And so my le Guin adventure continues…

Sooo… not my favourite le Guin. Which is sad, which is itself silly, since I half expect every new le Guin to become my new favourite!

The premise here is that George, a remarkably ordinary man, has the ability to have what he terms effective dreams: dreams that alter reality. He doesn’t always dream effectively, but when he does he can’t control it. And it’s driving him mad, because he doesn’t want to have this ability. Thus, drugs, and then therapy. However, that’s when things go even less as George would want them to, because his psychiatrist Haber discovers the ability and… well. ‘Manipulation’ has such ominous overtones, but it’s appropriate here.

Objectively, there is little about this book that ought to work, in some senses. For a start, George Orr is a nobody. He doesn’t want to be a villain or a hero. In fact, there are several long sections of the book where the incredible normal-ness, average-ness, and boring-ness of George are analysed in depth, with some interesting discussion about whether his being so very very average is actually quite amazing. I really like George’s normality, and I can imagine that choosing to put this amazing ability into the hands of Mr Boring was actually quite a radical choice for le Guin (it also made me think of Deb Biancott’s Bad Power set of stories, where people get powers without having any desire to have them). Haber is another sort of character altogether, and a deeply unpleasant one at that. But still we don’t get very much insight into Haber – not whether his actions are motivated by greed or misguided altruism or what. We only see him through George, and George is a fairly ignorant observer.

Then there’s the narrative. There isn’t really very much plot, as such, for the simple reason that the world keeps changing. There can’t be much continuity, even in George’s own life, when he keeps changing fundamental aspects of the world itself. And this is disturbing and uncomfortable and a rather confronting narrative device. Of course, part of the point I suppose is to demonstrate that ‘changing the world’ isn’t as easy as it sounds; Haber thinks it will be simple to make things better, but chaos theory tells us that changing one thing can have immeasurable consequences… and when you throw in the added difficulties of everything being mediated through George’s unconscious mind, well. Hello havoc. Essentially the narrative consists of George and his quest to be normal, please.

I thought the explorations of George as Mr Average were a really interesting aspect of the novel, because in some ways it seemed to be interrogating the idea of the hero, in life as well as in literature, and also of course pointing out that the idea of ‘average’ is entirely a construction: no one should actually sit completely at the midpoint of any measures. I was absorbed by le Guin’s awfully relentless exploration of dream-logic and what it would do to the world next. But – apparently The Times declared this book should be “read again and again.” I’m not convinced it has that much re-readability, for me.

Quite a disparate set of stories in this collection from Le Guin, and actually not what I had vaguely anticipated, which was stories connected to the Earthsea set – and why I thought that I have no idea.

Anyway.

One of the interesting parts about this collection is that it opens with an introduction by Le Guin herself, discussing her attitudes towards some of the stories and I think responding to some criticism from people when they originally appeared in magazines and the like. It also includes a robust defence of science fiction in terms of character (SF has them), ideas, and not always being heavy on the science (Egan, she didn’t know about you). In talking about technology, she has one of my now-favourite put-downs, regarding someone who said that Native Americans had no technology: “As we know, kiln-fired pottery is a naturally occurring substance, baskets ripen in the summer, and Machu Picchu just grew there.” She also rather defiantly claims BEAUTY as an aspect of science fictional writing, to which I say HELL YES.

Anyway. Again. The stories are a mixed bunch. The first, “The First Contact with the Gorgonids” is a weird one set in outback NT, with an unhappily married woman as the central character and (deliberately, I think) wince-worthy descriptions of Aborigines. “Newton’s Sleep” is about people who have managed to get themselves into orbit in a habitat to get away from the world, which is going to hell in a handcart; they’re mostly quite ordinary, although by necessity all skilled. Ike – Isaac – is a fairly unlikeable character, although I sympathised, especially when things appear to be going wrong. The third story is just odd, and not in an engaging way – “The Ascent of the North Face” does not refer to a mountain (nor an actual face).

“The Rock that Changed Things” is a story that I more easily associate with Le Guin’s style of writing. Based in an entirely non-human society, where there is a very strict hierarchy to the point of almost being separate species, the nurobls spend their time making sure that the obls can live lives in serenity without messy things like tidying or cleaning. They also help fix the rock patterns that are part of the very reason for being of many obls… and then one nurobls notices the colour of a particular pebble. This is a really delightful story. “The Kerastion” is not delightful, because it is more on the heart-wrenching side; it’s also less of a story and more of a vignette into a world where profession is caste and determines every single interaction.

The final three stories are all Hainish stories, like The Left Hand of Darkness and Rocannon’s World and so many others. In “The Shobies’ Story,” a crew is setting out to test the effects of fast-as-light travel on sentient beings. As Le Guin herself notes in her introduction, as well as playing with such physical ideas it’s also playing with metaphysical ideas, and the notion of creating reality through storytelling. So, too, is “Dancing to Ganam,” also looking at testing the new fast-as-light ‘drive’ (the Cetians are constantly reproving people for describing it as a drive). In this case, Commander Dalzul has decided that a small crew who are closer together than the Shobies might have a better chance at not having their realities warped. As well as looking at how we tell stories about our lives, I think there’s also a post/colonial message here, about the stories and political ideas etc that people bring with them when observing foreign cultures. And finally, there’s the paradoxical, sweet-bittersweet “Another Story,” whence comes the title of the collection: Hideo’s mother used to tell him the story of the fisherman of the Inland Sea, who went with a sea-princess and returned after one night to discover generations have passed. Hideo goes on to become a great physicist, and tries out fast-as-light travel…. This is definitely my favourite of the stories in this collection, and I love it dearly. It’s also set on O, a planet I’m sure I’ve read another short story about, perhaps in The Birthday of the World; here people have marriages involving four people, two men and two women, based around when they are born. It’s a fascinating view of society.

This has been part of my desire to read All The Le Guin, and it was overall a very satisfying one.

I am a big fan of le Guin, but this is definitely not a favourite collection. It’s amusing, but it’s not excellent (for me, anyway).

The conceit behind the collection I did really like: the idea that the boredom of sitting in an airport could trigger a visit to – wait for it – a different plane, as in of existence. It seems to be that the body itself does the travelling, because people come back with presents and sometimes arrive back on their own plane upside down. This is quite a fun take on the idea of alternate realities, since I think the idea also is that all of these planes are variations on Earth.

Each story in this collection is set in, or describes, a different plane, and many of them have little actual plot. It’s more like a travelogue, which makes sense and perhaps accounts for my less-than-in-love reaction. Some of them are very clever; some of them are quite clearly making a specific point about contemporary ideas, technology, or issues, or are presenting a topsy-turvy view to challenge and confront the reader. So there’s a plane where almost everyone is royalty; one where after about the age of 7, hardly anyone speaks; and one where people share their neighbours’ dreams. There’s a plane where two major cities fought for decades over a couple of acres of riverside property, and one where developing wings is a disability to be pitied. On another plane a scientific experiment attempted to develop children with no need of sleep, raising questions of the necessity of consciousness and sleep for sentience, and another where violence is a way of life.

I guess I expect le Guin to always turn out serious, hard-hitting and difficult fiction, which this is – largely – not. It’s a bit unreasonable of me, but there you go; I don’t expect light-hearted from her! It is a delightful collection, though, and of course all of the stories are very well written and there are some totally delightful descriptions.