The birthday of the world: and other stories

Book Cover
Average Rating
Publisher
Perennial
Publication Date
2003.
Language
English

Description

For more than four decades, Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled readers with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history.

The first six tales in this spectacular volume are set in the author's signature world of the Ekumen, "my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows," as Le Guin describes it -- a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness. The seventh, title story was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "remarkable . . . a standout." The final offering in the collection, Paradises Lost, is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness.

In her foreword, Ursula K. Le Guin writes, "to create difference-to establish strangeness-then to let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the gap: this acrobatics of the imagination fascinates and satisfies me as no other." In The Birthday of the World, this gifted literary acrobat exhibits a dazzling array of skills that will fascinate and satisfy us all.

More Details

ISBN
9780060509064

Table of Contents

From the Book - First Perennial edition.

Coming of age in Karhide --
The matter of Seggri --
Unchosen love --
Mountain ways --
Solitude --
Old music and the slave women --
The birthday of the world --
Paradises lost.

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Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
Like Ursula K. Le Guin, A.S. Byatt achieves plot tension via sharply contrasting, paired elements, like the everyday and the fantastic; or the beautiful and the cruel. -- Kim Burton
Like Ursula Le Guin, Nancy Kress writes elegant but cool prose, distancing herself from her characters and story but also focusing on larger issues. -- Krista Biggs
Peter Hoeg and Ursula Le Guin offer stringent political and social commentary in carefully crafted, subtle prose that uses magical realism, fantasy, science fiction, and varied settings to convey real-world messages. Hoeg's themes are more directly presented, and his atmosphere is more consistently dark or moody; Le Guin is more specifically feminist. -- Katherine Johnson
Like Ursula Le Guin, Sharon Shinn sets her fantasy and science fiction stories in societies where the underlying reality differs greatly from outward appearances. While Shinn's writing is more lyrical and places a greater emphasis on romance, its worlds and cultures will appeal to Le Guin's fans. -- NoveList Contributor
Both Catherine Fisher and Ursula Le Guin write intricately plotted, suspenseful fantasy fiction for teens. Both writers' stories incorporate world-building, an often bleak tone, and a lyrical writing style. Fisher's work, however, tends to be more action-packed and fast-paced than Le Guin's more leisurely style. -- Kelly White
Though Hal Clement writes hard science fiction and the work of Ursula K. Le Guin is more character-driven, both build engaging, wholly original science fiction worlds with rich culture and language. Expect more scientific detail from Clement, while Le Guin's work often reflects contemporary political or gender issues. -- Kaitlyn Moore
Both authors include political and social commentary in their works and often disguise that commentary within mythic lands and otherworldly protagonists. They frequently use the stranger-in-a-strange-land trope to point out the ways in which their worlds differ from the ones we know. And the ways in which they don't. -- Halle Carlson
Ayize Jama-Everett and Ursula Le Guin are science fiction writers who weave issues relating to spirituality and race throughout their vivid fantastical landscapes. Jama-Everett's novels are action-packed whereas Le Guin's follow a more leisurely pace, but science fiction readers looking for something compelling and thought-provoking will enjoy the works of both authors. -- Catherine Coles
While more prolific than her science fiction predecessor, Ursula K. Le Guin shares with Mary Shelley a talent for crafting thought-provoking, atmospheric novels that are entrenched in the social and technological developments of their respective eras. -- Basia Wilson
These authors have written fantasy and social science fiction classics. Their character-driven, thought-provoking stories share an atmospheric and lyrical writing style. Ray Bradbury's nostalgic stories often have near-future settings while Ursula LeGuin writes about fantasy worlds or the far future. Both authors have written for young readers and adults. -- Alicia Cavitt
Fans of Ursula K. Le Guin may find a lesser-known kindred spirit in Australian writer Alexis Wright. These lyrical, thought-provoking writers cross any division between literary fiction and science fiction, especially of the dystopian variety. Both feature recurrent environmental themes and storytelling as a vessel of history and culture. -- Michael Shumate
Michael Cunningham may appeal to Ursula Le Guin's readers who especially appreciate her depictions of modern society and social concerns. Cunningham occasionally employs science fiction conventions; all his writing is carefully crafted and includes believable characters as he builds stories that illuminate contemporary issues. -- Katherine Johnson

Published Reviews

Booklist Review

Le Guin's compilation of eight stories, six set in the universe of the Ekumen, which she introduced in her best-known book, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), requires knowledge of the complexities of her Ekumenical works to be fully appreciated. In one story she expands on the workings of androgynous sex on the planet Gethen, looks at the effect of gender imbalance (16 women to one man) on a planet where men have all the privilege and women all the power, and explores the marriage and kinship customs of the people of the world called O. "Old Music and the Slave Women," another Ekumenical tale, is a fifth story to go with the four connected ones in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995). Le Guin, in the foreword to this book, says that the title story "may or may not take place on a world of the Ekumen," and readers will probably feel the same about it, but knowing the Ekumen canon will help them ascertain that feeling, just as it will make the others more comprehensible. The concluding novella, "Paradises Lost," is the only first publication here. It offers a change of pace and stands well on its own as it follows the experiences of Earth people on a spaceship that takes centuries to get to its destination, centuries during which people are born, grow up, develop a religion, and die without seeing "planetfall." That Le Guin continues to be a master of literary sf is brilliantly borne out in these stories. --Sally Estes

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

Deeply concerned with gender, these eight stories, although ostensibly about aliens, are all about ourselves: love, sex, life and alienation are all handled with illuminating grace. Le Guin's overarching theme, the journey, informs her characters as they struggle to come to terms with themselves or their worlds. The journey can be literal, as in "Paradises Lost," set on a generational ship, where the inhabitants, living in a utopia, learn they will land on the planet their ancestors set out to colonize 40 years earlier; and as in "Unchosen Love," where a young man falls in love with someone in another country and must decide if he can build a new life in a new place. Or the journey can be figurative, as in "Coming of Age in Karhide," in which an adolescent in a genderless society enters sexual maturity; and in "Solitude," as outsiders visit and study a planet where the men and women live apart and a young woman seeks to perfect her soul in the only place she knows as home. In "The Birthday of the World," the nature of God is considered as hereditary rulers, literal gods to their subjects, give up their power when new gods aliens come, throwing their culture into chaos. Gender is a constant concern: "The Matter of Seggri" takes place on a planet where women greatly outnumber men, and in "Unchosen Love" and "Mountain Ways," society is based on complex marriage relationships comprising four people. Le Guin handles these difficult topics through her richly drawn characters and her believable worlds. Evocative, richly textured and lyrically written, this collection is a must-read for Le Guin's fans. (Mar. 13) FYI: Winner of five Hugo and five Nebula awards as well as a National Book Award, Le Guin published two major books last year, Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
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Library Journal Review

From a tale of a youth's sensual and bittersweet initiation into the world of adults on the planet Gethen ("Coming of Age in Karhide") to a story of a child's spiritual and political journey into womanhood ("The Birthday of the World"), this collection of eight short works, including a never-before-published novella, "Paradises Lost," reflects the storytelling expertise of one of the genre's most intelligent and courageous authors. Le Guin grapples with gender roles, religion, politics, and social concerns in prose at once luminous and graphic, tender and incisive, never backing down from difficult situations or selling her audience short. A good choice for sf collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/01.] (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Kirkus Book Review

Eight stories, including seven reprints and a never-before-published novella, by the masterful Le Guin (The Telling, 2000, etc.), who has racked some SF and fantasy classics onto her shelf since receiving her first rejection slip, at age 11, from Amazing Stories. The first six tales take place on the world of Ekumen: "Coming of Age in Karhide" spells out societal differences among the androgynes that confused Le Guin 36 years ago when they arrived piecemeal into her imagination for The Left Hand of Darkness. "The Matter of Seggri" gathers documents by the Historians of Hain about Earth's Seggri society and turns on the killing of female fetuses and babies. The amusing "Unchosen Love" and "Mountain Ways" are set on a world near Hain. The standout, charmingly limpid title story tells of the daughters of God and the infant Tazu, who will be four tomorrow on "The Birthday of the World" (see The Year's Best Science Fiction 2001). In the wry "Solitude," an ethnologist's daughter discusses gender, sexuality, and the lack of marriages among introverted people of Hainish descent who survive a gigantic population crash. "Old Music and the Slave Women" connects with four stories in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995), chronicling a revolution in the slave-based social economy on the planets Werel and Yeowe. Longest by far, the blissful novella "Paradises Lost," written for this collection, tells of a generation of 4,000 space-voyagers aboard the ship Discovery. Their parents, born earlier on that paradisiacal dirtball Earth, did not live to see New Earth, the planet the ship sails toward; perhaps only their grandchildren will. And these new Adams and Eves, upon arrival at New Earth, must of course start naming things before innocence fades. Pure starlight.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

Le Guin's compilation of eight stories, six set in the universe of the Ekumen, which she introduced in her best-known book, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), requires knowledge of the complexities of her Ekumenical works to be fully appreciated. In one story she expands on the workings of androgynous sex on the planet Gethen, looks at the effect of gender imbalance (16 women to one man) on a planet where men have all the privilege and women all the power, and explores the marriage and kinship customs of the people of the world called O. "Old Music and the Slave Women," another Ekumenical tale, is a fifth story to go with the four connected ones in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995). Le Guin, in the foreword to this book, says that the title story "may or may not take place on a world of the Ekumen," and readers will probably feel the same about it, but knowing the Ekumen canon will help them ascertain that feeling, just as it will make the others more comprehensible. The concluding novella, "Paradises Lost," is the only first publication here. It offers a change of pace and stands well on its own as it follows the experiences of Earth people on a spaceship that takes centuries to get to its destination, centuries during which people are born, grow up, develop a religion, and die without seeing "planetfall." That Le Guin continues to be a master of literary sf is brilliantly borne out in these stories. ((Reviewed January 1 & 15, 2002)) Copyright 2002 Booklist Reviews

Copyright 2002 Booklist Reviews
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Library Journal Reviews

Fans will love these eight new stories. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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Library Journal Reviews

From a tale of a youth's sensual and bittersweet initiation into the world of adults on the planet Gethen ("Coming of Age in Karhide") to a story of a child's spiritual and political journey into womanhood ("The Birthday of the World"), this collection of eight short works, including a never-before-published novella, "Paradises Lost," reflects the storytelling expertise of one of the genre's most intelligent and courageous authors. Le Guin grapples with gender roles, religion, politics, and social concerns in prose at once luminous and graphic, tender and incisive, never backing down from difficult situations or selling her audience short. A good choice for sf collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/01.] Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

Deeply concerned with gender, these eight stories, although ostensibly about aliens, are all about ourselves: love, sex, life and alienation are all handled with illuminating grace. Le Guin's overarching theme, the journey, informs her characters as they struggle to come to terms with themselves or their worlds. The journey can be literal, as in "Paradises Lost," set on a generational ship, where the inhabitants, living in a utopia, learn they will land on the planet their ancestors set out to colonize 40 years earlier; and as in "Unchosen Love," where a young man falls in love with someone in another country and must decide if he can build a new life in a new place. Or the journey can be figurative, as in "Coming of Age in Karhide," in which an adolescent in a genderless society enters sexual maturity; and in "Solitude," as outsiders visit and study a planet where the men and women live apart and a young woman seeks to perfect her soul in the only place she knows as home. In "The Birthday of the World," the nature of God is considered as hereditary rulers, literal gods to their subjects, give up their power when new gods aliens come, throwing their culture into chaos. Gender is a constant concern: "The Matter of Seggri" takes place on a planet where women greatly outnumber men, and in "Unchosen Love" and "Mountain Ways," society is based on complex marriage relationships comprising four people. Le Guin handles these difficult topics through her richly drawn characters and her believable worlds. Evocative, richly textured and lyrically written, this collection is a must-read for Le Guin's fans. (Mar. 13) FYI: Winner of five Hugo and five Nebula awards as well as a National Book Award, Le Guin published two major books last year, Tales from Earthsea and The Other Wind. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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