This Nebula and Locus Award winner focuses on the bittersweet ruminations of an old woman who began a social movement in her youth, and the culmination of her life as a public figure on the day before the Revolution begins. Nebula Award Winner, Locus Poll Award Winner, Hugo Award Nominee.

*

"The Day Before the Revolution" is a science fiction short story by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. First published in the science fiction magazine Galaxy in August 1974, it was anthologized in Le Guin's 1975 collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters and in several subsequent collections. Set in Le Guin's fictional Hainish universe, the story has strong connections to her novel The Dispossessed (also published in 1974), and is sometimes referred to as a prologue to the longer work, though it was written later.