns. The Kesh are much less rationalistic and more colorful than the anarchies in the other two books. The Dispossessed is a 1974 utopian science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, set in the same universe as that of The Left Hand of Darkness (the Ekumen universe). ...

Songs in the book and on the tape were composed by Todd Barton, and pictures in the book were drawn by Margaret Chodos-Irvine.