The Birthday of the World and Other Stories

Ursula Le Guin is somewhat a shame of mine.  I consider myself a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy and yet I have read almost none of her books.  My mother recommended this short story collection to me, saying that I had to read the final story.  It seemed silly to only read one part of a short story collection, so I read the whole thing.  The recommendation was correct: the novella at the end was what made it worth reading, but there were some other good parts as well. 

Perhaps this collection would have been more enjoyable for me if I had read more of the author's work.  Since most of her stories take place in the same universe the shorter ones might have benefited from some context.  None of them were incomprehensible or even close to it, I just wonder if I could have liked them more.

Having never read much Le Guin before, I was surprised at the degree that (especially of the earlier stories) were concerned with sex.  There was a lot of interesting gender roles or changes from our world but it was just interesting how much they revolved around sex.

In my opinion, the best two stories, the title story and the novella, occupied the last third of the book.  The title story is about a primitive culture being exposed to the larger world around them.  It is a science fiction-y look at conquistadors from those being conquist-ed, with a twist.  I liked the stories naive viewpoint.

The novella, called Paradises Lost,  is a very interesting take on what would happen on a generation ship.  Without giving too much away, it has to do with a religion being formed around the concept of the journey and how the ship completely cares for them.  It comes across as completely plausible (while at the same time reminding me of Battlestar Galactica in some ways).  The characters are believable and interesting and I have difficulty coming up with another story that looks at life aboard a generation ship like this.

The theme of the collection is societies different than those found on today's Earth and in that it certainly does a good job of showing off a variety of different societies in the Ekumen universe.  There are some interesting thought experiments contained within the pages of this book but none so good as the final novella.

Overall, I would give this book a 90%.