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idajoh's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
As always I love Le Guin. And this must be one of my favorites, although I didn't know what to expect going into it.
It was filled with social critique (and probably critiques of some sci-fi authors that I didn't recognize). This was immensely creepy, and most of it came down to the values in our own society. Some stories were on the other hand heartwarming.
It was filled with social critique (and probably critiques of some sci-fi authors that I didn't recognize). This was immensely creepy, and most of it came down to the values in our own society. Some stories were on the other hand heartwarming.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape, Pregnancy, Murder, Misogyny, and Sexual assault
novella42's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
I read this for the 2023 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge, for the entry "read your favorite author's favorite book," because I was able to find an interview with Becky Chambers in which she raved about this collection. I can see what drew her to it, though I'm sad that an author I consider to be really good at disability representation didn't have the same experience I had with this book.
For the record, I did really enjoy The Silence of the Asonu, Seasons of the Ansarac, and Social Dreaming of the Frin.
I have adored LeGuin since I was a teenager, but the more work I do around disability justice the more I find myself noticing the ableism woven into some of her stories and essays. I'd say it detracted from the experience, but more, it is just truly disheartening to learn that a role model you've looked up to for years might have thought or felt some awful things about your disabled body and presence in society.
I know this book was published in 2003 and at least six of the stories date back to 1998, 2000, etc. Likewise, I know if I had read these stories at that time, my own internalized ableism was so entrenched—I wouldn't even learn the word "ableism" until 2018, in spite of having experienced it all my life—that I probably wouldn't have said anything about it. I probably would've felt uncomfortable but in that wordless way when you don't have the vocabulary to explain what feels off.
Some of the moments of ableism seem to come down to vocabulary. Some go deeper into the speculative fiction trope of using a body horror lens on disability to demonstrate the perils of technology/magic.
I'm putting some spoiler-level details behind the cut, if you want them, or you think I'm being oversensitive / unduly harsh on the author.
From The Nna Mmoy Language:
"Like everybody else, I found their language so difficult that they probably thought me retarded."
"I suspect they heard my language as a noise made by an idiot... They recognized me as a human being, but as a defective one. I couldn't talk. I couldn't make the connections."
From The Flyers of Gy:
"[When 1 in 1000 people grow wings in their culture, it is] something every parent and every adolescent dreads: a rare but fearful deformity, a curse, a death sentence... Among the urbanized Gyr, that dread is mitigated to some degree, since the winged ones are treated... with tolerance and even sympathy, as people with a most unfortunate handicap."
"'I wasn't going to let this business eat up my whole life. To me the wings are simply excrescences. Growths. Impediments to walking, dancing, sitting in a civilized manner on a normal chair, wearing decent clothing. I refused to let something like that get in the way of my education, my life... I was fortunate enough to meet a beautiful woman who refused to let my handicap frighten her. In fact she won't let me call it that. She insists that all this'—he indicated his wings with a slight gesture of his head—'was what she first saw in me.'"
Wake Island spends a lot of time with a culture that denigrates people with intellectual disabilities in the pursuit of genetically developing intelligence by inducing sleeplessness. There's a lot of medical trauma and sexual violence in this one, plus some anti-Autism sentiment. (If this is a topic you're interested in, I'd cautiously recommend the 1991 novel Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress, which may or may not have aged well, but I do remember the super-intelligent sleepless characters depicted in far more humanizing ways.)
I'm not going to quote from The Island of the Immortals, but the horror of it is going to haunt me for a long time.
For the record, I did really enjoy The Silence of the Asonu, Seasons of the Ansarac, and Social Dreaming of the Frin.
I have adored LeGuin since I was a teenager, but the more work I do around disability justice the more I find myself noticing the ableism woven into some of her stories and essays. I'd say it detracted from the experience, but more, it is just truly disheartening to learn that a role model you've looked up to for years might have thought or felt some awful things about your disabled body and presence in society.
I know this book was published in 2003 and at least six of the stories date back to 1998, 2000, etc. Likewise, I know if I had read these stories at that time, my own internalized ableism was so entrenched—I wouldn't even learn the word "ableism" until 2018, in spite of having experienced it all my life—that I probably wouldn't have said anything about it. I probably would've felt uncomfortable but in that wordless way when you don't have the vocabulary to explain what feels off.
Some of the moments of ableism seem to come down to vocabulary. Some go deeper into the speculative fiction trope of using a body horror lens on disability to demonstrate the perils of technology/magic.
I'm putting some spoiler-level details behind the cut, if you want them, or you think I'm being oversensitive / unduly harsh on the author.
From The Nna Mmoy Language:
"Like everybody else, I found their language so difficult that they probably thought me retarded."
"I suspect they heard my language as a noise made by an idiot... They recognized me as a human being, but as a defective one. I couldn't talk. I couldn't make the connections."
From The Flyers of Gy:
"[When 1 in 1000 people grow wings in their culture, it is] something every parent and every adolescent dreads: a rare but fearful deformity, a curse, a death sentence... Among the urbanized Gyr, that dread is mitigated to some degree, since the winged ones are treated... with tolerance and even sympathy, as people with a most unfortunate handicap."
"'I wasn't going to let this business eat up my whole life. To me the wings are simply excrescences. Growths. Impediments to walking, dancing, sitting in a civilized manner on a normal chair, wearing decent clothing. I refused to let something like that get in the way of my education, my life... I was fortunate enough to meet a beautiful woman who refused to let my handicap frighten her. In fact she won't let me call it that. She insists that all this'—he indicated his wings with a slight gesture of his head—'was what she first saw in me.'"
Wake Island spends a lot of time with a culture that denigrates people with intellectual disabilities in the pursuit of genetically developing intelligence by inducing sleeplessness. There's a lot of medical trauma and sexual violence in this one, plus some anti-Autism sentiment. (If this is a topic you're interested in, I'd cautiously recommend the 1991 novel Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress, which may or may not have aged well, but I do remember the super-intelligent sleepless characters depicted in far more humanizing ways.)
I'm not going to quote from The Island of the Immortals, but the horror of it is going to haunt me for a long time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Torture, Classism, Colonisation, Body horror, Chronic illness, Ableism, and Medical trauma
Moderate: Death, Racism, Genocide, Gaslighting, Sexual violence, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexual assault, Mental illness, and War
Minor: Pandemic/Epidemic and Pregnancy
chelseareads's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
reflective
tense
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Rape, Violence, War, and Sexual violence
brothertubber's review against another edition
dark
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Rape
keholste's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Rape and Violence
nannahnannah's review
3.0
Darn, this takes the unfortunate place as my least favorite Le Guin read so far, but it’s still well written and thought provoking--and I do like a good many of the stories inside. Definitely not her strongest work, though.
Representation:
N/A
A woman named Sita Dulip discovers a way to transport herself from our earthly plane to nearly innumerable others--as long as she's waiting in an airport, is miserable, and is suffering from mild indigestion. Since then this type of travel been done by all sorts of people all around the globe, and in this collection one writer shares her experiences.
I think a big reason why I didn’t enjoy this--as an overall, cohesive work or looking at each story individually--as much as Le Guin’s other works is because firstly, these stories are less like actual short stories and more like ethnographic studies. Secondly, they lack a central heart that connects them in a more coherent way than the concept can alone (which would have worked better if there wasn’t a character “present” in every single one of them). I write “present” in quotation marks, because most of the time we’re just reading her travel diary. The stories contain fascinating notes on culture and world building creation, as well as the ever-present and relevant social commentary, but they will never be as engrossing as something that has an actual narrative.
Oh, but I love “The Nna Mmoy Language,” even if it is one of the above-type ethnographic stories. Le Guin is such an insightful and profound thinker. And overall an incredible inspiration.
But, of course, every collection of short stories is a grab bag, and this one is no exception. Unfortunately, most are just okay, with only a few standouts on either extreme. My least favorite is “The Fliers of Gy.” Not only does it use the cr*ppled slur many, many times, it attempts to use a disabled character to speak from a neuro-atypical pov to express superiority over neurotypicals/able-bodied people. It goes so far as to have the “disabled” people refuse to marry ableds. Many authors have done this “reverse oppression” kind of formula with the intent of getting their audience to become aware of a certain issue (like Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses and antiblack racism). As an autistic and cr*ppled person myself, this story left me more uncomfortable than anything, but I think I’d like to hear from another disabled and/or autistic person’s opinion on it before I go so far as to say it’s ableist or anything!
The last story is definitely strong, but it also shows a major issue I had with the collection as a cohesive unit. By the way this work introduces the narrator, it seems like it should have started off the collection. It’s the only story to actually introduce the narrator at all or give us any small idea of what she’s like outside of interviewing people--besides the book’s concept. She’s what’s holding the collection together, the traveler visiting and writing about each different plane. Most of the time, though, she’s not even present in the stories at all, which makes the collection’s theme less strong and more like a very polished, beautifully written book of notes about fictional cultures.
But! I was never bored, and I never counted down the pages. I even took my own notes. So it’s still a book worth reading, if you know why you’re reading.
Representation:
N/A
A woman named Sita Dulip discovers a way to transport herself from our earthly plane to nearly innumerable others--as long as she's waiting in an airport, is miserable, and is suffering from mild indigestion. Since then this type of travel been done by all sorts of people all around the globe, and in this collection one writer shares her experiences.
I think a big reason why I didn’t enjoy this--as an overall, cohesive work or looking at each story individually--as much as Le Guin’s other works is because firstly, these stories are less like actual short stories and more like ethnographic studies. Secondly, they lack a central heart that connects them in a more coherent way than the concept can alone (which would have worked better if there wasn’t a character “present” in every single one of them). I write “present” in quotation marks, because most of the time we’re just reading her travel diary. The stories contain fascinating notes on culture and world building creation, as well as the ever-present and relevant social commentary, but they will never be as engrossing as something that has an actual narrative.
Oh, but I love “The Nna Mmoy Language,” even if it is one of the above-type ethnographic stories. Le Guin is such an insightful and profound thinker. And overall an incredible inspiration.
But, of course, every collection of short stories is a grab bag, and this one is no exception. Unfortunately, most are just okay, with only a few standouts on either extreme. My least favorite is “The Fliers of Gy.” Not only does it use the cr*ppled slur many, many times, it attempts to use a disabled character to speak from a neuro-atypical pov to express superiority over neurotypicals/able-bodied people. It goes so far as to have the “disabled” people refuse to marry ableds. Many authors have done this “reverse oppression” kind of formula with the intent of getting their audience to become aware of a certain issue (like Malorie Blackman’s Noughts & Crosses and antiblack racism). As an autistic and cr*ppled person myself, this story left me more uncomfortable than anything, but I think I’d like to hear from another disabled and/or autistic person’s opinion on it before I go so far as to say it’s ableist or anything!
The last story is definitely strong, but it also shows a major issue I had with the collection as a cohesive unit. By the way this work introduces the narrator, it seems like it should have started off the collection. It’s the only story to actually introduce the narrator at all or give us any small idea of what she’s like outside of interviewing people--besides the book’s concept. She’s what’s holding the collection together, the traveler visiting and writing about each different plane. Most of the time, though, she’s not even present in the stories at all, which makes the collection’s theme less strong and more like a very polished, beautifully written book of notes about fictional cultures.
But! I was never bored, and I never counted down the pages. I even took my own notes. So it’s still a book worth reading, if you know why you’re reading.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape and Incest
Moderate: Ableism
ciancitt's review against another edition
dark
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
4.5
Loved it! Would very much like to live in a reality where I can change planes, at the very least it would make the interminable waits for connecting flights more interesting. Back to the book, every chapter has such interesting premises, and the snippets of the different cultures were extremely well developed and flushed out. I went into the book knowing nothing, and I encourage you to do the same.
Personal favourites (in order): The Nna Mmoy Language, The building, Social Dreaming of the Frin, The Fliers of Gy
Personal favourites (in order): The Nna Mmoy Language, The building, Social Dreaming of the Frin, The Fliers of Gy
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Child death, and Death
Minor: Rape
laguerrelewis's review
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
This book is a literal Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy. It tells a series of stories about different planes of existence, with endless creativity and depth. I don’t usually read non-narrative fiction, but this was an excellent case for the genre. There is no plot, though learning about these fictional worlds is certainly still engaging—helped by Le Guin’s excellent narrative voice. A fun, lighthearted read that surely took a lot of genius to create.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Rape
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