Changing Planes - (Harper Perennial Olive Editions) by Ursula K Le Guin (Paperback)

About the Book

Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Stories
A New York Times Notable Book

In these "vivid, entertaining, philosophical dispatches" (San Francisco Chronicle), literary legend Ursula Le Guin weaves together influences as wide-reaching as Borges, The Little Prince, and Gulliver's Travels to examine feminism, tyranny, mortality and immortality, art, and the meaning--and mystery--of being human.

Book Synopsis

Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Story - A New York Times Notable Book

"A fantastical travel guide, reminiscent of Gulliver's Travels, in which the narrator visits fifteen planes and describes the people, language and customs with the eye of an anthropologist and the humor of a satirist." --USA Today

In these classic "vivid, entertaining, philosophical dispatches" (San Francisco Chronicle), literary legend Ursula K. Le Guin weaves together influences as wide-reaching as Borges, The Little Prince, and Gulliver's Travels to examine feminism, tyranny, mortality and immortality, art, and the meaning--and mystery--of being human.

Sita Dulip has missed her flight out of Chicago. But instead of listening to garbled announcements in the airport, she's found a method of bypassing the crowds at the desks, a way to skip the nasty lunch, the whimpering children and punitive parents, and the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floor: she changes planes.

Changing planes--not airplanes, of course, but entire planes of existence--enables Sita to visit societies not found on Earth in a series of unforgettable allegorical tales. As "Sita Dulip's Method" spreads, the narrator and her acquaintances encounter cultures where the babble of children fades over time into the silence of adults; where whole towns exist solely for holiday shopping; where personalities are ruled by rage; where genetic experiments produce less than desirable results. With "the eye of an anthropologist and the humor of a satirist" (USA Today), Le Guin takes readers on a truly universal tour in this short story collection, showing through the foreign and alien indelible truths about our own human society.

Review Quotes

"Le Guin is a splendid short story writer. [Her] fiction, like Borges's, finds its life in the interstices between the borders of speculative fiction and realism." - San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"The people, places and emotions in Le Guin's stories are typically strange, but her careful, sudden turns toward the familiar. . . seem like revelations of what's really important or fascinating about human life." - Salon

"An accomplished stylist. . . . Even Le Guin's overtly cautionary tales have a delicacy that disarms resistance. Outstanding among these are the almost unbearably poignant 'Fliers of Gy' and 'The Island of the Immortals, ' which break new ground in exploring the dangers of getting what you wish for." - New York Times Book Review

"Vivid, entertaining, philosophical dispatches." - San Francisco Chronicle

"They say God is in the details, but in Le Guin's case, genius is in the details. . . . [Her] writing transports us to other worlds. . . . Pure imagination unbound." - Oregonian

"Le Guin, as always, treats fantasyland with the utmost matter-of-factness. . . . Arresting." - Boston Sunday Globe

"A welcome collection for the many fans of speculative fiction's multiple-award-winning grande dame." - Seattle Times

"Le Guin describes compellingly the joy of flying, and also the reasons to remain earthbound" - Minneapolis Star Tribune

About the Author

URSULA K. LE GUIN was born in Berkeley, California, in 1929, and died in Portland, Oregon, in 2018. She published over sixty books of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children's literature, and translation. She was the recipient of a National Book Award, six Hugo and five Nebula awards, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.