The Unreal and the Real: Selected Stories, Volume 1: Where on Earth
Ursula K. Le Guin
Language: English
Pages: 262
ISBN: 2:00329468
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Unreal and the Real is a major event not to be missed. In this two-volume selection of Ursula K. Le Guin's best short stories—as selected by the National Book Award winning author herself—the reader will be delighted, provoked, amused, and faced with the sharp, satirical voice of one of the best short story writers of the present day. Where on Earth explores Le Guin's earthbound stories which range around the world from small town Oregon to middle Europe in the middle of revolution to summer camp.
Companion volume Outer Space, Inner Lands includes Le Guin's best known nonrealistic stories. Both volumes include new introductions by the author.
Praise for Ursula K. Le Guin's short story collections:
"An important writer. Period."—The Washington Post
"Witty, satirical and amusing. Yet it is the author’s more serious work that displays her talents best, as she employs recurring themes and elements-cultural diversity, unlikely heroes and heroines, power’s ability to corrupt, love’s power to guide-and considers characters and types (women, children, the differently sexed and gendered) so often disenfranchised by other, more technologically oriented SF writers. . . . [A] classy and valuable collection."—Publishers Weekly
"Her characters are complex and haunting, and her writing is remarkable for its sinewy grace."—Time
"Le Guin's prose is so luminous and simple, and she always tells the truth, and when I'm with her people, I'm with living people, on worlds as solid and real as my own. Le Guin has a gift, which is to transform words into worlds."—Molly Gloss
"A master of the craft."—Neil Gaiman
"[E]verything Le Guin does is interesting, believable, and exquisitely detailed."—Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"Delicious ... her worlds are haunting psychological visions molded with firm artistry."—Library Journal
"There is no more elegant or discerning expositor than Le Guin."—Kirkus Reviews
Ursula K. Le Guin has received the PEN–Malamud and National Book Awards, among others. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
out beans for supper. “He’ll be all right.” “Do you think . . . Somebody was saying he might be, you know. . . .” “Crippled? No, he’ll be all right.” “Why do you think he, you know, ran to push that fellow out of the way?” “No why to it, Ros. He just did it.” He was touched that she asked these questions of him, and surprised at the certainty of his answers. He had not thought that he had any answers. “It’s queer,” she said. “What is?” “I don’t know. Kostant . . .” “Knocked the keystone
for each motorcar on the road, was I, an oak, to shirk? Noblesse oblige, and I trust I have never dropped an acorn that did not know its duty. For fifty or sixty years, then, I have upheld the Order of Things, and have done my share in supporting the human creatures’ illusion that they are “going somewhere.” And I am not unwilling to do so. But a truly terrible thing has occurred, which I wish to protest. I do not mind going two directions at once; I do not mind growing and shrinking
“Creepy.” I told her, “Aw, come on, Deb. She’s quiet. Maybe not extra bright. I don’t know. She isn’t talkative. Some people aren’t.” “I’d like to have a woman around who could say more than two words. Stuck in the woods out here.” “Seems like you spend all day in town anyhow,” I said, not meaning it to be a criticism. It’s just the fact. And why shouldn’t she? I didn’t take on this place to work my wife to death, or tie her down to it. I manage it and keep it up, and Ava Evans cleans the
it till whammy! right between the eyes. Wooed and won. Go it, Phil. She looked like an intelligent girl, actually, overserious, and Phil wouldn’t hurt her. Wouldn’t hurt a fly, would old Phil. St. Philip, bestower of sexual favors. She smiled at them and said, “Come and get it.” Sue Student was being nice to Daddy, talking with him about forest fires or something. Daddy had his little company smile and was being nice to Sue Student. She didn’t sound too stupid, actually. She was a vegetarian.
responsibilities, I checked. To my surprise I was amazed to discover that the adjoining lot, which had been developed in 1906, had been in the name of Tobinye Walker since that date, 1906! I naturally assumed at that point in time that this “Tobinye Walker” was “Mr. Toby Walker’s” father and thought little more about the issue until my researches into another matter, concerning the Essel/Emmer lots, in the town records indicated that the name “Tobinye Walker” was shown as purchaser of a livery