The Birthday of the World and Other Stories
The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, five Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards, the renowned writer Ursula K. Le Guin has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters...
show more
The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, five Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards, the renowned writer Ursula K. Le Guin has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.
show less
Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780060509064 (0060509066)
Publish date: March 4th 2003
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages no: 362
Edition language: English
Category:
Fantasy,
Science Fiction Fantasy,
Science Fiction,
Anthologies,
Feminism,
Speculative Fiction,
Collections,
Short Stories,
Glbt,
Queer,
Gender
Series: Hainish Cycle
Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh! Sooooo goooooood! When I learned that Le Guin's father was an anthropologist it explained a huge amount to me. Her SF "what ifs" aren't much along the lines of "what if there was magic goo that could make and fix everything?" or "what if aliens built an interstellar subway system...
I love Le Guin's crusty old loners.
On one level, LeGuin is the bard of polymorphic perversity (quite literally so in the case of the periodic hermaphroditism on Gethen, first introduced in The Left Hand of Darkness). In this collection of nine stories, she explores the romantic and reproductive strategies of a wide range of human (or...
The Birthday of the World is a good book, as were Le Guin's last several. In the present volume, Le Guin explores themes clustered around questions of right action and right being, and explores narrators' and protagonists' relationships to culture, the idea of home, and conscious or unconscious cult...
This is a collection of short fiction, 8 stories set in UKL's various worlds and universes. I found them all to be engaging, serious, and good. The first one, Coming of Age in Karhide is set on the world of The Left Hand of Darkness, which is a world I've missed. It was cool to get to revisit it ...