Changing Planes by Ursula Le Guin
Dec. 30th, 2014 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
It was Sita Dulip who discovered, whilst stuck in an airport, unable to get anywhere, how to change planes – literally. By a mere kind of a twist and a slipping bend, easier to do than describe, she could go anywhere – be anywhere – because she was already between planes … and on the way back from her sister’s wedding, she missed her plane in Chicago and found herself in Choom.
Ursula Le Guin’s collection of 16 anthropologically-styled short stories hinge around the premise that people who find themselves stuck in airports are able to slip between dimensional planes. The first story SITA DULIP’S METHOD sets out the premise, with each of the following 15 stories taking place on a different plane and setting out aspects of its culture as experienced by other travellers or academics. It’s a fascinating collection with Le Guin using each of the worlds to make a point about this one and I enjoyed the combination of barbed acidity and satire that she deploys with an effortless sweep of her pen. This is the first Le Guin I’ve read in many years and it’s reminded me of how much I admired and loved her work and certainly encouraged me to check out more of her work.
Of the 15 stories, my favourite is THE ROYALS OF HEGN, which is biting satire on the nature of class and the part that each of the ruling class and working class play in sustaining and reinforcing the other. However, GREAT JOY runs it a very close second – another satire, it imagines what happens when one of the planes is effectively privatised by a wealthy US elite who form a corporation that turns the plane’s population into virtual slaves forced to work in artificially created lands dedicated to American holidays, e.g. one where it’s Christmas all year long. I also enjoyed THE FLIERS OF GY, which is a moving tale of a world filled with bird-like people but where only a small minority are cursed with the ability to fly and the thought-provoking THE ISLAND OF IMMORTALS, which is set in a plane where the people of one small island are blessed with immortality. Although there are no obvious duds within the collection, I was less moved by THE BUILDING, which looks at the activities of an oppressed minority on a plane – purely because it was so open to interpretation and SOCIAL DREAMING OF THE FRIN, which didn’t appeal because of its focus on dreaming and the nature of dreaming, which is a subject that’s never really appealed to me. This was just a personal thing though and I would honestly have no hesitation in recommending this to either fans of Le Guin or those who are new to her work.
The Verdict:
Ursula Le Guin’s collection of 16 anthropologically-styled short stories hinge around the premise that people who find themselves stuck in airports are able to slip between dimensional planes. The first story SITA DULIP’S METHOD sets out the premise, with each of the following 15 stories taking place on a different plane and setting out aspects of its culture as experienced by other travellers or academics. It’s a fascinating collection with Le Guin using each of the worlds to make a point about this one and I enjoyed the combination of barbed acidity and satire that she deploys with an effortless sweep of her pen. This is the first Le Guin I’ve read in many years and it’s reminded me of how much I admired and loved her work and certainly encouraged me to check out more of her work.
It was Sita Dulip who discovered, whilst stuck in an airport, unable to get anywhere, how to change planes – literally. By a mere kind of a twist and a slipping bend, easier to do than describe, she could go anywhere – be anywhere – because she was already between planes … and on the way back from her sister’s wedding, she missed her plane in Chicago and found herself in Choom.
Ursula Le Guin’s collection of 16 anthropologically-styled short stories hinge around the premise that people who find themselves stuck in airports are able to slip between dimensional planes. The first story SITA DULIP’S METHOD sets out the premise, with each of the following 15 stories taking place on a different plane and setting out aspects of its culture as experienced by other travellers or academics. It’s a fascinating collection with Le Guin using each of the worlds to make a point about this one and I enjoyed the combination of barbed acidity and satire that she deploys with an effortless sweep of her pen. This is the first Le Guin I’ve read in many years and it’s reminded me of how much I admired and loved her work and certainly encouraged me to check out more of her work.
Of the 15 stories, my favourite is THE ROYALS OF HEGN, which is biting satire on the nature of class and the part that each of the ruling class and working class play in sustaining and reinforcing the other. However, GREAT JOY runs it a very close second – another satire, it imagines what happens when one of the planes is effectively privatised by a wealthy US elite who form a corporation that turns the plane’s population into virtual slaves forced to work in artificially created lands dedicated to American holidays, e.g. one where it’s Christmas all year long. I also enjoyed THE FLIERS OF GY, which is a moving tale of a world filled with bird-like people but where only a small minority are cursed with the ability to fly and the thought-provoking THE ISLAND OF IMMORTALS, which is set in a plane where the people of one small island are blessed with immortality. Although there are no obvious duds within the collection, I was less moved by THE BUILDING, which looks at the activities of an oppressed minority on a plane – purely because it was so open to interpretation and SOCIAL DREAMING OF THE FRIN, which didn’t appeal because of its focus on dreaming and the nature of dreaming, which is a subject that’s never really appealed to me. This was just a personal thing though and I would honestly have no hesitation in recommending this to either fans of Le Guin or those who are new to her work.
The Verdict:
Ursula Le Guin’s collection of 16 anthropologically-styled short stories hinge around the premise that people who find themselves stuck in airports are able to slip between dimensional planes. The first story SITA DULIP’S METHOD sets out the premise, with each of the following 15 stories taking place on a different plane and setting out aspects of its culture as experienced by other travellers or academics. It’s a fascinating collection with Le Guin using each of the worlds to make a point about this one and I enjoyed the combination of barbed acidity and satire that she deploys with an effortless sweep of her pen. This is the first Le Guin I’ve read in many years and it’s reminded me of how much I admired and loved her work and certainly encouraged me to check out more of her work.
