Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Orion Pub Co (2004), Hardcover
Description
"All Le Guin's stories are...metaphors for the one human story; all her fantasy planets are this one. Le Guin is a quintessentially American writer, of the sort for whom the quest for the Peaceable Kingdom is ongoing." In this collection of short stories, Sita Dulip from Cincinnati finds a method of transcending the miserable experience of flying. A mere kind of twist and a slipping bend, easier to do than to describe, takes her not to Denver but to bizarre societies and cultures that sometimes mirror our own and sometimes open doors into the alien. Changing Planes is by turns funny, disturbing, and thought provoking.
Media reviews
Washington Post
Perhaps as a result, the book is marred in parts by signs of haste, bits of undigested spleen and even some uncharacteristic patches of cliché. ... Luckily, there is much in Changing Planes to make up for such lapses. Le Guin's intellectual fertility remains unmatched. Nearly every interplanary
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destination is a fully realized world, complete with language, nomenclature, landscape and social organization. And then, every so often, one comes across the ultimate seduction, a trademark Le Guin passage, perfect in every phrase and cadence, such as this description of the tenuous, cloudy plane of Zuehe ... Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member inkstained
This is a light read, but a good one. I highly recommend it for while traveling. Le Guin's writing here is consistent with what would be expected, but the darker themes she usually employs aren't as prominent in this novel. Indeed, the novel itself is hard to classify as such since it reads much
The point of the novel, in fact, seems to be rather thinly veiled commentary on modern society. Society in general is fun to comment on, and she gets fairly wild with some of the alternate worlds she introduces to us in this book. The tone remains throughout one of an anthropological, somewhat distant discussion and study of these fictional cultures. For those who enjoy this style of exploring cultures, this will be a delight. For those who find this style displeasing, I recommending picking up a book by a different author entirely.
As a whole, this is both an entertaining read, and a fun examination of how cultures work.
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more like a collection of short stories strung together by a narrator whose story doesn't seem to really be the point of the novel.The point of the novel, in fact, seems to be rather thinly veiled commentary on modern society. Society in general is fun to comment on, and she gets fairly wild with some of the alternate worlds she introduces to us in this book. The tone remains throughout one of an anthropological, somewhat distant discussion and study of these fictional cultures. For those who enjoy this style of exploring cultures, this will be a delight. For those who find this style displeasing, I recommending picking up a book by a different author entirely.
As a whole, this is both an entertaining read, and a fun examination of how cultures work.
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LibraryThing member reading_fox
8 odd short and light tales. Le Guin I feel doesn't like flying, particularly not the hassle involved with airports and making connections, and in this ever pressured environment who can blame her. These are tales of differen planes - places that can be reached when the desperation and indegestion
Populated with odd types living their lives as they have always done, and interacting with the travelling tourist through the Interplanetary Travel Agency. Vaguely dark, cycnical tales, but not particularly thought provoking. Despite finishing the book only yesterday I can only really remember that bird people featured in a couple, and that there was a fantastic library planet which had had a dark history.
Easy reading, enjoyable, weird but ultimately nothing special. Good for travelling!
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of the airport gets sufficently burdensome that anywhere else is better. Anywhere being the key point.Populated with odd types living their lives as they have always done, and interacting with the travelling tourist through the Interplanetary Travel Agency. Vaguely dark, cycnical tales, but not particularly thought provoking. Despite finishing the book only yesterday I can only really remember that bird people featured in a couple, and that there was a fantastic library planet which had had a dark history.
Easy reading, enjoyable, weird but ultimately nothing special. Good for travelling!
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LibraryThing member avogl
Ursula Le Guin is the queen of short stories. I am amazed how she created whole worlds/planes in such a short story. Complete with culture, traditions, language, these planes came to life in this book. It is an interesting concept of being able to travel to other planes as you wait in the airport
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between planes. Love the play on words. The plane where you have communal dreams was probably my favorite. But also the one where only a few citizens grew wings and could fly and that was a curse. The plane where you could never learn their language because it seemed to disappear as the citizens grew older. The plane that tried to charge for travel. A plane with two warring nations and the one squeezed out starting building a huge building for the other nation. These stories are great. Show Less
LibraryThing member deckla
Is there any greater master of speculative fiction than Ursula K. Le Guin? Here she uses the maddening experience of changing planes (read: sitting in airports post 9-11) as a perfect time to change planes (read: alternate levels of existence). Like an anthropologist in the field, she gives short
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reports on imagined societies that are so advanced as to be post-language and so primitive as to extend the Christmas shopping season year round and to stage battles with preordained outcomes. There are angel-like creatures with wings and devil-like creatures with hooves. Builders and birds, queens, placid people and immortal souls, and places like libraries and gardens and hotels and grog shops and streets that change direction as you traverse them--all are conjured in Le Guin's clear, unreliable, contradictory, inspirational, satirical voice. Whisper in my ear anytime at all, o great Le Guin! Show Less
LibraryThing member razjnev
A great collection of short stories describing the narrator's visits to alternate realities (planes) while stuck in airports waiting to change...um...planes. A triumph of the freedom of the mind even though the body may be bound to our own humble plane. These are individual stories, but they are
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bound together by this common theme, and it could be viewed as a fantasy travel book, a collection of sociological studies, or a biting satire on parts of our own culture. Show Less
LibraryThing member lunacat
When someone discovers how to 'change planes' while waiting in an airport for a flight, a whole universe of possibilities is opened up. This tells the experiences of some of the planechangers, the planes (or planets) they visit and the societies and cultures they find.
From the satirical tale of The
It is difficult to pick a favourite chapter out of this (each chapter tells of a different world), I have found the place I would most love to sit and read: The Library Gardens of Mahigul.
"In spring, during the mild steady rains, big awnings are stretched from one library arcade to the next, so that you can still sit outdoors, hearing the soft drumming on the canvas overhead, looking up from your reading to see the trees and the pale sky beyond the awning."
and
"In winter it's often foggy, not a cold fog but a mist through which and in which the sunlight is always warmly palpable, like the colour in a milk opal. The fog softens the sloping lawns and the high, dark trees, bringing them closer, into a quiet, mysterious intimacy."
I have the feeling I will read these stories again and again and again. The power they provide, the thought they provoke and the rush of emotions they produce are extraordinary. And all done in such a gentle way that you don't realise you're being touched until you take a breath at the end of each one.
I would highly recommend this. I never expected it to be as good as it is, and I am surprised I had never heard of it before.
4.5 out of 5
From the satirical tale of The
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Holiday Plane, where islands have been converted to cater for different holidays (such as Christmas with the villages of Noel, O Little Town etc), to the amusingly cynical (Hegn, where everyone is royalty apart from a small group of commoners), these stories and accounts are sometimes illuminating, disturbing, sad and peaceful all at the same time.It is difficult to pick a favourite chapter out of this (each chapter tells of a different world), I have found the place I would most love to sit and read: The Library Gardens of Mahigul.
"In spring, during the mild steady rains, big awnings are stretched from one library arcade to the next, so that you can still sit outdoors, hearing the soft drumming on the canvas overhead, looking up from your reading to see the trees and the pale sky beyond the awning."
and
"In winter it's often foggy, not a cold fog but a mist through which and in which the sunlight is always warmly palpable, like the colour in a milk opal. The fog softens the sloping lawns and the high, dark trees, bringing them closer, into a quiet, mysterious intimacy."
I have the feeling I will read these stories again and again and again. The power they provide, the thought they provoke and the rush of emotions they produce are extraordinary. And all done in such a gentle way that you don't realise you're being touched until you take a breath at the end of each one.
I would highly recommend this. I never expected it to be as good as it is, and I am surprised I had never heard of it before.
4.5 out of 5
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LibraryThing member SimoneA
An enjoyable collection of stories, revolving around the principle that one can change between different worlds (planes) at airports. Several worlds are introduced, written about as if they are travel reports. Some of the stories were quite impressive, others not so interesting, partly because of
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the 'academic' writing style. Changing planes is a nice in-between book (for travelling by airplane). Show Less
LibraryThing member nmele
This book has been on my to-read list since it first was published, and why it took me so long to find a copy and read, I don't know. I quite enjoyed the underlying conceit, a play on the words of the title, but I enjoyed more the narrator's descriptions and adventures in a variety of planes. Le
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Guin manages to pack a lot of entertainment and some deep critiques into the short stories that make up this book. Show Less
LibraryThing member WildMaggie
The framing device for these connected short stories from sci-fi/fantasy legend Ursula Leguin is that bored air travelers can slip out of airport lounges into alternative worlds or planes. So, while travelers are waiting to change planes, they can take little side trips by changing planes. The
Reading Changing Places is like getting a series of letters from a traveling friend with newsy reports of her latest stops. But these are not your usual colorful locals and odd customs. The narrator meets people who are mostly human (and part plants and animals), entire populations who migrate north to breed and return south when their young are grown, people compelled to build stone structures that no one uses, people cursed with flight where flyers are considered deformed, and others—each more outlandish than the last.
The collection showcases LeGuin’s world-building talent. Sixteen stories each present a unique world with one or more species of cool, outrageous, thought provoking, or weird sentient beings. It’s good these various being we meet are interesting because not much actually happens in any of the stories. This gives the collection something of a contemplative mood, like a series of miniature studies in extraterrestrial sociology.
So, for LeGuin’s fans, this collection offers two things she does best: build worlds and examine their social structures. Few writers come up with so many and so varied new ways to imagine life. And few make it interesting enough you want to keep turning the pages to see what the next plane change will bring.
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collection is one traveler’s accounts of her visits to alternative planes. Reading Changing Places is like getting a series of letters from a traveling friend with newsy reports of her latest stops. But these are not your usual colorful locals and odd customs. The narrator meets people who are mostly human (and part plants and animals), entire populations who migrate north to breed and return south when their young are grown, people compelled to build stone structures that no one uses, people cursed with flight where flyers are considered deformed, and others—each more outlandish than the last.
The collection showcases LeGuin’s world-building talent. Sixteen stories each present a unique world with one or more species of cool, outrageous, thought provoking, or weird sentient beings. It’s good these various being we meet are interesting because not much actually happens in any of the stories. This gives the collection something of a contemplative mood, like a series of miniature studies in extraterrestrial sociology.
So, for LeGuin’s fans, this collection offers two things she does best: build worlds and examine their social structures. Few writers come up with so many and so varied new ways to imagine life. And few make it interesting enough you want to keep turning the pages to see what the next plane change will bring.
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LibraryThing member raschneid
A fun mixture of satire and worldbuilding. Very Gulliver's Travels, really, except with a likable narrator!
LibraryThing member pennyshima
Several years ago while my husband experienced a frustrating flight for a business trip, I acquired travel reading at a local bookstore. The stories in this collection are all different yet tied together through travel, uncovering history and custom, and commentary. Each story is self-contained
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enough in that the book can be set aside for years when other covers distract the reader. A few stories required a little more thought to follow than I could handle at bedtime (when I tend to read short stories), but I do not begrudge them. Le Guin has built planes I long to visit. Show Less
LibraryThing member eduscapes
Interesting look at other worlds.
LibraryThing member thioviolight
This is my first book by Ursula K. Le Guin, and I'm very pleased at this introduction. I'd found this in a bargain stack, so it's double the luck! Changing Planes is a collection of interconnected stories about interplanary travel. It is quite a fascinating concept, and sounds wonderful to
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experience! The planes and people in these pieces may be very different or similar to ours, but each has something to say about humans and our society. A witty and clever observation! Show Less
LibraryThing member tronella
After all those crime books, I thought it was about time for some fantasy! This is a collection of short stories set in parallel planes of existence (yes, the title is some sort of pun). The introduction says that a method for travelling to other worlds was discovered, but it only works if you're
Each story is set in another world, and they do somehow have the air of travel writing about them. I enjoyed all of the stories here, but I would have liked to see some trips to more high-technology worlds - the majority of them were set in peaceful, less technologically developed planes, or worlds that have reverted after some kind of event turned them away from that sort of thing. Still, on the whole a very good read.
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in an airport. So when people are stuck waiting for a delayed plane or missed transfer, they can go travelling for a while and not miss much time here.Each story is set in another world, and they do somehow have the air of travel writing about them. I enjoyed all of the stories here, but I would have liked to see some trips to more high-technology worlds - the majority of them were set in peaceful, less technologically developed planes, or worlds that have reverted after some kind of event turned them away from that sort of thing. Still, on the whole a very good read.
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LibraryThing member bordercollie
"Confusions of Uni" was my favorite story in this collection about visits to other planes. They are accessed from the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floors of airport terminals, and a two-day trip takes only minutes in our time.
LibraryThing member TheDivineOomba
I love this book - its a collection of short stories written almost as an allegory or fable feel to them, each story is about a different plane, and that you can only get to these plains by waiting at airport terminals.
LibraryThing member Brainannex
The first story was the best one, a wonderful little thought experiment. The rest of the stories are like little anthropological sketches and have moments of great writing but short stories aren't my favorite form.
LibraryThing member jobbi
A neat and amusing collection of fantasy short stories. Quite light, but enjoyable nonetheless.
LibraryThing member amaraduende
Short stories - some more like little snapshots, really - set in different planes or dimensions... some from a traveler from our plane's point of view.
LibraryThing member SusanBraxton
A travelogue of fifteen worlds, haunting or humorous (or both). The bittersweet Seasons of the Ansarac was my favorite, but there is much to savor. If you have commitment issues, this is great way to sample Le Guin. Deceptively heavy.
LibraryThing member iansales
There’s a cunning pun in that title there. It goes like this: a person waiting one day in an airport to catch a connecting flight accidentally discovered a way to visiting other worlds, or, as Le Guin has it in this collection, other planes. Get it? Aeroplanes and alternate universes/planes. And
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hence this collection of, well, fables, all based on other planes visited by a narrator from Earth. I am not a big fan, I must admit, of fables, though I am certainly a fan of Le Guin’s fiction. So while I can appreciate the art and cleverness with which Changing Planes is put together, I didn’t much enjoy the stories. Meh. Show Less
LibraryThing member librarybrandy
LeGuin is a fantastic writer, most notably for her ability to create such a realistic world-setting that readers just fall right into it each time they revisit that place. What she's doing in this collection is exactly that--building world settings that feel so real it's sometimes hard to believe
Unfortunately, that's all that's in this book: world settings. There are some pieces with narrative, almost-stories in them; those pieces tend to be the ones originally published in various magazines or other anthologies. Those pieces stand alone, and stand out. The other pieces in this book, though, read like anthropological reports (I know, that's what they're meant to be), but to this reader felt more like the notes that have been kicking around LeGuin's desk--odds and ends she knows she won't have time to explore fully or use in full-length books (or even develop into short stories). Write them up in a creative way, stick 15 of them together, and voila, you have a book you can release to the public.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading these snippets of worlds, some of which I'd love to see further fleshed-out and used. But reading them all together is a challenge: after 4 or 5, I was pretty much done, and ready to see something a little more robust. Three stars is low for this, but four seems high.
I'm sorry, Ursula. I swear I've loved most of your other books.
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they're science fiction.Unfortunately, that's all that's in this book: world settings. There are some pieces with narrative, almost-stories in them; those pieces tend to be the ones originally published in various magazines or other anthologies. Those pieces stand alone, and stand out. The other pieces in this book, though, read like anthropological reports (I know, that's what they're meant to be), but to this reader felt more like the notes that have been kicking around LeGuin's desk--odds and ends she knows she won't have time to explore fully or use in full-length books (or even develop into short stories). Write them up in a creative way, stick 15 of them together, and voila, you have a book you can release to the public.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading these snippets of worlds, some of which I'd love to see further fleshed-out and used. But reading them all together is a challenge: after 4 or 5, I was pretty much done, and ready to see something a little more robust. Three stars is low for this, but four seems high.
I'm sorry, Ursula. I swear I've loved most of your other books.
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LibraryThing member grandpahobo
The stories are very clever and use alternative locations (planets, dimensions?) to illustrate the various failures of human society throughout its history.
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
This is a collection of short pieces, not even so much stories as observations on various places, assembled by Ursula Le Guin. The premise is that people can open up their minds to "changing planes"; the method for doing so is different on every plane, but in our plane, it has to be done while
The book reminds me of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and that's surely on purpose; Le Guin had a fascination for that kind of fictional travelogue, as she translated a couple of them into English. The chapters are fairly different: some are full-fledged short stories about a trip taken by the narrator, some are explications of other societies and cultures, some are stories from those other planes. Most, of course, reflect back on our world, depicting other ways of being in the world and thus causing us to reflect on ours. My favorite along those lines was "Seasons of the Ansarac," about a plane where the inhabitants are migratory, and only engage in sex while in the north; in the south, they have no sex, no romance. It asks us to consider why our society is organized the way it is, and how it might be different; like many stories in the book, it also contains some brief moments of cultural imperialism. "The Royals of Hegn" is a good satire on our interest in royalty; it takes place on a plane where everyone is royalty except for a couple commoners that the royals are totally obsessed with. (Though like a couple stories in the book, it uses rape as a sort of tossed-off joke in a way that surprised me. I wonder if that would have been true if I had read it in 2003; I think our mores around this have shifted.) I also enjoyed the satire of "Great Joy," about a group of businessmen who remake another plane as a series of holiday-themed vacation sites: Christmas Island, Easter Island, Fourth (of July) Island, and so on.
Some of the sociological ones that were less satirical I found less interesting, but I did particularly like "The Building," a weird story about two societies on one plane, where the members of one continuously work on a building with no clear purpose or structure, and "The Fliers of Gy," about a plane where the occasional inhabitant is born who can fly—and is thus doomed some day to die when their wings spontaneously give out. Only one story did I not enjoy at all, "Woeful Tales from Mahigul," which relates a series of stories from one of the other planes, which I found difficult to find anything interesting in.
At her best, though, as always, Le Guin makes us imagine other worlds and reimagine ourselves. My favorite of these stories was "The Silence of the Asonu," which is about a plane where people gradually cease speaking as they grow older, and the visitors from other planes who desperately try to find meaning in the few words they do speak.
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literally "changing planes"—you can only do it while waiting for a connecting flight in an airport! (Incidentally, the flap writer seems to think the stories are narrated by Sita Dulip, the Cincinnati(!) woman who invented the method, but that's clearly not the case; the narrator is a friend of hers.) The opening story lays out the basics of the method and is probably the funniest thing I've ever read by Le Guin, an enjoyable satire on the indignities of air travel.The book reminds me of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, and that's surely on purpose; Le Guin had a fascination for that kind of fictional travelogue, as she translated a couple of them into English. The chapters are fairly different: some are full-fledged short stories about a trip taken by the narrator, some are explications of other societies and cultures, some are stories from those other planes. Most, of course, reflect back on our world, depicting other ways of being in the world and thus causing us to reflect on ours. My favorite along those lines was "Seasons of the Ansarac," about a plane where the inhabitants are migratory, and only engage in sex while in the north; in the south, they have no sex, no romance. It asks us to consider why our society is organized the way it is, and how it might be different; like many stories in the book, it also contains some brief moments of cultural imperialism. "The Royals of Hegn" is a good satire on our interest in royalty; it takes place on a plane where everyone is royalty except for a couple commoners that the royals are totally obsessed with. (Though like a couple stories in the book, it uses rape as a sort of tossed-off joke in a way that surprised me. I wonder if that would have been true if I had read it in 2003; I think our mores around this have shifted.) I also enjoyed the satire of "Great Joy," about a group of businessmen who remake another plane as a series of holiday-themed vacation sites: Christmas Island, Easter Island, Fourth (of July) Island, and so on.
Some of the sociological ones that were less satirical I found less interesting, but I did particularly like "The Building," a weird story about two societies on one plane, where the members of one continuously work on a building with no clear purpose or structure, and "The Fliers of Gy," about a plane where the occasional inhabitant is born who can fly—and is thus doomed some day to die when their wings spontaneously give out. Only one story did I not enjoy at all, "Woeful Tales from Mahigul," which relates a series of stories from one of the other planes, which I found difficult to find anything interesting in.
At her best, though, as always, Le Guin makes us imagine other worlds and reimagine ourselves. My favorite of these stories was "The Silence of the Asonu," which is about a plane where people gradually cease speaking as they grow older, and the visitors from other planes who desperately try to find meaning in the few words they do speak.
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LibraryThing member electrascaife
A series of vignettes all based on the premise, set out in the first chapter, that inter-planal travel is possible when you're stuck in the liminal time and space of waiting in the airport for a connecting flight. Each subsequent chapter, then, is either a story set in one of the planes or a sort
Does what sci-fi does: uses distant times and places to lightly disguise a close examination of our own culture and times. It's a clever idea cleverly carried out, but the cleverness is somewhat lost on me because I can't ever manage to enjoy short story collections, which is very much how this reads. So take my rating with a large pinch of salt - you may very well enjoy it a lot more than I did.
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of ethnography of the people/species who live there.Does what sci-fi does: uses distant times and places to lightly disguise a close examination of our own culture and times. It's a clever idea cleverly carried out, but the cleverness is somewhat lost on me because I can't ever manage to enjoy short story collections, which is very much how this reads. So take my rating with a large pinch of salt - you may very well enjoy it a lot more than I did.
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Awards
Locus Award (Finalist — Collection — 2004)
Mythopoeic Awards (Finalist — Adult Literature — 2004)
Italia Award (Finalist — 2006)
Language
Original publication date
2003-07 (Collection)
2003
Physical description
224 p.; 7.87 inches
ISBN
0575075643 / 9780575075641