Changing Planes: Stories

"In these "vivid, entertaining, philosophical dispatches" (San Francisco Chronicle), literary legend Ursula Le Guin weaves together influences as wide-reaching as Borges, The Little Prince, and Gulliver's Travels to examine feminism, tyranny, mortality and immortality, art, and the meaning-and mystery-of being human"--
Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Story A New York Times Notable Book In these &;vivid, entertaining, philosophical dispatches&; (San Francisco Chronicle), literary legend Le Guin weaves together influences as wide-reaching as Borges, The Little Prince, and Gulliver&;s Travels to examine feminism, tyranny, mortality and immortality, art, and the meaning&;and mystery&;of being human. Sita Dulip has missed her flight out of Chicago. But instead of listening to garbled announcements in the airport, she&;s found a method of bypassing the crowds at the desks, the nasty lunch, the whimpering children and punitive parents, and the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floor: she changes planes. Changing planes&;not airplanes, of course, but entire planes of existence&;enables Sita to visit societies not found on Earth. As &;Sita Dulip&;s Method&; spreads, the narrator and her acquaintances encounter cultures where the babble of children fades over time into the silence of adults; where whole towns exist solely for holiday shopping; where personalities are ruled by rage; where genetic experiments produce less than desirable results. With &;the eye of an anthropologist and the humor of a satirist&; (USA Today), Le Guin takes readers on a truly universal tour, showing through the foreign and alien indelible truths about our own human society.
Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Stories A New York Times Notable Book In these &;vivid, entertaining, philosophical dispatches&; (San Francisco Chronicle), literary legend Ursula Le Guin weaves together influences as wide-reaching as Borges, The Little Prince, and Gulliver&;s Travels to examine feminism, tyranny, mortality and immortality, art, and the meaning&;and mystery&;of being human.