Unlocking the Air and Other Stories

Rating:
Summary: America's greatest living writer
Review: No one can claim more breadth of talent that Ursula K. Le Guin. She's known to science fiction for her brilliant social-science fiction and to the fantasy world for her world of Earthsea, making her one of the few truly original writers in each of those fields. But here she proves that she is not limited by the stereotypes and discriminations of genre writing. They might call this "mainstream" compared to her other writing: it generally doesn't involve other worlds; but Le Guin is entirely incapable of doing anything "mainstream;" it's still her, and she's still the best. These stories are beautiful to read. They are never too light, never too serious: always playful, always pointed. She flirts with ideas of reality, throwing the traditional existential questions out the window. "Ether, OR" tells the story of a town in Oregon that moves from place to place from multiple perspectives. "Unlocking the Air" is about wars and rumors of wars in a small, nonexistent European country (the same Orsinia from "Orsinian Tales" and "Malafrena"). "Sunday in Summer in Seatown" is a simple prose poem. She's always pushing the edge, pushing herself. It seems that she's succeeded again.

Rating:
Summary: America's greatest living writer
Review: No one can claim more breadth of talent that Ursula K. Le Guin. She's known to science fiction for her brilliant social-science fiction and to the fantasy world for her world of Earthsea, making her one of the few truly original writers in each of those fields. But here she proves that she is not limited by the stereotypes and discriminations of genre writing. They might call this "mainstream" compared to her other writing: it generally doesn't involve other worlds; but Le Guin is entirely incapable of doing anything "mainstream;" it's still her, and she's still the best. These stories are beautiful to read. They are never too light, never too serious: always playful, always pointed. She flirts with ideas of reality, throwing the traditional existential questions out the window. "Ether, OR" tells the story of a town in Oregon that moves from place to place from multiple perspectives. "Unlocking the Air" is about wars and rumors of wars in a small, nonexistent European country (the same Orsinia from "Orsinian Tales" and "Malafrena"). "Sunday in Summer in Seatown" is a simple prose poem. She's always pushing the edge, pushing herself. It seems that she's succeeded again.

Rating:
Summary: a real master of her craft
Review: Unlocking the Air is an interesting collection of stories that crosses over genres in LeGuin's style of bridging the misty realm of dreams with the sun-bright daytime world of movement and activity. To me she is an absolutely amazing artist.

Rating:
Summary: a real master of her craft
Review: Unlocking the Air is an interesting collection of stories that crosses over genres in LeGuin's style of bridging the misty realm of dreams with the sun-bright daytime world of movement and activity. To me she is an absolutely amazing artist.