tannervolz 's review for:

Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin

4.0

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A sort of distillation of Le Guin’s dominant form into a series of delightful vignettes, some of which are startlingly challenging and evocative, given their whimsy. She knows what she’s doing. Everyone’s called her an anthropologist who unearths and studies imagined lands. I’ve said as much, but I don’t think that’s quite right. Obviously I can’t assert that these many micro-verses and their fascinating variations of human society and biology are actually real and waiting for Le Guin to discover them, but also that’s precisely what’s happening. She’s the first to observe them and therefore give them life. The thing is that none of them are alien. Her planes are always reorganizations of our own realities. Adjust one detail and everything changes. She’s an ethnographer of human potential, for better or worse.