The Birthday of the World: And Other Stories

In a mountain community on the Hainish world O, Shahes and Akal fall for each other. Yet the society's traditional four-person marriages leave no place for a bond between only the two of them, leading them to plan a dangerous deception in order to fit its rules.

plural marriagegendersame-sex lovesocial normsthe Hainish world

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Work Information

Even a marriage system that appears free can become a new barrier to two people in love.

"Mountain Ways" is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in Asimov's Science Fiction in 1996. In the mountains of world O, marriage between two men and two women forms the basis of society. Shahes and Akal try to choose love within the gaps of that custom, confronting questions of gender, desire, and honesty. The story was later collected in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories.

Review Summaries

It has been praised for naturally exploring gender and diverse desire through a richly realized alien social system and its relationships.

Book Information

Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2002-03-05
Pages: 384 pages
Language: 英語
Size: 15.88 x 3.07 x 23.5 cm
ISBN-13: 9780066212531
ISBN-10: 0066212537
Category: 洋書/Science Fiction & Fantasy/Science Fiction/Anthologies

“Le Guin is a writer of enormous intelligence and wit, a master storyteller with the humor and force of a Twain. . . . The Birthday of the World is prime new Le Guin. Like a tour of other countries, these splendid and necessary stories will send you back home with new eyes.” — Boston Globe Ursula K. Le Guin has enthralled readers with her imagination, clarity, and moral vision. The recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, and five Hugo and five Nebula Awards, this renowned writer has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. In The Birthday of the World , she returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity. Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history. The first six tales in this spectacular volume are set in the author's signature world of the Ekumen, "my pseudo-coherent universe with holes in the elbows," as Le Guin describes it—a world made familiar in her award-winning novel The Left Hand of Darkness . The seventh, title story was hailed by Publishers Weekly as "remarkable . . . a standout." The final offering in the collection, Paradises Lost , is a mesmerizing novella of space exploration and the pursuit of happiness. In her foreword, Le Guin writes, "to create difference—to establish strangeness—then to let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the gap: this acrobatics of the imagination fascinates and satisfies me as no other." In The Birthday of the World , this gifted literary acrobat exhibits a dazzling array of skills that will fascinate and satisfy us all.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters. Her body of work includes twenty-three novels, twelve volumes of short stories, eleven volumes of poetry, thirteen children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. The breadth and imagination of her work earned her six Nebula Awards, seven Hugo Awards, and the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master Award, along with a PEN/Malamud Award and many other accolades. In 2016 she joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America.

Reviews

Adult literature

Good book - but not for kids!!! Don’t buy by mistake.
The best of Ursula's stories!

Don't go any further than this! This is THE BEST series of stories by Ursula Le Guin. Mind shaking, moving, epic, subtle and just amazing! Buy this!
Better than expected

I fell in love with Ursula K Leguin at the age of 15, when I first read the Earthsea novels. I'm a big SF and fantasy fan, but she is someone special. Her skill is in world building - she can create a world, a culture and an emotional context that enables her characters to spring to life. The Ekumen is here, and her frequent themes of the complexities of sex and gender. She writes about the stupid and beautiful things people do and doesn't judge, lets the story unfold and leaves you to make your own mind up about what you think. You can dip into this book and just read a story, or you can do what I did on holiday and devour the lot in one go. If you like writing that's spare, compassionate and thoughtful, you'll like this.
endlessly inventive and surprising

Ursula Le Guin is so humane and perceptive and inventive and funny that reading her work is like a live performance. In these short stories - perhaps even more than in her novels - she provides insights into our own world and society by imagining alien ones. So much richness and imagination in too few pages!
Mindbendingly Brilliant

LeGuin is SUCH a brilliant writer that on the one hand she inspires me to write, to reach for the stars, on the other hand I despair of ever getting close to her AMAZING, lyrical prose. Her work is filed in Science Fiction, but truly, she is all about who WE are, now. This is a collection of eight short stories/novellas, what she calls a "story suite," that is, worlds/stories set in the same mythical universe. Her stories simultaneously pose the question, "What would life/society be like if: All beings were hermaphroditic, neuter, and became male or female periodically for short periods of time, either siring or bearing children? Females born live and healthy outnumbered males 16:1? Marriages are a complicated mix of foursomes: two males, two females, and two moieties? The rulers of the world are considered Gods, much like the early Egyptians? People travel on a multi-generation starship to discover and colonize another planet - what would the 5th generation be like? She explores these questions, and more, in incredible tales that draw us fully into these make-believe worlds, while at the same time, holding up a mirror to the society in which we live, without ever getting preachy, lecturing, or wordy. I am a long-time fan of LeGuin's work, but even the stories that introduced me to worlds new to me, such as Paradises Lost, felt fully realized within a few pages. For those who proclaim that "I never read science fiction;" if you skip Ursula LeGuin you are cheating yourself of some of the most original, imaginative, skillful, downright beautiful writing there is, in any genre.