Sita Dulip visits fifteen societies from other worlds, recording the strange yet strangely familiar things she encounters. This later collection of stories by Ursula K. Le Guin is a contemporary reimagining of Gulliver’s Travels, combining anthropological and critical insight with sharp satire.
Sita Dulip has just missed her flight.
Rather than sit through the airport loudspeakers’ awkward, incomprehensible announcements, she discovers a method that allows her to bypass check-in lines, bland meals, crying children and shouting parents, and the uncomfortable plastic chairs bolted to the floor: instead of changing flights, she changes dimensions. There, Sita encounters societies utterly unlike our own. As her method — which eventually comes to bear her name — spreads, she and her fellow travelers discover cultures where people fall silent upon reaching adulthood, where anger and rage form the foundation of every personality, and where entire cities exist solely for the sake of relentless consumption.
These interdimensional journeys, narrated by Ursula K. Le Guin with wit, satire, and philosophical insight, offer a contemporary reimagining of Gulliver’s Travels while exposing unsettling truths about our own society. With her characteristically incisive and playful prose, Le Guin once again explores the themes that run throughout her work: feminism, tyranny, mortality and immortality — and ultimately the meaning, and mystery, of human existence. The collection received the Locus Award for Best Collection in 2004.
