Changing Planes (Paperback)

by Ursula K. Le Guin (Author) "The range of the airplane-a few thousand miles, the other side of the world, coconut palms, glaciers, the poles, the Poles, a lama, a llama,..." (more)
Key Phrases: stone faring, stone farers, wing failure, Nna Mmoy, Great Joy Corporation, Interplanary Agency (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
A fantastical travel guide, reminiscent of Gulliver's Travels. -- USA Today

Review
A fantastical travel guide. (USA Today) A master of the craft. (Neil Gaiman) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Ace Trade (August 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044101156X
• ISBN-13: 978-0441011568
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,077,362 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun Read!, January 19, 2006

By	G. Messersmith "calliopemuse" (Tennessee) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Changing Planes (Paperback)

This book makes me think of Douglas Adams and Jonathan Swift. It has the appeal and fun of "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" through the protagonist's (Sita) travels to varied societies (worlds) which are similar to the many places in "Gulliver's Travels".

The book is written as a pun about the miseries of air travel. The first page will strike a definite chord for anyone who has flown very much. Le Guin calls the worlds she visits "planes" (another little joke here I believe) where the protagonist(Sita Dulip) meets a variety of people. In all Sita goes to 15 different worlds where she meets societies to include a world where applied genetics had gone wrong; a society where the older the people got the less they spoke; another society talks but their words have meanings that change all the time; another world is one of migratory people who like many animals of our own planet trek long distances to mate.

This book is funny, ironic, intelligent, thought-provoking and the ultimate in escapism reading. Even if you've never read Le Guin before, you will be delighted with this book. The only complaint I have with the book is that the drawings in the book are distracting. The artist does a fine job, but I prefer to have my own mental pictures from a book; otherwise, it's a lot of fun to read!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gulliver's (Le Guin's) Extraterrestial Travels, May 1, 2009

By	Daniel Murphy (Redmond, OR USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Changing Planes (Paperback)

Hey. Just my opinion, but a book whose very title is a pun is off to a mighty good start. The premise of Changing Planes is that a traveler in a U.S. airport becomes so mightily disturbed by flight delay, food that could double as a petro-chemical, and airline attendants that could easily be outperformed by a Tickle Me Elmo doll, that she is able to access interstellar planes, making travel twixt the numerous civilizations in our universe quite accessible.

Daughter of a writer and an anthropology professor (Berkeley), LeGuin's earliest writings often involved imaginary civilizations. What does a writer whose career spans more than four decades, has garnered numerous awards, and gathered a significant band of devoted readers choose to write about in her mid-70's? Well, whatever she damn well pleases! Which, with qualifications (more on this in just a bit), is much to our benefit.

The influence of LeQuin's anthropologist/writer genome is strong in Changing Planes. Some books, to be fit into a nutshell, would require a coconut. The kernel, but not all the richness, of Changing Planes can be fit into a sunflower seed: Think Gulliver's Travels on an intergalactic basis. In a series of short stories, each reflecting a trip to a different plane/planet, our neo-Gulliver (who goes by Sita Dulip)visits civilization after civilization, exploring whatever themes haunt the intelligent and agile mind of Ursula K. LeGuin. Genetic manipulation gone wild, clashes between cultures that differ in technological expertise, tales of the consequences of abandoning rituals that are tuned to the rhythms of nature, a planet turned into an extreme version of Disney's "Happiest Place on Earth": Le Guin simply lets fly, with largely intriguing results. My own favorite story? A planet is which everyone dreams a new, but shared, dream every night; a communal dream that includes the longings, fears, joys, and horrors of every citizen.

Changing Planes, absorbed at a measured pace, and with a bit of patience, is richly provocative. It could (in Berkeley, but not likely in Sarah Palin's home town) be used to great effect as an entire high school course, with sufficient depth of material to consume an entire semester. Is it worth your time? Let me get back to those qualifications I mentioned above...

If you like your sci-fi chock full of nano-tech warfare, spaceships whose guns are projecting blue trans-dimensional disrupter beams at sinister aliens, and scientific underpinnings as hard as diamonds (I do like all these things)....go play somewhere else. If you are ideologically in the Bush/Cheney camp (ideological implies ideas, admittedly a bit of a stretch for these two gentlemen), spare yourself some Pepcid/antacid purchases, pick up a Clancy novel instead. But if, on the other hand, you'd like a book that you could leave on your bedstand in order to graze on a story/plane, and subsequently drift off to sleep thinking "Hmmmmm. Interesting. Very, very interesting", well then! Time to change planes!

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars More enjoyable if you don't read between the lines, May 5, 2006

By	D. Rahmel "Dan Rahmel" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Changing Planes is a compilation of loosely connected short stories describing a variety of worlds or "planes." Islac, the first plane visited, is a place where genetic engineering has gone haywire and every type of gene splice has occurred (plant-human, human-fish, human-animal, etc). This world is fun, colorful, and bittersweet in a way that gave me great hope for the rest of the collection.

While most of the worlds are interesting, it becomes increasingly clear as you progress through them that each story is a satirical projection against something Le Guin finds distasteful about the modern world. The most obvious satire is found in the plane of Great Joy where a corporation has subjugated a whole people to create a type of Disneyland for shallow American tourists. Goodness is finally achieved when the Great Joy Corporation has been destroyed and the workers socialize the means of production. High five for socialism!

In "Seasons of the Ansarac," a humorless, overbearing industrial civilization tried to impose its culture on a peaceful, celebratory, pre-industrial culture. What a relief that they failed! In each of the planes, the simplistic pre-industrial cultures are in tune with the world around them and their environment. How sweet. The cultures that have gone through industrialization are found in their post-apocalyptic state. I guess that doesn't bode well for our world.

Le Guin's approach often comes across as a lecture because most of the stories are written less like a travelogue and more like an anthropological treatise. Only rarely are individual characters fleshed out -- and in these stories the writing sparkles. As I turned the last page, I wished Le Guin had focused her substantial imagination on inventing compelling new worlds instead of preaching.

PS: If you listened to the audio book, you missed out on Eric Beddows' illustrations for each world. Check out the Ursula Le Guin web site where they have been reproduced.