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Ursula Le Guin's latest title, The Birthday of the World, is her first short story collection since The Wind's Twelve Quarters (available in the Gollancz yellow jacket edition) and one of the most essential SF short story volumes published in many a while. Long-time fans of Le Guin will be delighted that several of the pieces are set in the already superbly realised worlds of her Hainish cycle, and there is a brand new novella called Paradises Lost. This is the SF of ideas, a lyrical, organic collection that explores visions of worlds where women outnumber men, where there exist societies without order and lands where sex is not determined at birth, but people slip between genders at a whim and are neither male nor female in between. While the word controversial doesn't really do it justice, the stories and the ideas Le Guin presents are certainly challenging to say the least, and she has some interesting ideas on the evolution of society and our own place in it. All in all a daring and bold collection, breathtaking and beautiful, that confirms why Le Guin is one of the genre's most celebrated writers. --Jon Snow |
