Fans of author Ursula K. Le Guin can send their snail mail in true science fiction style with new US postage stamps to pay tribute to her impressive literary legacy.
The United States Postal Service announced Friday that the 33rd stamp in the literary art stamp series honors Ursula K. Le Guin, who increased the critical and popular appreciation of science fiction and fantasy books. She died in 2018.
The new collector's stamp features a portrait of Le Guin by artist Donato Giancola, based on a 2006 photo. The background shows a scene from her novel The Left Hand of Darkness from 1969. In it, an envoy of the earth named Genly Ai escapes from a prison camp on the snow-covered planet Gethen with a shamed Gethenian politician.
We are proud to announce that Ursula has been honored with the 33rd stamp in the US Postal Service Literary Arts series. The stamp will be released later this year, date TBD. From then on, all of our letters will be three ounces! Many Thanks @USPS for this distinction. https://t.co/jGboi8i5LU pic.twitter.com/8H3UOGafPv
- Ursula K. Le Guin (@ursulakleguin) January 15, 2021
The stamp will officially be released later this year with the words "three ounces" to indicate its usage value. As with forever stamps, this always applies to the value printed on them.
In addition to Le Guin's literary postage stamp, the U.S. Postal Service announced a new set of stamps recognizing NASA's commitment to solar science.
The new 20 stamp set includes 10 images celebrating the science behind NASA's ongoing exploration of our next star. The images show events like solar flares, sunspots, and coronary loops, according to the NASA blog.
The bold colors on the stamps do not correspond to the actual colors of the sun as seen by the human eye. Rather, NASA colored each stamp based on wavelengths, which the USPS blog says reveal or highlight certain features of solar activity.
The stamps were designed using digital images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a spacecraft launched in February 2010 to observe the sun from geosynchronous orbit over the aircraft's ground station in New Mexico.
Customers can purchase the new stamps through the USPS Postal Store or at post offices nationwide.
