The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories, Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands

The Unreal and the Real #2

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Outer Space, Inner Lands includes many of the best known Ursula K. Le Guin nonrealistic stories (such as "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," "Semley’s Necklace," and "She Unnames Them") which have shaped the way many readers see the world. She gives voice to the voiceless, hope to the outsider, and speaks truth to power—all the time maintaining her independence and sense of humor.

Companion volume Where on Earth explores Le Guin's satirical, risky, political and experimental earthbound stories. Both volumes include new introductions by the author.

This volume includes the following stories:

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1973)
Semley’s Necklace (1964, 1975, Hainish Cycle)
Nine Lives (1969, 1997)
Mazes (1975, 2003)
The First Contact with the Gorgonids (1991)
The Shobies’ Story (1990, Hainish Cycle)
Betrayals (1994, Hainish Cycle)
The Matter of Seggri (1994, Hainish Cycle)
Solitude (1994, Hainish Cycle)
The Wild Girls (1994)
The Fliers of Gy (2000)
The Silence of the Asonu (2000)
The Ascent of the North Face (1983)
The Author of the Acacia Seeds (1974)
The Wife’s Story (1982)
The Rule of Names (1964, Earthsea)
Small Change (1981)
The Poacher (1992)
Sur (1982)
She Unnames Them (1985)
*Jar of Water (2014) [ * "Jar of Water" does not appear in the 2012 Small Beer Press edition(s) of this work, but was added to the combined volume later released by Saga Press / Simon and Schuster.]

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Audiobook, Anthologies

330 pages, Hardcover

First published November 20, 2012

About the author

Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon.

She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

The great Ursula K. Le Guin is by far my favorite author. Her depth of insight and breadth of knowledge and profound moral courage and deep compassion and abiding wisdom and abundant, wry humor infuse everything I’ve read of hers. These stories are no exception. They moved me, entertained me, enraptured me, stirred me, upset me, challenged my way of seeing and thinking, and left me in awe of her power to craft sentences and bring her worlds and characters and ideas to vibrant, subtle, and wholly original life. I am very glad she was incredibly prolific, and that there are still many other stories and novels of hers I haven’t read.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ursula Le Guin is one of my favourite authors. I had picked this up a few years ago but only recently read this.

I'm usually obsessively reading the news but it depresses me so much lately I've started reading books again. Should I thank the president-elect for this? Anyhow as always Ms. Le Guin's writing did not fail to sooth. I had read a few of the stories in this collection before, some of them more than once. Some of the stories I had not yet encountered and they were wonderful. It was like being at a great party with old friends and new acquaintances. Some of the stories were funny, some puzzling (I'm still not exactly sure what "Churtening" is to be honest). Her prose is spare and elegant...her worlds are wonderful.

Her father was an anthropologist and the anthropological approach shows in her writing. She uses her writing to examine cultures...she looks at gender politics...environmental disasters...the effects of slavery...the aftermath of war...the paradoxes created by faster than light space travel. She doesn't write technically the way Neal Stephenson does, there are no mathy bits to be skimmed over by yours truly. She writes about people. Often they are old but not always...as I am aging rapidly and not particularly gracefully I appreciate this. Why should young people have all of the stories.

For me stand-outs in this collection are as follows: "The Matter of Seggri", "Solitude", and "The Poacher". Of the older stories I particularly love "Semley's Necklace" and "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas". I also loved "First Contact With the Gorgonids" and "The Ascent of the North Face" because as always they made me laugh and right now I need laughter.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Unreal and the Real, Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands: Brilliant SF tales of human anthropology
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
This is essential reading (or listening) for all fans of SF who want to see why Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the giants of the SF/fantasy field. Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands contains a host of impressive stories, both her famous award-winners and lesser-known gems. All of them are intelligent, thought-provoking, understated, and beautifully written. It’s hard to underestimate the influence she has had on the genre, fans, and how much respect she has gained in the greater literary world. I can’t wait to see the upcoming documentary about her life and legacy being produced by Arwen Curry called Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin scheduled for completion by 2017.

As we journey through the various imaginary worlds she weaves, many set in her shared far-future Hainish universe, what becomes clear is that Le Guin is an anthropologist at heart, which is hardly surprising considering both her parents were well-known anthropologists: Alfred Kroeber, a renowned Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and his wife Theodora Kroeber, both of whom did pioneering work on California native American tribes, including the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe, named Ishi.

The influence of anthropology, sociology, psychology, folklore and linguistics in Le Guin’s stories is pervasive, as well as tremendous writing skills that make her prose and stories seem effortless and timeless. While many SF authors use aliens as proxies for various human behaviors and cultures, Le Guin does something very different.

In her Hainish universe, humanity arose on the planet Hain and seeded the stars with numerous human colonies (including Terra), but after this League of Worlds collapsed, travel among these worlds ceased and many human worlds lost track of this galactic civilization and their own origins. This allows Le Guin to explore a limitless number of human societies that are frequently at a primitive level of technology, have developed unusual social structures, and in some cases have been modified dramatically via genetic engineering (such as the androgynous characters of The Left Hand of Darkness).

Le Guin’s stories are mainly focused on humanity in a myriad range of diverse societies and cultures. She dispenses with the easy metaphor of “aliens” to show the alienness of all human cultures including our own. The behaviors of these different humans is often bizarre, unexpected, disturbing, and yet familiar. One of her favorite literary tricks is to lull readers into false complacency with a seemingly-familiar setting before suddenly turning things on their head midway or at the end, exposing all the cultural biases and assumptions we bring to our reading experiences, like “Mazes”, “The Author of the Acacia Seeds”, and “The Wife’s Story”. This is particularly the case for gender biases and behaviors, which she explored brilliantly at full-length in The Left Hand of Darkness, but also with great effect in “The Matter of Seggri” and “The Wild Girls”.

Highlights in this collection are:

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1974, Hugo Award for Best Short Story): More of a parable than a story, a thought-experiment about the ethics of the greater good of an entire city vs. the suffering of a single child. Is it okay for a child to suffer, if an entire city of people can live rich and fulfilling lives? I understand this story is used in college classes and it is certainly well-suited to generating healthy debates.

Semley’s Necklace (1964; initially “The Dowry of the Angyar”): The first story set in her Hainish universe, and tells the folklore story of Semley, a high-born woman on the planet Fomalhaut, who enters the underworld in search of a valuable family heirloom that has disappeared long ago. She makes contact with a representative of the Ekumen and gets her wish, but at a heavy cost. This story introduces many of the anthropological themes of her Hainish stories, with a strong mythic fantasy tone.

Nine Lives (1968, Nebula Nominee for Best Novelette): A story about identity, explored by contrasting the friendship of two individual scientists in a remote outpost with a ten-clone, a group of 10 men and women cloned from the same man, John Chow, sent to assist. They seem to be more efficient, self-contained, and mentally stable than the two men, until a crisis situation exposes their weaknesses.

The Shobies’ Story (1990, Nebula Nominee for Best Novelette): This is a fairly challenging story about a diverse crew from the Ekumen group of worlds that suffer the psychological stresses of faster-than-light travel. Using a process called transilience, they must establish a shared reality through story-telling in order to power the ship. Given all their different cultural beliefs and biases, this proves quite challenging. The concept of relativity is explored in very literal terms.

Betrayals (1994): This story is a part of a connected series of stories set in the twin worlds of Werel and Yeowe in the Hainish universe (collected in Four Ways to Forgiveness). It’s the meeting of two people - a retired teacher named Yoss and an exiled leader named Abberkam, whose divergent pasts and beliefs are forced into contact in a desolate place.

The Matter of Seggri (1994, Hugo and Nebula nominee for Best Novelette, James Tiptree Award Winner): This for me was the highlight of this collection. It is a brilliantly developed study of a society in which women are dominant in the economy, politics, education, and all practical professions. That leaves the men with just two roles, isolated in their castles - sports and breeding (siring children and serving as sex workers). In fact, women pay them for their services. While this may seem at first like an enviable position for men, Le Guin meticulously shows us their utter powerlessness. They are reduced to prized breeders and are given no other outlets or means of self-fulfillment.

Switching around familiar gender roles forces the reader to confront all the biases and rigid social barriers that form the basis for men and women’s roles in societies throughout human history, and brings home just how soul-crushing a position women have been frequently subjected to, even to this day and age. In particular, the cruel behavior towards men who are not prized at breeders parallels the intolerant treatment of women who cannot bear children. Towards the end of the story, we also see the vicious in-fighting among the men themselves. There is even the equivalent of an Equal Rights Movement, and it is bittersweet to see the men struggle to gain respect even after they are granted the right to higher education and other roles in society. I think this story is really an eye opener for younger readers in the West who have benefitted from far greater sexual equality than prior generations.

Solitude (1995, Nebula Award for Best Novelette): This is a deeply anthropological study of an female Observer who discovers her only means to study an isolated human society that maintains a strict code of men and women not mingling in adulthood is to use her own children to infiltrate their inner ranks and learn their social practices from within. What they discover is a harsh legacy of rampant overpopulation that led to a collapse in civilization and a warped social response.

Women form aunt rings where they share stories and pass on knowledge. However, they otherwise do not speak to each other. This society is devoted mainly to silence and the development of the soul. The men face their own form of solitude - they spend their teenage years in harsh boy groups in which the strongest bully and sometimes kills the weaker members. For those that survive to adulthood, their fate is to live a hermetic existence in the forest, only being visited by women for child-bearing purposes.

The most powerful part of the story is what happens after the mother takes her children away from these societies in order to gather the information they have learned from their experiences. The son is cooperative but the daughter is extremely resistant and desperately wants to return to her aunt ring and the cultivation of her soul. The conflict in values between mother and daughter is profound, and the difficult position of children bridging vastly divergent cultures is something I have seen first-hand.

The Wild Girls (2003, Hugo Award for Best Novelette): This story also shows the strong
anthropological influence of Le Guin’s upbringing. Here we see a practice that is not so unusual in more primitive tribal societies - in this case invading the Dirt people’s tribes and stealing away girls to provide new blood to the Crown people of Sky City. This story is filled with contrasts - the ruthless behavior of the men as they slaughter older people and take only the girls they want, and their fierce protectiveness of the girls as spoils of war. The gender roles of the society are sharply delineated, as are the gaps between the Dirt people and Crown people. The themes of formal slavery (Dirt people) and effective slavery (wives) are also prevalent. This is a grim story with a tragic ending.

The Flyers of Gy (2000): This story reads like a field report about the Gy people, among whom a small minority develop functioning wings at adulthood. However, this is frequently viewed as a curse rather than a gift, and we are shown a myriad of brutal and repressive responses to this trait in various communities. Often the flyers are stoned to death or killed in even more perverse ways. Even when they are not immediately killed, their position in society is strictly proscribed, and the story ends with an interview with a lawyer who has valiantly overcome his “handicap” to be a productive member of society. This is a clear parable of discrimination against those who are different, and how they cope.

The Silence of the Asonu (1998): Here we have a mysterious society that is probably unlikely, but intriguing as a concept. Imagine a society that voluntarily chooses silence after a normal childhood. And yet not a grim silence, but within a well-adjusted and caring social structure, but lacking in both verbal and non-verbal communication. In keeping with religious ascetics, their silence could be a form of spiritual wisdom. Or perhaps just a means of minimizing social conflict. Other people are fascinated by the Asonu, leading to a thriving tourist trade. Some go so far as to kidnap an Asonu child and try to force them to reveal their “secret wisdom”. We are left to draw our own conclusions.

The Author of the Acacia Seeds (1974): Here is a little treat about therolinguistics, the study of animal languages. Written in academic journal style, it is both humorous and completely serious. It reminded me in some ways of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris in its discussion of Solaristics, the study of a possibly sentient ocean by generations of academics. Only someone intimately familiar with academic disciplines could create a story so strange and yet totally convincing.

The article asks “What if art is not communicative? If a non-communicative, vegetative art exists, we must rethink the very elements of our science, and learn a whole new set of techniques. But the problem was far greater. The art he sought, if it exists, is a non-communicative art: and probably a non-kinetic one. It is possible that Time, the essential element, matrix, and measure of all known animal art, does not enter into vegetable art at all. The plants may use the meter of eternity. We do not know.”

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Overall this volume is amazing. I read some stories before but re-reading them was just as good as first time and those that I didn't where amazing.

There are some that are OK or "just" good but there are few that deserve more than 5 stars so it balances out.

[Kevin (the Conspiracy is Capitalism) · Rating 3 out of 5]

--The better half (Volume One: Where on Earth was a miss for me) with a higher hit rate (6-out-of-20) and greater impression on the hits:

1) The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: a classic!
2) Mazes: a favorite.
3) “The First Contact With the Gorgonids”: a chortle.
4) “The Wife’s Story”: a trick and a treat.
5) “The Rule of Names”: a parody for Hobbit fans.
6) “The Poacher”: a tale more enchanting to me than A Wizard of Earthsea, which I failed to make much progress in after numerous attempts.

[Lost Planet Airman · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting collection of Ms. Le Guin's works; as the title indicates, "selected short stories".

This review marks the completion of Volume Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands with some interesting side journeys for me. From what I can determine, there are two major editions of this work. First, the two volumes were originally published as two books in 2012 by Small Beer Press. An audio version was cut, and I listened to the stories in this way. Then, in 2016 or 2017, Saga Press combined the volumes into one book and added the 2014 story "Jar of Water" (which is excellent, by the way). I skipped over some stories that I had read previously in other collections (which is not a lot!).

Here's a brief review of the collection:
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1973)  -  A fable in the Borges tradition with "a long and happy career of being used by teachers to upset students and make them argue fiercely about morality."
Semley’s Necklace (1964, 1975, Hainish Cycle)  -  Norse fantasy with spaceships and an alien planet. Read it previously.
Nine Lives (1969, 1997)  -  solid SF, almost Asimovian
Mazes (1975, 2003)  -  a touching first-contact-gone-wrong story.
The First Contact with the Gorgonids (1991)  -  see above, but it is also the tale of Mrs. Jerry Dubree.
The Shobies’ Story (1990, Hainish Cycle)  -  The next several Hainish stories speak for them selves, or don't.
Betrayals (1994, Hainish Cycle)
The Matter of Seggri (1994, Hainish Cycle)
Solitude (1994, Hainish Cycle)
The Wild Girls (1994)  -  starts slow, builds to a good commentary on human nature
The Fliers of Gy (2000)  -  from Changing Planes, brief satire
The Silence of the Asonu (2000)  -  ditto.
The Ascent of the North Face (1983)  -  short and stands on its own merit
The Author of the Acacia Seeds (1974)  -  odd discussion of an odd future science of the languages of animals
The Wife’s Story (1982)  -  "[a] werewolf story, only backwards".
The Rule of Names (1964, Earthsea)  -  I had forgotten that I had read this before; it might be incorporated into one of the Earthsea novels but definitely a cautionary tale of many facets.
Small Change (1981)  -  "[a] ghost story, sort of"
The Poacher (1992)  -  an interesting riff on Sleeping Beauty
Sur (1982)  -  one of Ms. Le Guin's favorites, on a hidden expedition to the South Pole
She Unnames Them (1985)  -  a fantasy vignette of 3 pages.
Jar of Water (2014)   -  Pure Arabian Nights fantasy with an ambiguous theme and an unambiguous moral.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not realize this was a two volume affair until I got home and looked closer at the cover. Volume Two is the Outer Space half of the volume, although a few of the stories do occur on Earth, including a beautiful one about the languages of animals, plants, and possibly the earth itself.

I won't go through the stories individually, but I will say that each one is designed to blow your mind. In her introduction Le Guin says she intends to give a voice to the voiceless, and that is what she does throughout this volume. When you start a story, you have certain assumptions about who the narrator is, what he/she has for motivation, etc. Le Guin turns these assumptions on their ear every time, especially in the beautifully sad "The Wife's Story." She is a well-known feminist who uses intersectionality in her work in ways that most feminists don't even think about.

I think the power of her writing is best displayed in "The Matter of Seggri," which tells the story of a planet where the roles of men and women as we know them are inverted, and then some. Men, who are far less than 50% of the population on Seggri, are kept sequestered in castles, where they play sports and compete in dancing and other physical activities until they are deployed to the "fuckeries" (brothels, and I can't imagine Le Guin wasn't laughing her face off when she came up with that) for women's pleasure and procreation. I am an ardent feminist who does a lot of reading in the field, and I am constantly aware of how the patriarchy undercuts women to this day. But I still was shocked by the treatment of the men in this story, as they rebelled against the system, started entering universities, and tried to love women. Le Guin has an uncanny ability to suck you into her narrative so deeply, you forget where you started.

"Get back in the fuckeries where you belong!" That is just hilarious and awful at the same time. Awflarious.

[Jemppu · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Neither of us enjoyed the funeral at all."

Fascinating collection with Le Guin's usual clarity and sophisticated wit. There were some slightly lesser ones in the mix - as collections are to do -, but the ones that shone, shone bright enough to eclipse them all.

Personal favorites: "Solitude", and the pièce de résistance, "She Unnames Them".

_______________
More immediate impressions in the reading updates below.

[Val]

It took me a while to finish this book, so I guess this mix of short stories was not really my thing. Some stories were quite interesting, like The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, but I also found some other ones to be quite boring, and I ended up skipping them after reading two pages or three.

The highlights from this book, though, are for me The Matter of Seggri and Solitude. Both of them are focused on societies where men and women are quite separated from each other, and in both (especially in the Seggri one) the women actually hold power over the men. The Matter of Seggri is written as a series of documents related with this society (researchers' work, fictional pieces, testimonies, etc), and the last of these documents left me speechless, it was very beautiful. As always, I'm in awe of the talent and imagination that Le Guin had, the complete control she shows when describing fictional and complex societies.

[Kuszma · Rating 5 out of 5]

– Rabelében, szabad a Talmud olvasása közben dohányozni?
– Nem, nem szabad!
– És rabbi, szabad dohányzás közben a Talmudot olvasni?
– Hát persze, a Talmudot mindig szabad olvasni!

Ha az előző kötetnél az volt a problémám, hogy az ötlet időnként ellopta a levegőt az emberi kapcsolatok amúgy érzékeny ábrázolása elől, hát most meg azt élveztem piszokul, hogy a központba helyezett ötletet mennyire feldúsította az emberi kapcsolatok érzékeny ábrázolása. Hogy mi a kettő között a különbség? Hm, talán nem sok. Le Guin ezen elbeszélései mindenesetre egyértelműen (egyértelműbben) sci-fi és fantasy történetek, nem sok kacérkodás van bennük a „komoly” realizmussal, és ez felettébb jól áll nekik. A sci-fi és a fantasy (ahogy laikusként látom) jellemzően ötletközpontú formák: a szerző új nézőpontból kap el egy nagyon is ismerős problémát egyszerűen azzal, hogy az egész cselekményt teljesen idegen közegbe helyezi, legyen az a közeg a Mars vagy akár Középfölde. Amivel persze nem azt akarom mondani, hogy a sci-fi és a fantasy nem több allegóriánál, álöltözetbe bújtatott társadalomfilozófiai problémagyűjteménynél – ám gyakran van egy ilyen olvasata is. És ha Le Guin ember és ember közti kapcsolatot bénító pontossággal megragadó talentumát olyan eszköznek tekintjük, ami a fantasztikus témát elemeli önmagától és érzelmi-gondolati komplexitással ruházza fel, akkor máris megvan, mi katapultálja ezeket a szövegeket a legmagasabb szintű irodalmi produktumok közé.

Nem emelnék ki egy novellát sem. Mind más miatt tetszett. Akad köztük sötéten filozofikus és sziporkázó humorral átszőtt is, és gyakran visszatérő elem bennük a nemek egymáshoz való viszonya – de mindben pulzál a kreativitás, no meg az írni tudás, ami segít Le Guinnek abban, hogy amit eltervezett, azt pontosan úgy tudja megírni, ahogy eltervezte. És mivel eleve jól tervezte el, le is nyűgözött.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.6⭐

A collection of Ursula K Le Guin's fantasy and/or science fiction short stories. All the stories were previously published elsewhere; several including Semely's Necklace, Nine Lives and The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, have been heavily anthologized.

As usual with Le Guin, all of the stories are interesting although I personally felt many of them were among her lesser works. There are a few stories from her Hainish cycle including Solitude and The Matter of the Seggri and one set in her Earthsea universe The Rule of Names. Most of the included stories are stand alone tales.

I would descibe many of the tales as feminist and as satirical. All, imho, are worth reading.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Betrayals," "The Matter of Seggri," "Solitude," and "The Wild Girls" are among the best short stories I've ever read. More anthropology than fiction, but also more realism than spec. Incredibly emotional and moving, but also largely set on alien world with nonhumans. They're hard to explain, but I feel like a whole new world of literary expression has opened up before me, and I am in awe. You just have to read it.

[l · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked
* The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - frustrating but it stays with you.
* Betrayals - a quiet piece involving a cat
* The Matter of Seggri - a matriarchy story that goes beyond boring reversals. I’m not happy how the lesbian relationship is treated in this story (the het relationship is framed as the great love story that could have been if men were treated equally) but it’s still an interesting story.
* She Unnames Them - short, charming enough.
* Sur - this is really very different from her other stories and I really love what this story is doing.
* The Rule of Names - everything in this story is expected but it doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. Love earthsea, always.
* The Wife’s Story - a fun reversal
* The Silence of the Asonu - on anthropology and racism. I’m surprised by how often Le Guin calls out anthropology as a field in these stories tbh.
* The Fliers of Gy - the winged people story

Hm
* Nine Lives - a cloning take which would be more interesting to sci-fi fans than to me.
* The Shobies’ Story - hm
* Solitude - vaguely interesting new world
* The Poacher - I really like the concept, letting the enchantment remain, but not impressed by the DV that is never dealt with and the rape scene. I think the story would have been better had the protagonist been a woman and had rescued the step mom.
* Small Change - could have gone somewhere interesting and didn’t
* The Wild Girls - it doesn’t hit the right notes for a story on slavery imo.

Pass:
* Mazes - ARA that’s aged poorly.
* Semley’s Necklace - a faerie story that’s not worth much.
* The First Contact with the Gorgonids - don’t like how racism and sexism are handled here.
* Jar of Water - pass on parables
* The Author of the Acacia Seeds - just didn’t care
* The Ascent of the North Face - why was this included?

[Nicky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outer Space, Inner Lands is the second of two volumes collecting together the best of Ursula Le Guin’s short fiction. It’s also the one containing all the SF work, or at least all the less realistic work, and it contains stories like ‘Those Who Walk Away from Omelas’, one of Ursula Le Guin’s most famous stories (at least among people I know) — though not my favourite, as I think the moral is obvious from the beginning.

As always, Le Guin’s writing is clear and strong, and the stories chosen here span her career and showcase all kinds of different ideas and different phases of her work. I prefer it to the first volume, because I find Le Guin’s speculative fiction more accessible.

She’s brilliant. Do yourself a favour.

Reviewed for The Bibliophibian.

[Cipőfűző · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stanislaw Lem anno élesen kritizálta az amerikai sci-fi irodalmat annak elpongyolásodása miatt. Akárhogy is volt, Le Guint nem érheti vád efelől. Ez a novelláskötet a minőségi irodalmat képviseli.
Megalkotott egy világot, amihez minden egyes novella, ami betagozódik ebbe az univerzumba, hozzáad valamit, tovább írja azt. Nagyon jól adagolva az olvasónak az ismeretlen megismeréséhez szükséges információkat.
Le Guin történeteit szerintem nem csak (és nem mindig) az élénk fantázia emeli magas szintre, hanem a perspektíva is, ahonnan megközelíti őket.

[Odo · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5.0

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many great stories it deserves 5 stars. Full of empathy and with a great sense of where to take premises (to the point where they hurt but feel cathartic at the same time)

[Catherine Siemann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of LeGuin's short stories (non-earthly division) is a real treasure. Beginning with old favorites from my youth like "Semley's Necklace" and the amazing "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", moving through her intensely anthropological Hain-universe stories, and ending with more fairy-tale inflected stories, the storytelling is uniformly strong. "Semley's Necklace" makes literal the admonition that magic and technology are only differently understood, and "Omelas" is, to anyone who knows it, unforgettable. The more anthropologically-oriented stories show some of the real possibilities of what genre fiction can do -- by observing different societies (or sometime by the representation of members of those societies) the Hainish and their descendants explore different possibilities for gender roles, social organization, and so forth, throwing new light on our own perceptions. There is a shapeshifting story from an unusual point of view, an all-female expedition to Antarctica, and an interesting take on the Cinderella story. While one or two stories impressed me less ("The Ascent of the North Face" is amusing but felt a little silly), overall this collection is a winner. I do recommend reading this collection slowly, a story or two at a time -- the stories are dense and thought-provoking, and the anthropological ones could too easily blend together, but are in fact each unique and well-developed.

I received a free PDF of this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program. (I enjoyed the book so much that I am currently considering purchasing the set of two in hardcover, even though many of my book purchases are in eBook form these days. That says something.)

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

My parents have all of Ms. Le Guin's books, including every previous collection, and I grew up reading her stories. When I bought these at Atomic in December I planned to read them all again in Ms. Le Guin's curated order. It has taken a while. I kept the book next to my bed, and I read one story every night, except sometimes I went back and reread one from the night before or the night before that. 'Cause here's the thing: these are GREAT stories. I notice something new every time.

If you had asked me about "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" I would have said yeah, yeah, I've read it a million times. That's the story with the beautiful city hiding an ugly secret about how they can have their happiness as long as they keep a child caged and abused beneath the city. And sure, that is what it's about, exactly as I remembered from reading it in 8th grade. I wasn't expecting to be absolutely floored by the language, the way I was this time. The first sentence is exquisite: "With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city. Omelas, bright-towered by the sea." The early passages of the story are poetry in prose. Then, as the narration turns to the child, the words close down like a prison. They become ugly, harsh, oppressive. I didn't remember any of that from reading this as a kid. The other stories are like that too, revealing new prizes and new challenges on my return.

[Oriente · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hosszan olvastam ezt a második kötetet is, de nem azért mert unalmas volt, épp ellenkezőleg. Egy-egy történet olyan erősen dolgozott bennem, annyira lekötötte a gondolataimat, mint máskor, máshol egy egész regény - így ha befejeztem egy novellát, rendszerint képtelen voltam csak úgy, minden további nélkül a következőre ugrani.

Ahogy gondolkodtam ezen az értékelésen, bámultam a tartalomjegyzéket és ide-oda forgattam a kötetet, próbáltam felidézni magamban a 21 novella mindegyikét, hogy kiemelhessem a kedvenceimet, vagy megjegyzéseket fűzzek a gyengébb darabokhoz. Magam is meglepődtem, de nem megy. Mindegyik novella különleges és egyedi élmény volt, aligha tudnám bármiféle képzeletbeli sorba rendezni őket. Ez egy ilyen ritka tökéletes válogatás.

Magával a szerzővel ez már sokadik találkozásom, de csak most találtam meg az írásaiban, ami eddig rejtve maradt előttem. Másképpen szólva, most érintett meg, méghozzá számtalan új formában egyszerre. Szerencsére nem kell ennyivel beérnem, itt vár a polcon a következő gyönyörű kötet, aminek így már a címe is egészen új jelentéssel bír, hiszen a korábbi, kevéssé sikerült magyar átültetések hatására Le Guin számomra majdnem "elveszett"...

[Eva Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and well-told, if a bit puzzling. It's the story of a whole people who have feathers and sometimes some of them start sprouting wings when they reach puberty. In rural areas, they get killed, either ceremoniously as sacrifices or unceremoniously as freaks. In more enlightened places they are allowed to live and then they have to decide whether they want to fly with all the dangers this entails or stay on the ground.
What had me puzzled was that I was never sure what the story was supposed to be a metaphor for. Maybe it's not a metaphor for anything, but truly an original concept, but it felt like there was an answer that I never grasped.

[Rachel (Kalanadi) · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Sur", guys. A fictional expedition that reaches the South Pole first in 1910... with an all-women crew. They leave no trace. I'm not gonna cry. Not gonna cry...

[Iris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Average rating: 3.5 stars

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - 4 stars
A tale about the utopian city of Omelas and what it means for a people to be happy. I can definitely see why it's one of those stories teachers love to use. The idea of one child's misery for the happiness of everyone else is super relevant though. If one person prospers, doesn't that mean someone else suffers? Isn't it impossible for everyone to be prosperous? But at the same time, isn't it wrong to keep someone in abject misery?

Favorite quote:
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”


Semley's Necklace - 3.5 stars
On an alien planet, a woman named Semley goes on a quest to find the magnificent necklace once possessed by her forebears. I really liked the contrast between the fairy-tale vibes of Semley's story and the more modern vibes of Rocannon's perspective. This story is just like that joke people sometimes make about characters not being genre aware. Semley thinks she's living in a fantasy fetch quest fable, but actually she's living in a space exploration sci-fi story. I think it's fascinating how Le Guin manages to make you see the end of the story—where Semley realizes she hasn't aged while her friends and family have—through two different lenses: (1) the fairy tale lens of "oh no, something magical happened to her as a consequence of her rash actions"; and (2) the sci-fi lens of "yep, that's time dilation alright." Really interesting food for thought about how a simple story can become a legend.

Nine Lives - 5 stars
Pugh and Martin, surveyors on an alien planet, are faced with the arrival of a new Planetary Exploitation team composed of ten clones of the same person. This was such an interesting take on what it means to relate to other people, especially if you spend all your time with nine other copies of yourself. The people in charge of cloning may think it's advantageous to have the clones grow up with each other, but really all they're doing is perpetuating the illusion that the self is sufficient, that you can live your whole life without needing anyone else. That is not true; in the end, survival requires learning how to rely on other people. Kaph's struggle to adjust to being alone after a lifetime spent in the company of others is poignant but also relatable. His struggle is really just the old-age question of, how do we go about forming connections with others? (Also, why is social interaction so difficult?) Really enjoyed this one.

Favorite quote:
“We're each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?”


Mazes - 2 stars
A short little story detailing the narrator's torture at the hands of a cruel alien creature (waaaay less graphic than I made it sound). Ok, so I'm like...pretty sure this is from the perspective of a lab rat or something being made to undergo human experiments. In any case, interesting ideas about how the worst cruelties can arise from ignorance rather than any purposeful malice.

The First Contact with the Gorgonids - 3 stars
A man and his wife venture through the Australian Outback in search of Aboriginals. Not sure what the message of this one is besides, "men are arrogant" and "listen to your wife," but honestly, I vibe with that. I loved how the wife was first introduced as Mrs. Jerry Debree but by the end of the story she was Annie Laurie Debree, the first human to make contact with the Gorgonids. Like, yes, girl, be rich and famous while your husband lives out the rest of his life fully paralyzed.

The Shobies' Story - 2.5 stars
The crew of the Shoby agree to be the first higher-intelligence life forms to test experimental transilience technology that will (hopefully) allow ships to achieve instantaneous travel. I'll be honest, this one confused me a lot...which I think is the point? As far as I can tell, being sent through nontime as it were caused the Shobies to lose all sense of how things happen, resulting in mass confusion, hallucinations, and possibly even the simultaneous perception of disparate things. My ultimate takeaway was that stories are how we make sense of confusion; we construct narratives in order to exert control over the chaotic realities of our existence. What I know for certain is that Le Guin does a fantastic job making you feel the terror and mayhem of not knowing what's really happening. I spent the entire second half of the story desperately wishing for some sort of order or coherence, ultimately found in the story the Shobies tell themselves. Kind of a mindfuck, in any case.

Betrayals - 1 star
An old woman named Yoss retreats to secluded marshes at the end of her life in search of spirituality. There, she meets Abberkam, a disgraced hero of the War of Liberation. Yoss and Abberkam are members of the Yeowe, a formerly enslaved race, so there's some discussion here about what it means to be free and also some references to the challenges that arise even after you've attained freedom (mainly: infighting). To be honest though, I found Yoss's reluctance to accept death a far more fascinating topic, even as she acknowledges that she doesn't have a lot of time left. Overall, this one left me feeling pretty meh.

The Matter of Seggri - 5 stars
A brief history of the alien planet of Seggri, where the women vastly outnumber the men, men's only value is in siring children, and sexism is flipped on its head. This was such a good exploration of gender issues. I loved(?) seeing all the parallels between the oppression of the Seggri men and the oppression of women in real life. From comments about men being too violent and aggressive to participate in society to young boys being much more coddled than their sisters, Le Guin does a great job highlighting sexist practices that still exist in our lives today. At the same time, this reversal of gender norms also underlines the cultural nature of sexism, how it truly does not have any kind of scientific or genetic basis. Definitely a favorite.

Solitude - 3 stars
A woman from off-planet details her life growing up on Eleven-Soro in a society—very much at odds with her mother's Hainish culture—that prizes solitude. There are some really interesting explorations of societal structures going on here. The people of Eleven-Soro believe that anything that allows someone else to hold power over you is magic (i.e. a violation of the natural order), which consequently leads them to lead mostly isolated lives. That's not to say they're physically isolated from each other though, just that their society teaches them how to achieve spiritual satisfaction alone by constantly being aware of the world around them. It's a pretty distinct contrast to our society, which I'd say is mainly structured around people finding fulfillment through their relationships to others. Do I think one is better than the other? No, not really, which is why I think Serenity and her mother end up splitting up, but I will say there is something beautiful about the idea of being able to find contentment from the world around you.

The Wild Girls - 4 stars
The story of Dirt sisters Mal and Modh, who are kidnapped from their home and made slaves by a Crown man named Bela ten Belen. As always, I am a sucker for sibling relationships; I loved the fierce love that Modh has for Mal, to the extent that she's willing to seduce a man to keep him from going after her sister. I also liked the contrast between Modh and Mal's daily lives—which on the surface actually seem pretty good—and the insidious knowledge lurking beneath that they're slaves, that Bela kidnapped them from their homes, that they will one day be forced to marry a man not of their choosing. No matter how shiny the facade is, cracks will always appear, be it Ralo ten Bal and his creepy obsession with Mal or the baby that Ralo killed long ago. I like the idea that unjust systems will inevitably result in fractures, even if the people under those systems can't even articulate the injustices being done to them. Fucked-up and tragic, in the best way.

Favorite quote:
"Neither did Nata know of that alternative, that possible even when unattainable space in which there is room for justice, in which the word 'But' can be spoken and have meaning."


The Fliers of Gy - 5 stars
A story about the few people of Gy who grow wings and have the ability to fly. Look, as much as I like stories with like, an actual plot, conflict, and resolution, I also really, really adore when authors just take an interesting concept and explore it. That's what this story is: exploring the concept of wings which, to many, seem more of a burden than a boon. It's about what makes people choose to fly even given the risk of total wing failure, it's about what makes people choose NOT to fly even when you're ill-suited for ground life, it's about what kind of life you want and what you're willing to give up to get it. Lovely worldbuilding.

The Silence of the Asonu - 4 stars
A story about the Asonu, who grow ever more silent as they grow older. Similar to the previous story in that it's more an exploration of a concept than something with an actual plotline. There's some interesting ideas here about how people have a tendency to try to give everything some deeper meaning, in this case the Asonu's silence. To that end, the Ohio Reading of the Sayings of the Elder of Isu was deeply amusing. The ending bit where someone kidnaps an Asonu girl to try to discover the secret Wisdom of the Asonu is a major tonal shift, yet it also feels like a natural progression of people's obsession with the Asonu. Enjoyable, for sure.

The Ascent of the North Face - 3 stars
Journal entries from a climber's ascent up the North Face. Short, silly, and fun. It took me way too long to get that they were actually climbing up a house, not a mountain, but I thought this story was cute. Definitely not a lot here, but that's not always a bad thing. Sometimes a little silliness is in order.

The Author of the Acacia Seeds - 5 stars
Selected excerpts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics, a field which studies and seeks to interpret the languages of various animal species. I think I've decided that I like Le Guin best when she just takes an idea and explores it. I loved every part of this story. I loved the Ant language of seeds and the Adélie language of group movement, I loved the ballet translations and the idea of future phyto- and geolinguists. I loved everything this had to say about language, and the many different forms of it; art, and our prevailing failure to define it; discovery, and how new breakthroughs require us to let go of our preconceptions. All-around fantastic.

The Wife's Story - 4 stars
A wife tells the sad story of what happened to her husband. This story rests pretty much entirely on its twist, but man is it a good twist. Werewolf story where the conflict is that the wolf turns into a human? Brilliant. We're scared of wolves, wolves are scared of us, and no one likes werewolves. Short but good.

The Rule of Names - 3 stars
A story about a wizard named Mr. Underhill whose truename is a mystery to the residents of Sattins Island. I've always really loved the "names hold great power" trope in fantasy, so glad to see that here. I also think it's funny how the Rule of Names is necessary because knowing someone's truename gives you power over them, but then flash-forward to Blackbeard getting trampled by a dragon as a direct result of knowing Mr. Underhill's truename. Just goes to show that sometimes you should let people keep the masks they wear; the true self isn't always the best thing to show others.

Small Change - 3 stars
The story of a girl in the aftermath of her aunt's death. Definitely quite strange. Not really sure what was going on with that whole bit where her aunt was wandering through the maze. I thought the ending—where the girl dies and her aunt returns to take care of her just as she did in life—was far more poignant. Something something love transcends death (or so we'd like to believe, anyway).

The Poacher - 2.5 stars
A boy discovers a tall mysterious hedgerow in the forest and becomes determined to get to the other side. A story about those who don't get stories. Very unique spin on the tale of Sleeping Beauty, from the perspective of a random peasant boy who breaks through the brambles and kinda just squats in the sleeping castle for the rest of his life. I think the name of this story is particularly interesting, because the boy isn't just poaching food from the King's Forest, he's poaching on someone else's story too. Because not everyone gets stories, so sometimes all we can do is steal spots in the fringes of other people's. And the main characters of those stories may not ever know we're there, but we are, and that makes a difference. We exist, and we make a difference. I will say, though, sometimes the narrator creeped me out; like when he was perving on his naked stepmother, or when he straight-up raped that sleeping girl. Seriously icky.

Sur - 4 stars
A story about a group of women undertaking an expedition to Antarctica in 1909. I liked this one. I'm always down for feminist rewritings of history, and I do love the idea of the first people to reach the South Pole being this group of relatively uneducated explorers-for-fun women. I also think it's so funny how the narrator wants to keep this expedition a secret so that the man who first reached the South Pole won't feel bad about being second-best. There is something so interesting about the fact that these women are really just doing this for fun. They didn't set out to break records or win recognition. They just wanted to see Antarctica. The men end up in history books, and the women leave behind no footprints, but that doesn't change the fact that the expedition happened.

Favorite quote:
"But then, the backside of heroism is often rather sad; women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no less real for that. But achievement is smaller than men think. What is large is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul."


She Unnames Them - 4 stars
Exactly what it says on the tin. Everyone gets unnamed. I feel like I'm too much of an atheist to fully appreciate the genius of Eve unnaming the animals (mainly because I hadn't known about the story of Adam naming the animals while reading this), but I really liked the idea of names drawing divides between different species. Without any way to refer to a specific creature, we all feel much more like the same kind of being. This moral, of course, is also applicable to many real-life situations. Quiet but powerful.

[Jeff Koeppen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second volume of short stories by master storyteller Ursula K Le Guin was much more enjoyable to my ears that the first volume as it featured primarily science fiction and fantasy. I'm not a big fan of fantasy but the storytelling kept me absorbed. If you are familiar with Le Guin's Hainish Cycle of science fiction novel you'll get more out of this collection as a number of the stories are set in this universe.

Audible improved their game from the absolute disastrous formatting of the first volume but there was still a chapter with no announced title and the order was off a little from the paper copy order.

There were some some real gems in this collection. A few of my favorites were:

"Semley's Necklace" - set in the Hainish universe, a woman sets out to track down a family heirloom in a story featuring themes of time dilation and interaction amongst civilizations with different technological levels.

"First Contact with the Gorgonids" - the story of an abusive ass of a husband and his and his wife's first contact experience. I laughed on my way to work listening to this one.

"The Matter of Seggri" - interesting what-if tale which takes place on a matriarchal planet in which genetic engineering has resulted in only one in six (I think) births being male. How would such a society even operate?

"The Fliers of Gy" - takes place on a planet where a small number of people grow wings, and instead of flying being something wonderful and appreciated it is thought by many to be a negative attribute. It's a sad tale.

"The Wife's Story" and "Small Change" - two surreal fantasy stories about a beloved family member. Spellbinding story telling.

"She Unnames Them" - the collection's finale. What if animals were unnamed? Sounds pretty straightforward but develops in to a short and poignant tale.

Most of the stories in this collection of twenty-two were hits for me, with a few misses which is to be expected. If you enjoy Le Guin and/or fantasy/science fiction I would recommend, even if you are unfamiliar with her Hainish works. She does not disappoint.

[Kathryn Pearson · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first introduction to Ursula Le Guin (and...sci fi?? Veryy late to the game wow) was Left Hand of Darkness and I was reluctant to say how much I struggled with it...but this was fantastic and I am a complete convert now!
Surprised by every single story, these were subvertive and immersing in a way that was so unbelievably refreshing. Truly such stimulation for the mind, heart and spirit. I was deeply impressed with the complexity and resolve she is able to create in under 30 pages, particularly with internal conflicts.
Also didn't expect the level of affinity and gentleness she writes around animals, and in general her stories run with such hope, humour and kindness (apart from Wild Girls and damn she did well with the aftercare of that one.) The realisation that I'm still working through internalised misogyny and cancel culture anger when I get surprised that feminist authors have kindness as an undertone/overtone? Ooft.
Loved the overall theme of the real and unreal too, excellent curation. I think my favourite were Nine Lives (nearly cried at this one), Betrayals and The Author of Acacia Seeds. Huge fan grl energy now and excited to read more.
P.S Finished this at the end of a holiday that was a game changer for me, and I wouldn't say the book was the reason for it but it was certainly part of it and oh what a wonderful companion it was.

[D Dyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most people familiar with Ursula K. Le Guin’s work will have read some if not all of these fantastic stories. Classics like “Semley’s necklace” which deals with the possible consequences of interstellar travel and of cultures at different technological levels interacting “the matter of Segri” which Imagens a world of extreme gender imbalance and “ The wife’s story” which takes an unusual look at the shape shifter myth are gathered together here under the banner of being sci-fi and/or fantasy stories. And the selection does a great job of highlighting the themes Le Guin has spent her career focusing on, issues of gender, sexuality, class and power. But they are also just good stories. The writing is beautiful, the stories are controlled though not particularly fast-paced. Sometimes you are reading a report from a distant land, sometimes a fable. Always, you are left thinking.
The one issue I can take with this collection is that for someone already familiar with the authors work there isn’t much new here. It’s a lovely and compact wait to revisit the familiar but won’t give you new stories you are unfamiliar with.

[Koen Crolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short story collection is the more sci-fi counterpart to the previous bland one, but it's really not much better. The most well-known story here is obviously The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, and if you only know that through cultural osmosis you already have the full experience—it's very much as if Le Guin couldn't figure out how to work out the basic idea she had, and decided to just let the reader do it instead. As far as the rest is concerned, Solitude is a stand-out that would probably do well if it were rediscovered by audiences today (apparently it won a Nebula Award in 1996, so I guess it's not one of her more obscure ones anyway), The Author of the Acacia Seeds starts off very cutely but then keeps going for too long, and The Rule of Names is atypical Le Guin but nice old-school fantasy; everything else falls somewhere on the spectrum from uninteresting to a genuine slog.
Maybe Le Guin just isn't for me, actually.

[Dawn F · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fear I’ll soon run out of positive adjectives to describe Le Guin’s writing. While some stories are not as sharp and full bodied as The Matter of Seggre (spelling varies), Solitude and The Wild Girls, all tales with heavy weight on social structures, gender and anthropology, I’m never bored for one moment. Her prose carries you like a shell upon the sea, easily and at her every whim and I find myself wanting to go wherever her flow of words leads me.

[mysterygif · Rating 4 out of 5]

a few weak stories but the strength of the remainder outweighs them enormously. both volumes charged with fantastic imagination and her attunement to the nature of human fragilities and strengths, each scenario used as vehicle to demonstrate acutely.

[Raphael Knight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Way better than the first, in the sense that I actually understood this book.