Changing Planes

Ursula K. Le Guin

★★★★☆

Lighter than most Le Guin I’ve read, Changing Planes is a Gulliver’s Travels for the present era, the social satire made possible through interdimensional travel. (When you’re stuck in a dismal airport between planes, well, you’re already between planes, right?)

Some chapters are told first person as the narrator explores a new reality (sometimes sticking to the tourist spots, sometimes going off the beaten path). Others read more like magazine articles or encyclopedia entries. Still others mix first- and second-hand accounts with the narrator’s reactions to them.

There’s a world that imported genetic engineering tech without first figuring out evolution and genetics, and proceeded to run amok with it. A world where people stop talking in adolescence, and tourists tend to project whatever they imagine onto the adults’ inner lives. Another where the language is too complex for outsiders to learn or for the auto-translator to process. Worlds where war and battle are everyday things, but aren’t used for domination. One where everyone is royalty, except for a couple of families of commoners (whom the royals are obsessed with). Another that was colonized and turned into a string of theme parks. Worlds where people migrate like birds, or fly, but the non-flyers consider the winged ones to be disabled.

There’s a lot of whimsy, humor and sarcasm. It’s not particularly deep (especially compared to her major works), but it does give you a lot to think about.