The framing device for these connected short stories from sci-fi/fantasy legend Ursula Leguin is that bored air travelers can slip out of airport lounges into alternative worlds or planes. So, while travelers are waiting to change planes, they can take little side trips by changing planes. The collection is one traveler’s accounts of her visits to alternative planes.

Reading Changing Places is like getting a series of letters from a traveling friend with newsy reports of her latest stops. But these are not your usual colorful locals and odd customs. The narrator meets people who are mostly human (and part plants and animals), entire populations who migrate north to breed and return south when their young are grown, people compelled to build stone structures that no one uses, people cursed with flight where flyers are considered deformed, and others—each more outlandish than the last.

The collection showcases LeGuin’s world-building talent. Sixteen stories each present a unique world with one or more species of cool, outrageous, thought provoking, or weird sentient beings. It’s good these various being we meet are interesting because not much actually happens in any of the stories. This gives the collection something of a contemplative mood, like a series of miniature studies in extraterrestrial sociology.

So, for LeGuin’s fans, this collection offers two things she does best: build worlds and examine their social structures. Few writers come up with so many and so varied new ways to imagine life. And few make it interesting enough you want to keep turning the pages to see what the next plane change will bring. ( )

A standard quality collection, coming in at 3.25. The best work is in the last three stories. Planes here does not refer to the big metal sausage with wings variety, but the extra-world type.

Changing Planes : Sita Dulip's Method - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : Porridge on Islac - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : The Silence of the Asonu - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : Feeling at Home with the Hennebet - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : The Ire of the Veksi - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : The Seasons of the Ansarac - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : Social Dreaming of the Frin - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : The Royals of Hegn - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : Woeful Tales from Mahigul - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : Great Joy - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : Wake Island - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : The Nna Mmoy Language - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : The Building - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : The Fliers of Gy - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : The Island of the Immortals - Ursula K. Le Guin
Changing Planes : Confusions of Uñi - Ursula K. Le Guin

Alternate travel.

3 out of 5

Bear bowling.

3 out of 5

Plane saying.

3 out of 5

Not like me.

3 out of 5

Violence unvisited.

3 out of 5

Migratory pattern.

4 out of 5

Projecting power.

3 out of 5

Party secrets.

3.5 out of 5

Area examination.

3 out of 5

Restricted yankish.

3 out of 5

Smarter group.

3 out of 5

Safe but dull.

3 out of 5

Stonewalling.

3 out of 5

Winged handicap ritual.

3.5 out of 5

Carbon based longlife.

4 out of 5

Interplanary virtual reality craft.

4 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/09... ( )

After all those crime books, I thought it was about time for some fantasy! This is a collection of short stories set in parallel planes of existence (yes, the title is some sort of pun). The introduction says that a method for travelling to other worlds was discovered, but it only works if you're in an airport. So when people are stuck waiting for a delayed plane or missed transfer, they can go travelling for a while and not miss much time here.

Each story is set in another world, and they do somehow have the air of travel writing about them. I enjoyed all of the stories here, but I would have liked to see some trips to more high-technology worlds - the majority of them were set in peaceful, less technologically developed planes, or worlds that have reverted after some kind of event turned them away from that sort of thing. Still, on the whole a very good read. ( )

When someone discovers how to 'change planes' while waiting in an airport for a flight, a whole universe of possibilities is opened up. This tells the experiences of some of the planechangers, the planes (or planets) they visit and the societies and cultures they find.

From the satirical tale of The Holiday Plane, where islands have been converted to cater for different holidays (such as Christmas with the villages of Noel, O Little Town etc), to the amusingly cynical (Hegn, where everyone is royalty apart from a small group of commoners), these stories and accounts are sometimes illuminating, disturbing, sad and peaceful all at the same time.

It is difficult to pick a favourite chapter out of this (each chapter tells of a different world), I have found the place I would most love to sit and read: The Library Gardens of Mahigul.

"In spring, during the mild steady rains, big awnings are stretched from one library arcade to the next, so that you can still sit outdoors, hearing the soft drumming on the canvas overhead, looking up from your reading to see the trees and the pale sky beyond the awning."

and

"In winter it's often foggy, not a cold fog but a mist through which and in which the sunlight is always warmly palpable, like the colour in a milk opal. The fog softens the sloping lawns and the high, dark trees, bringing them closer, into a quiet, mysterious intimacy."

I have the feeling I will read these stories again and again and again. The power they provide, the thought they provoke and the rush of emotions they produce are extraordinary. And all done in such a gentle way that you don't realise you're being touched until you take a breath at the end of each one.

I would highly recommend this. I never expected it to be as good as it is, and I am surprised I had never heard of it before.

4.5 out of 5 ( )

"Confusions of Uni" was my favorite story in this collection about visits to other planes. They are accessed from the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floors of airport terminals, and a two-day trip takes only minutes in our time. ( )