Book Review

I just finished reading Changing Planes by Ursula LeGuin, another favorite author. I should say re-read, because I’d read it a number of years ago, given it to my sister, who just returned it.

LeGuin is probably most famous for her Earthsea books, which I also loved. They were made into one of those made for TV movies. I didn’t like it. They changed the story a lot, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, in my opinion. This time I didn’t think it did, mostly because those dreamy books were turned into an action movie. The author was not pleased because whoever did the changing also tried to make the trilogy into some kind of Religious Statement, which she did not intend.

I understand her anger. But I can see why someone reading Earthsea might have come up with his or her own interpretation, wrong as it was.

LeGuin has a way of poking gentle, and often not so gentle, fun at modern beliefs, practices, and social norms. Changing Planes is no exception. The premise is if you are in an airport and you focus hard enough, you can change planes. Planes as in planes of existence. But only in airports, because it takes boredom, bad treatment, and horrible food to produce the correct mental state. That right there is hilarious, and one of those not so gentle statements.

The stories occurring in alternate dimensions are even more so: a plane catering to American holidays run by captive natives, another where genetic programs have produced people who can’t sleep, a kingdom where those who are different are killed, an island of very sad immortals...all of these destinations pointed to situations in our own world, even if the author had no intention of doing so.

LeGuin’s pieces are, at the very least, philosophical fantasy. I understand why she wouldn’t like her prose “explained”, especially by a TV producer. On the other hand, to have someone take something away from my work, even if it wasn’t intended, I think is pretty cool. In fact, I would love it if two different people got completely different meanings from a story I had written.

But that’s just me…in my own private plane of existence.