skybridge

sethdmichaels.bsky.social · @sethdmichaels.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated The Birthday of the World and Other Stories 8/10

Love love love LeGuin. she has this way of writing that makes her stories feel old and epic and cosmic, even when the actual substance is somewhat mundane - it's like being in a canyon, where you can really hear the echoes and feel the eons of geology around you. all of these stories revolve around defining relations between people when something about the world is tweaked from our own - gender, social structures, norms. most of the stories take place in her general extended universe of humanoid aliens with different arrangements of gender - she really does the thing that sci-fi is supposed to do, which is dive into a speculative world in a way that illuminates our own. one of the stories is more standalone, concerning people living through the middle of a multi-generational space voyage. the one caveat i have about these stories and LeGuin generally is that her tone can sometimes be a little chilly and distant, but she's so sharp an observer that her stories are compelling anyway. if you like sci-fi, you'll probably love this; if you don't like sci-fi it's worth trying this anyway because it's so unusual and is very much about ~people~ more than science or technology per se. there will be images and ideas that will stick with you.

#book

Published 2026-08-18 14:46 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere