Changing Planes

If one wanted to design a perfect science fiction writer, one would need elements of history, anthropology, psychology, imagination along with freedom from dogma. Consider the long life of Le Guin, the author, who over sixty years of writing, created twenty novels and one hundred short stories. Le Guin’s mother was a psychologist, her father an anthropologist, and her husband was a historian. Le Guin was raised in Berkeley in a liberal and bookish atmosphere. Her mother wrote the biography of Ishi, the last native of the California Yahi tribe. One can see elements of all these influences in Le Guin’s very imaginative Changing Planes.|The title of the book is essentially a pun as Sita Dulip is fed up with waiting for planes in airport waiting rooms and finds a way to literally change planes by traveling to other worlds. Le Guin exactly captures the ennui resulting from sitting in bolted down chairs with other travelers waiting for arrivals, departures, and connections. She rails against the entrapment which we all feel as we cannot escape the between worlds feeling of airports. As Dulip travels and observes the customs and lifestyles in other worlds, this reader is struck by the rich imagination and visions of the author.