Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Changing Planes
    Unavailable
    Changing Planes
    Unavailable
    Changing Planes
    Ebook262 pages4 hours

    Changing Planes

    By Ursula K. Le Guin and Eric Beddow

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    “A fantastical travel guide, reminiscent of Gulliver’s Travels,” from a narrator with “the eye of an anthropologist and the humor of a satirist.” —USA Today
     
    Hailed by Neil Gaiman as “a master of the craft” and Margaret Atwood as “a quintessentially American writer,” Ursula K. Le Guin is at her entertaining, thought-provoking best in this collection of ingeniously linked stories.
     
    Missing a flight, waiting in an airport, listening to garbled announcements—who doesn’t hate that misery? But Sita Dulip of Cincinnati finds a way to bypass the long lines, the crowded restrooms, the nasty food, the whimpering children and domineering parents, the bookless bookstores, the plastic chairs bolted to the floor. . . .
     
    With a kind of twist and a slipping bend, easier to do than to describe, Sita travels not to Denver but to Strupsirts, a picturesque region of waterspouts and volcanoes. Or to Djeyo, where she can stay for two nights with a balcony overlooking the amber Sea of Somue. This new method of “changing planes” enables Sita to visit bizarre societies and cultures that sometimes mirror our own . . . and sometimes open doors into the thrillingly alien.
     
    A New York Times Notable Book and Los Angeles Times bestseller, featuring illustrations by Eric Beddows, Changing Planes is your boarding pass to fifteen worlds that are vintage Le Guin, from a recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the art of the short story.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMar 4, 2014
    ISBN9780544341685
    Unavailable
    Changing Planes
    Author

    Ursula K. Le Guin

    URSULA K. LE GUIN (1929-2018) was the celebrated and beloved author of numerous groundbreaking works, such as The Left Hand of Darkness, A Wizard of Earthsea, and The Dispossessed. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebulas, nine Hugos, and SFWA’s Grand Master, along with the PEN/Malamud and many other awards. In 2014 she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

    Read more from Ursula K. Le Guin

    Related to Changing Planes

    Related ebooks

    Science Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ursula K. Le Guin, Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer, Has Died at 88

      Jan 24, 2018

      Acclaimed science-fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin died Monday in her hometown of Portland, Ore., her agent confirmed. Le Guin was 88. Although best known for her science fiction - particularly the Earthsea series - Le Guin was a creative, curious wr

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Vanished Birds

      Aug 12, 2020

      Starship captain Nia Imani returns home to one of the great trade Stations with an unexpected passenger who will change the course of history… Umbai’s Ark departed from the Colombian Elevator two years later, in early June. It was the third to leave

      5 min read

    • Article

      Just Trust Me: In Praise Of Strange Books

      Dec 23, 2017

      Author Victoria Schwab says she loves the books that can't be categorized, that fall between library-shelf categories, and that spark passionate debate among readers who either love them or hate them.

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Book That Changed How I Think

      Oct 25, 2023

      The right book read at the right time can alter not just what you think, but how. The effect can feel like putting on a new set of glasses: Everything remains the same, but you view reality with sudden clarity. It can also be more unsettling—great wr

      6 min read

    • Article

      Jenny Offill: The Doomy Bits

      Mar 6, 2020

      Jenny Offill: The Doomy Bits
      16 min read

    • Article

      Splits, Doubles, Masks, and Decoys: On ‘Life Is Everywhere’

      Jun 26, 2023

      There is an ongoing game about what is real vs. what is really real, which is funny because in a novel, nothing is really real. The post Splits, Doubles, Masks, and Decoys: On ‘Life Is Everywhere’ appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Hernan Diaz: ‘If Ever I Find Myself On The Page, I View It As An Immense Failure’

      Jul 8, 2023

      Hernan Diaz, 50, was born in Buenos Aires and lives in Brooklyn. A finalist in 2018 for the Pulitzer prize in fiction with his debut In the Distance, which the New Yorker called “an offbeat western”, he is the joint winner of this year’s award – toge

      4 min read

    Reviews for Changing Planes

    4/5

    424 ratings32 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This is a slender and charming travelogue of places that don't exist. The stories that make it up were published over the last five years in a variety of places, with the exception of the introductory story. "Sita Dulip's Method" sets up a frame for the whole.

      Anyone can visit other planes of existence, but to make the transition you need to achieve a certain level of discomfort, boredom, and indigestion. On our plane of existence, this is only achieved when waiting in an airport between connecting flights--when you are, literally, between planes. The Interplanary Agency maintains a generally loose supervision of this travel, providing translation devices, guidebooks, and accommodations for longer stays. They'll take stronger measures in the event of real misbehavior by visitors or hosts. Without misbehavior, both wonders and quiet horrors are available to the adventurous traveler.

      Enjoyable.
    • 4/5
      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 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!
    • 4/5
      Sometimes a bit preachy, but filled with the glorious language that LeGuin is great at.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      This is an interesting book. It's more a collection of short stories with a common theme, and it's fantasy/sci-fi masquerading as a travel book. It's interesting for that, and interesting for Le Guin's writing. Her political/social commentary is obvious, particularly in "Porridge on Islac", but it's also touching. "My daughter lives in the North Sea. On raw fish. She's very beautiful. Dark and silky and beautiful. But -- I had to take her to the sea-coast when she was two years old. I had to put her in that cold water, those big waves. I had to let her swim away, let her go be what she is. But she is human too! She is, she is human too!"
    • 3/5
      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 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.
    • 3/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      A fun mixture of satire and worldbuilding. Very Gulliver's Travels, really, except with a likable narrator!
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 5/5
      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 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
    • 4/5
      "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.
    • 5/5
      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 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!
    • 5/5
      This is a collection of sketches of alternate universe worlds that LeGuin uses to say some fascinating things about the nature of... not humans necessarily, but beings. Each world is related to our own, but the people or the lifestyle differ in ways that make for some fascinating commentary on our own reality. What if we lived in a world without language? What if we shared our dreams with our neighbors every night? Each story has a different character and some are more whimsical than poignant, but the collection works. A thought-provoking but not too heavy read.
    • 5/5
      Wicked satire of American consumer and political culture. Le Guin at her humane best - a great read for the stress of air travel!
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 3/5
      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 the 'academic' writing style. Changing planes is a nice in-between book (for travelling by airplane).
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      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 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!
    • 4/5
      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.
    • 4/5
      A collection of stories/vignettes connected by an amusing premise: while caught in the unique state of boredom experienced only by the traveller stuck with a layover at an airport, a person can quite literally "change planes" and visit other realms of existence.
      (One gets the feeling that LeGuin doesn't like modern travel much - and indeed, on her website it says that the author is currently taking a sabbatical from any kind of book tours or speaking engagements.)
      Each section describes, from the visitor's perspective, a different 'plane' and the people who live there. The segments are a bit too brief and lacking in full development for me to consider then full 'stories' - but the writing is wonderful, and the book is just full of brilliantly insightful and amusing ideas. LeGuin apparently has many more flashes of creativity on a routine business trip than most authors do in a career. These are the ideas she hasn't fleshed out into full novels, but the book is still a rewarding experience - both funny and with many serious-yet-wry observations about our own world as well as potential alien ways of life.
    • 4/5
      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 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.
    • 4/5
      Interesting look at other worlds.
    • 4/5
      The stories are very clever and use alternative locations (planets, dimensions?) to illustrate the various failures of human society throughout its history.
    • 4/5
      Interesting book. Reminds me of Borges, although it has been many years since I read any of his stuff.
    • 5/5
      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 Guin manages to pack a lot of entertainment and some deep critiques into the short stories that make up this book.
    • 4/5
      This was a fun book. The premise really was just "How far can I run with a pun on changing airplanes vs astral planes?", but that served as a nice springboard for a series of vignettes of alternate worlds. Some were clearly commentary on this plane, others just seemed like an exploration of a little idea, and the whole book is breezily written - light reading that's worth taking time over.
    • 5/5
      Starting with some cutting observations about airplane travel it moves on to the fantasy of spending time in alternate universe while waiting on airplane connections. The alternate universes are all highly imaginative echoing the ability she displayed on her other work.
    • 5/5
      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.
    • 3/5
      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 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.