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A review by lmsmango
Changing Planes by Ursula K. Le Guin
3.0
What a great collection of stories to start the year with. Ursula Le Guin often credits her father, anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber, as being her source of inspiration ("His field of science was a human one, and that’s really good luck for a novelist"). That inspiration is on full display here, with each chapter as detailed as the last.
To say they are stories may be disingenuous, because what it is, really, is a collection of fictional anthropological accounts of several worlds. In that respect, there is almost a profound detachment to the writing, which works well with the book's assumption that one visits the world as if a foreigner, a visitor.
I found myself most drawn to the accounts that feel closest to our world. In "Great Joy", one need not wait for the calendar to celebrate holidays, as every island is packaged differently, while the islands' natives are imprisoned for the Great Joy Corporation's profits. In "The Fliers of Gy", people who develop wings can choose to lead a life of flight or to clip their wings, the former risking death, the latter conformity. "The Royals of Hegn" deals with a population filled with only royalty save for one commoner family, whom they look to for entertainment—because, for them, struggle is a spectacle. "Seasons of the Ansarac" talks of a planet with very long Earth years, whose nomadic, migratory way of life is threatened by the entrance of industry.
My favorite entry has to be "The Island of the Immortals", which operates on the basic premise of dystopic stories: that immortality comes at a price. That idea is subverted here, showing how endless suffering results in lumps of ruin in one world, and yet priceless to another. The term "Blood diamond" here takes a very dark turn.
The frame story is by itself weak, and for all its examination of societal differences, it could have benefited from more interactions between the unnamed narrator and its society's members to highlight those very differences. Otherwise, it just imitates the clinical, and at times even exploitative, flair of scholarly writing. Regardless, the stories all have merit by their own right, a testament to the author's penchant for worldbuilding.
To say they are stories may be disingenuous, because what it is, really, is a collection of fictional anthropological accounts of several worlds. In that respect, there is almost a profound detachment to the writing, which works well with the book's assumption that one visits the world as if a foreigner, a visitor.
I found myself most drawn to the accounts that feel closest to our world. In "Great Joy", one need not wait for the calendar to celebrate holidays, as every island is packaged differently, while the islands' natives are imprisoned for the Great Joy Corporation's profits. In "The Fliers of Gy", people who develop wings can choose to lead a life of flight or to clip their wings, the former risking death, the latter conformity. "The Royals of Hegn" deals with a population filled with only royalty save for one commoner family, whom they look to for entertainment—because, for them, struggle is a spectacle. "Seasons of the Ansarac" talks of a planet with very long Earth years, whose nomadic, migratory way of life is threatened by the entrance of industry.
My favorite entry has to be "The Island of the Immortals", which operates on the basic premise of dystopic stories: that immortality comes at a price. That idea is subverted here, showing how endless suffering results in lumps of ruin in one world, and yet priceless to another. The term "Blood diamond" here takes a very dark turn.
The frame story is by itself weak, and for all its examination of societal differences, it could have benefited from more interactions between the unnamed narrator and its society's members to highlight those very differences. Otherwise, it just imitates the clinical, and at times even exploitative, flair of scholarly writing. Regardless, the stories all have merit by their own right, a testament to the author's penchant for worldbuilding.