Reviews for The birthday of the world

The average rating for The birthday of the world based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-07 00:00:00 William Wright The Birthday of the World and other stories by Ursula K. LeGuin is a beautifully written collection of stories crafted by an artist whose ability to create deeply meaningful speculative fiction has placed her high among peers. Providing a foreword to her work, LeGuin makes a persuasive case that the collection of short stories should be considered its own genre. While her reasoning makes sense and should be considered, LeGuin really makes her case in the pages that follow. Creating a panorama of humanity with frank sexuality and sincere emotion, LeGuin again creates a speculative fiction work that transcends that genre and bridges the gap with works that evoke human behavior, group dynamics, cultural and social foundations. Science fiction may be her medium, but the result of her craft is fiction that resonates with what it means to be a man and a woman. "Coming of Age in Karhide" was first published in 1995 and takes place on Gethen the planet of The Left Hand of Darkness, part of LeGuin's Hainish cycle. Fans of TLHOD will recall that the hermaphroditic Gethenians are either male or female during a monthly phase called kemmer. LeGuin uses this setting as a further exploration of that creation and also as a transcendent means of expressing a uniquely human experience either from a man or woman's perspective. "The Matter of Seggri" first released in 1994 and also in LeGuin's Hain universe, this is a deeply personal, introspective description of alteration and renewal. "Unchosen Love" - another exploration of sexuality and also from 1994. Set on the planet O where society is structured around the sedoretu - a marriage involving four people. LeGuin uses this unusual arrangement to examine cultural and group dynamics and also to demonstrate that human nature does not change, regardless of social convention. "Mountain Ways" another story from the planet O and about the strange institution of the sedoretu, this complicated but charming story of love in the face of cultural prohibitions serves as a vehicle for LeGuin to subtly but demonstrably shine a revealing light on arbitrary and senseless barriers to individuality and genuine human emotion. "Solitude" - set in the outer limits of human civilization, LeGuin defines individuality and yet also shows how a human must have interaction and relationship, even if stretched to its farthest extremities. "Old Music and the Slave Women" a quietly strong story about slavery, dignity, bravery and standing against a grievance that has become ingrained in society. This is LeGuin as a Goya like artist, painting a painful scene that needs to be shown. "The Birthday of the World" the titular story is from 2000 and tales a story in the Hainish style though the planet is never clearly identified. Told from the perspective of an old woman looking back to important events from when she was young, this describes a world where society has created a situation where a royal family has come to be worshipped as, and to believe itself to be, deity. This is reminiscent of an Egyptian or Incan culture, and gives LeGuin the opportunity to examine and scrutinize the rationality and power of theological belief. "Paradises Lost" - my favorite and a new publication. Vaguely reminiscent of Frank Herbert's Destination: Void, this explores the voyage of a generational ship. Science fiction writers have long taken the easy way out in distant space travel by concocting "wormholes" or "warp space" or whatever. LeGuin considers the human cost on a voyage meant to take 200 years to complete and especially the impact on the middle generations, those whose life is expected to be made up entirely of journey, never expected to reach a destination. Poignant, though provoking and epitomizing LeGuin's inimitable ability to accurately portray human emotion, "Paradises Lost" stands atop this elite collection to highlight the author's unquestioned ability to construct a glimpse of our soul.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-04-13 00:00:00 Elizabeth Silva I liked all the stories here, but Paradises Lost I loved. I thought about it since yesterday, and decided to knock this book up from four to five stars because of Paradises Lost, and that's the story I'd like to write about here. This novella is about a generational ship travelling from Earth to a new, distant planet, to study it and see whether or not it can be colonized. After reading this, I was considering whether such an enterprise would ever be successful, not because of technological limitations, but rather if human nature would be doomed to compromise it. We get to know a bit about the ships history, but the main focus lies on the fifth generation to live on the ship. The technological aspects of the ship works very well, people are safe and comfortable, they have never known cold or hunger or thirst or just being really tired after a long day of physical labor. They always walk barefoot, and children are naked, because their environment perfectly accommodates human needs and wants. In one way they're very smart people, but at the same time very naive. They cannot imagine the hardships of colonizing a new planet. Or even of living without walls around them all the time. They cannot even imagine clouds, wind, sky. They know in theory what these things are, but have no feel for them. There are several very interesting paragraphs about what "nature" "human nature" civilization" and "control" really mean, seen from the perspective of people who have never set foot on a place with wild nature, but always been confined to a human-made environment. In a way they are institutionalized. Some of them starts to think that "the departure" and "the arrival" are metaphorical concepts, and the only things that exists are the ship and the voyage. This is also a story about the power of religion or the danger of cults. The generational ship started out as a mostly atheistic enterprise - how to deal with startup religions is even laid down in their constitution. But maybe it's ingrained in human nature to search for something to believe in? And how all this played out on an isolated, generational ship was completely fascinating to read about. Towards the end, I had this dark, nervous feeling inside me that went something like "Will the remnants of of the clear, scientific, sensible minds that first left Earth still be strong enough to win out over the crazies?" The power struggle and political/religious scheming, based on manipulating people's world view, really got to me. This story shows the struggle between different sides of the human mind, and that made it profound in a way few authors can manage. Like in so many of her works, it's Le Guin's anthropological and philosophical mind that makes Paradises Lost shine.