Changing Planes

In this collection, Ursula K. Le Guin, winner of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award, presents a world where there’s a better way of changing planes.

Missing a flight, waiting in an airport, listening to garbled announcements — who doesn’t hate that misery?

But Sita Dulip from Cincinnati finds a method of bypassing the crowds at the desks, the long lines at the toilets, the nasty lunch, the whimpering children and punitive parents, the bookless bookstores, and the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floor.

A mere kind of twist and a slipping bend, easier to do than to describe, takes her not to Denver but to Strupsirts, a picturesque region of waterspouts and volcanoes, or to Djeyo where she can stay for two nights in a small hotel with a balcony overlooking the amber Sea of Somue. This new discovery—changing planes—enables Sita to visit bizarre societies and cultures that sometimes mirror our own and sometimes open doors into the alien.

Illustrated by Eric Beddows, Le Guin’s account of her travels is by turns funny, disturbing, and thought provoking.