The Birthday of the World: And Other Stories
| Date: 15 April 2011, 18:04
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In 1969, LeGuin shattered the standards of science fiction with "The Left Hand of Darkness," an accessible, amazing story set in a universe she had developed in earlier romances. "Left Hand" explored the meaning of sexuality and its implications in an entirely new way. If you haven't read "Left Hand," you should.
She has returned to that universe many times since, most recently in "The Telling," but only in "Birthday of the World" does she approach issues of humanity and sexuality and its implications with the brilliance and sheer elegance that she brought to "Left Hand." The short stories of "Birthday" are as good as short science fiction gets.
One of LeGuin's many gifts is to tell a fine story, while at the same time holding a mirror to our own world. By creating relationships that are different from our own - sedoretu, a complex marriage system, for example - she allows us to see from a new viewpoint, and more clearly, the express and implied values in our own culture. Don't misunderstand; there is no preaching or lecturing, only a very fine set of stories very well told.
Another of her gifts is to take an intellectual structure and wrap a marvellous story around it. In her fantasy novel "Wizard of Earthsea," it was Jungian psychology. Here she takes her background in cultural anthropology to explore the modalities of human relationships. Her storytelling is so deft that you can read these stories for the superb writing that they are and enjoy them immensely. But they work at other levels, too, and seeing the intellectual structure cleverly crafted into the narrative gives the perceptive reader additional pleasure.
LeGuin's brilliant characters, her spare writing and her eloquence are as evident here as in her longer writing. This amazing woman has been writing at this level for more than 30 years. In the last three years she has produced this and an earlier collection of short stories - "Tales from Earthsea" - and a novel - "The Other Wind" - very nearly as delightful as this collection. If she wrote in the so-called "mainstream" genre, she'd have a stack of Pulitzers by now. But it is our luck she hangs with us in the science fiction ghetto, and graces us with tales like these.
If the last line of "Unchosen Love" doesn't make you blink back tears; if the grace of the first paragraph of the title story doesn't astound you; well, we must not like the same kind of literature. Bravo, Ms. LeGuin!
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