Like any collection of short stories; there were stronger and weaker tales. I enjoyed everyone channeling their inner Le Guin, but some stories definitely showed how that's harder than it looks.
This is an anthology of stories by about twenty-nine different authors, in tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin. I have a weakness for anything Ursula, it seems.
Let's go some of my notes one-by-one.
I. Magelight
A lay of light and anger
Songs, poetry, and words form the weapons in this world. Child discovers that the rebels they always feared are actually an inspiring protest against a dictatorial ruler they always revered.
The night bazaar for women becoming reptiles
Lovely title that invokes immediate inspiration. Interestingly fresh societal norms, truly reminiscent of Le Guin; moonside and sunside partners. A self-contained society somewhere in the desert. And still the silent dreams of people that long to break their mammalian husks.
The wake
A beautiful adventure in a tangible but imaginary world. Gods die, but humans continue their search for meaning and togetherness.
Black as thread
Stitching curses into fabrics as a silent resistance against military oppressors. Jilli slowly discovers how powerful her magic truly is, with the needle feeding upon her blood. But at the height of her power, she chooses to back off and realizes that genuinely spending time with her brother without any incantations forcing anyone to is worth way more.
A woven womb
Weavers form children in this spiritual ritual with the two parents, tugging on threads of their souls. But the Order forbids a weaver from bringing in themselves. Gyndre's most meaningful friend's weaving threatens to go awry, producing a child immensely powerful but scared of herself. She must break her Order's vows to save this child's sanity.
The couple escapes to the cold north where everyone's still flesh-born and Gyndre stays behind to prepare the world for the return of a new most-powerful weaver.
Prothalamion
Vogelvlucht telling of a village's corrupted dreams that came to bear reality. Some of these paragraphs would even work as microfiction. All of it has a very ominous and mystical bend.
The kingdom of the belly
A girl strikes a bargain with a coyote to bring back her kitten from ghostness. The author said she's inspired by Le Guin's "catwing" books, "the royalty among children's books." Should give those a read then.
Return to the root
Old souls
That's a lot of plot twists and surprises for a short story. Even if we realize it is going to happen half a page before, that must of course have been the intention. A clearer message than we would find in Le Guin's work, but equally powerful. Makes me want to finally start on some of Fonda Lee's books.
The ones who don't walk away
Hauntingly dark, building on Le Guin's Omelas.
The polar explorer
This is one of the best short story-to-adventure ratio's I've read. Chillingly sharp sentences on gender inequality. Truly Le Guin-esque.
Only a month after she mailed her paper, "On the Contours and Tendencies of Arctic Sea Ice," to the Royal Society of London, she received a rejection. The Society's board members believed Mínervudottír had either invented the data or stolen it from a man. Upon reading the terse letter, she held a lit match to the healing stump of her pinky until the skin bubbled.
Birds
I don't really know what to think. An enjoyable little tale between two people, one homeless and living on the outside of skyscraper, with undercurrents of noticing the world around us.
Homeless Gary Busey
Fever dream of a downward spiral. How Ian falls back to bad Ian and becomes homeless himself.
Findin Joan
Like one of those apocalpyse tales, but instead of making it American patriotism (which is mentioned and dismissed here), it's about a spiritual woman of fifty-eight learning to live independent of society and men.
Becoming human
No human is left alive after a nuclear disaster. But ants take up the mantle of dangerous rhetorics and the waging of wars. All motivated by wanting to bake cakes in the kitchen of the Jackson's.
Bee, keeper
Insanely well done bee society with different factions vying for strategic interests. There are "free-hives" and boxheads with discussions over the merits of symbiosis with human while they at the same time spray the air with toxins. And then there are the religious fanatics (also boxheads) who see humans as their gods. They recruit and send an outcast drone to assassinate the queen of queens at the congregration of queens. Love the long names all bees carry. Feels right. (E.g., Yursillinianna, Rillixintraxil)
KwaZulu-natal
Moving tale of a boy's bond with an elephant he raised despite enduring an abusive father. The boy's father still showed some care for his son, even though he didn't really approve of the elephant. The end nearly brought me to tears. The getting away from dusty Zuid-Afrika, sailing across the world, only to return to his home park and feel the rumble of Rocky. It's the piece of him that he'd carried with him, inside of his heart, that brought him there again.
Mr. Uncle's favor
Brought tears to my eyes, in the middle of the eating hall for volunteers at ITGWO. Such a beautiful and tender bond between a little girl and their old downstairs neighbor, who's full of stories about Nigeria. But the girl's family misinterprets the stories the girl tells, thinking she's being touched inappropriately by the old man. They force an end to their beautiful friendship, but not really...
On time and darkness
Neuron
A girl is a neuron, and she gets really excited about a Chloe, who is maybe a girl, and maybe a neuron.
Laddie come home
From the perspective of a wearable piece of bodytech, we witness a kidnapping. As LAD, the bodytech, learns to interpret its sensors to get a sense for the location, so are we introduced to the story. LAD befriends the daughter of the kidnapper and manages to kick off the search and rescue. Really cute when he follows up afterwards to make sure the girl is okay and properly looked after.
The way things were
A hardly subtle story of violent resistance against Nazi/white-supremacy inspired by "the word for world is forest" but far away from its nuanced themes. Interesting to notice that I noticed the male perspective being written as weak and hesitant, while the two girlfriends of Nick are the more violent, active types who don't want to back down. As in, apparently societal expectations of character stereotypes are still ingrained in my brain to a somewhat patriarchical level.
Valuable
This feels much more like Le Guin than the last story; precise, effective, and almost carelessly pulling me in to it.
Apocalyptic premise, with the classic "the rich build a safe haven but leave the rest of the world to burn." Glory Park is the daughter of the academics who invented time dilation. Her mother traveled through time as a feminist vigilante. Now Glory is stuck in the rich pod on Antarctica (her mother gave up her spot). She travels back in time to fix mistakes and try to look for her girlfriend Frieda.
Hard choices
It's a choose-your-own-adventure story where you inadvertently get eaten by your girlfriend Bitsy, who turns out to be a carnivorous shapeshifter.
When strangers meet
Non-human lifeforms, for which we get a brief glimpse of their society through the point-of-view of the One, who appears to rule as some sort of enlightened monarch. The humans might be the voices from the sky? They attempt to communicate with this society but get offered in a ritual dance to their deaths instead. But honestly, I didn't really know what was going on here.
JoyBe's last dance
A manionette being played by thirty-six puppeteers. A man (?) is trapped inside, but the audience loves it. Until he (JoyBe) does things that make everyone question reality.
The taster
It started off flawed in ways I've also run into when you try to worldbuild futures where people live eternally and everything is organized "fairly". Though in this case it's slightly dystopian. Lots of gray, no one eats mandarins anymore except for Silvas, who gets stickered with sensors and broadcasts her sensations to millions of fully digital people. Until many of them get killed, "corrupted", by the people from the Mars colony who fight for independence.
Let it die
I've praised Le Guin's writing for being beautifully succinct while maintaining power. This short story also has short and to-the-point sentences, but they feel blunt, exposing too much of what the writer clearly saw as the emotional beats that should make up the story. It kind of detracts from it all. I otherwise enjoyed the forcefully low-tech world they story built.
Each cool silver orb a gift
Why do these "utopia's" all feel so forced? Most men are lost or got infertile from a chemical war, and a mysterious new gender, the thirds, appears. Positions of power are only held by women, because men are too aggressive. The revelation of a coup and the misuse of thirds for the creation of "pearls" that induce fertility feels implausible. How has Helena never heard of it before until she gets on the council and goes for one single walk?
Wenonah's gift
This story feels very Le Guin. No rushed worldbuilding of some flimsy utopia. Just the gentle introduction of a society and its people through the natural flow of the plot.