Changing Planes: Stories

Synopsis

Sita Dulip has missed her flight out of Chicago. Rather than endure the crowds, bad food, crying children, and uncomfortable airport chairs, she discovers a method for bypassing the ordinary world: she changes planes—not airplanes, but entire planes of existence. Through “Sita Dulip’s Method,” she begins visiting societies unlike anything found on Earth.

In these vivid, entertaining, and philosophical stories, Ursula K. Le Guin imagines worlds where children’s babble gradually fades into adult silence, entire towns exist solely for holiday shopping, personalities are governed by rage, and genetic experiments produce unexpected results. Drawing on influences including Borges, The Little Prince, and Gulliver’s Travels, Le Guin uses the foreign and alien to illuminate the indelible truths of our own human society.

About the Author

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was one of the most influential American writers of the twentieth century. Her work spanned science fiction, fantasy, poetry, essays, and children’s literature, and earned her numerous honors, including the Hugo, Nebula, and PEN/Malamud awards.

Karen Joy Fowler is an American novelist and short-story writer whose books include We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves and The Jane Austen Book Club. She received the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and is the recipient of numerous awards for her fiction.

Publisher

Harper Perennial

Publication Date

September 1, 2026

Format

Paperback

Pages

256

Subjects

Science Fiction · Short Stories · Literary Fiction · Satire · Social Commentary

ISBN

9780063568310