The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin

The Unreal and the Real #1-2

by Ursula K. Le Guin

A collection of short stories by the legendary and iconic Ursula K. Le Guin—selected with an introduction by the author, and combined in one volume for the first time.

The Unreal and the Real is a collection of some of Ursula K. Le Guin’s best short stories. She has won multiple prizes and accolades from the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters to the Newbery Honor, the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and PEN/Malamud Awards. She has had her work collected over the years, but this is the first short story volume combining a full range of her work.

Stories
-Brothers and Sisters
-A Week in the Country
-Unlocking the Air
-Imaginary Countries
-The Diary of the Rose
-Direction of the Road
-The White Donkey
-Gwilan’s Harp
-May’s Lion
-Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight
-Horse Camp
-The Water Is Wide
-The Lost Children
-Texts
-Sleepwalkers
-Hand, Cup, Shell
-Ether, Or
-Half Past Four
-The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
-Semely’s Necklace
-Nine Lives
-Mazes
-The First Contact with the Gorgonids
-The Shobies’ Story
-Betrayals
-The Matter of Seggri
-Solitude
-The Wild Girls
-The Flyers of Gy
-The Silence of the Asonu
-The Ascent of the North Face
-The Author of the Acacia Seeds
-The Wife’s Story
-The Rule of Names
-Small Change
-The Poacher
-Sur
-She Unnames Them
-The Jar of Water

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Anthologies, Science Fiction Fantasy, Collections

715 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2013

About the author

Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon.

She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.

Reviews

[Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Unreal and the Real: Omnibus of anthropological SF and literary tales
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
Everyone with even a passing knowledge of SF/Fantasy will likely have heard of Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the giants of the field whose work has transcended genre and literary categories. Her SFF works have ranged from mythical fantasy such as the EARTHSEA CYCLE to brilliant studies of gender, identity, and political ideologies like The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. She proudly identifies herself as a SF writer, but one whose intellectual rigor and literary ambitions have forced mainstream readers and critics to take notice and acknowledge. Le Guin has produced a steady stream of fiction, poetry, criticism for over 50 years. She is a champion of feminism, political and intellectual freedom, and ecological preservation. There is even a documentary about her life and legacy being produced by Arwen Curry called Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, which raised over $234,000 in pledges on Kickstarter in just a month, and is scheduled for completion by 2017.

However, until recently it has been difficult to get her best short stories and novellas in single volumes. Fortunately, Saga Press has recently come out with two books that address this issue. The first volume collects her most famous short stories (it is by no means comprehensive, considering her output over many decades), which are selected by the author herself. This new handsome hardcover edition is currently available for $22.49 on Amazon, but the Kindle edition is available for only $7.99, which is incredible considering you get over 700 pages of some of the most challenging, literary, and intelligent short stories every produced in the genre. I have previously reviewed these stories in two separate volumes but am glad to see them now combined in this attractive omnibus edition.

Part One: Where on Earth

While the quality of LeGuin’s writing is consistently high, it’s undeniable that Part One: Where on Earth may be of less interest to dedicated fans of “speculative fiction,” or “genre fiction.” Having said that, Le Guin is brilliant, fearless, intellectual, and ethical, so anything she writes is worth reading. So it comes down to your personal preferences as a reader. I have always preferred “genre” fiction over “mainstream” or “literary” works, but I do appreciate literary elements in genre fiction.

Part One: Where on Earth features four stories from her fictional Eastern European country of Orsinia, as well as numerous stories set in or inspired by Oregon, her home since 1958. Her prose is confident, luminous, fiercely honest, and firmly centered on people as they really are, flawed but with moments of strength and decency. She frequently sets her stories in small towns or the countryside — places where the sparse conditions let us focus on her characters. Even if you are not a fan of realism in your fiction, you will find elements of the “magic realism” of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino, which can also be found in writers inspired by Le Guin such as David Mitchell, Jonathan Lethem, and Michael Chabon.

While I admired the craftwork of her realistic stories, I struggled to enjoy the Orsinian and Oregonian stories. That is more a matter of taste than quality, but I think the stories more likely to interest genre fans would be “The Diary of the Rose” (winner of the 1976 Jupiter award), “The Direction of the Road,” and “Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight” (winner of the 1988 Hugo Award and International Fantasy Award).

“The Diary of the Rose” (1976): is about a psychotherapist who normally treats autistic children. One day she is assigned an adult patient labeled as psychotic, delusional, and violent. However, upon meeting him, he seems intelligent, well-spoken, and lucid. However, he quickly reveals his fear of undergoing electro-shock therapy. Initially she is skeptical of him, but as the sessions proceed she gains sympathy for him and starts to wonder exactly why he has been detained and whether he is truly mentally ill or not. To describe the any further would be to ruin the story, but suffice to say that many of the assumptions of her profession and world view are thrown on their head, and the ending is devastating. Another gem from Le Guin that explores her favorite themes of political and intellectual freedom.

“The Direction of the Road” (1973): A short but imaginative story that uses a unique point of view to give a voice to the voiceless, and allows us to observe the folly of human affairs from a very unusual perspective. It’s got some great humor and gentle irony, and really forces the reader to rethink our view of the world around us. Moreover, it plays with the concept of “relativity” in a way I have never encountered before. It’s worth a re-read to capture all the subtleties.

“Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight” (1987, Hugo Award for Best Novelette, World Fantasy Award for Best Novella): Takes a very creative approach to the Native American mythos of the trickster Coyote and a menagerie of animals in the American Southwest. A little girl is involved in an airplane crash and finds herself taken in by talking animals who don’t make a distinction between various “people,” whether human or animal. Their open acceptance is contrasted with the crass behavior of humans in their towns and hunters with their guns who treat the natural world with contempt. This story has a playful tone, but beneath the surface is a condemnation of what humans have given up in favor of technology and modernization, and the dignity and resignation of the “old people” in the face of this.

Part Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands

This is essential reading (or listening) for all fans of SF who want to see why Le Guin is one of the giants of the SF/fantasy field. Part Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands contains a host of impressive stories, both her famous award-winners and lesser-known gems. All of them are intelligent, thought-provoking, understated, and beautifully written. It’s hard to underestimate the influence she has had on the genre, fans, and how much respect she has gained in the greater literary world.
As we journey through the various imaginary worlds she weaves, many set in her shared far-future Hainish universe, what becomes clear is that Le Guin is an anthropologist at heart, which is hardly surprising considering both her parents were well-known anthropologists: Alfred Kroeber, a renowned Professor of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, and his wife Theodora Kroeber, both of whom did pioneering work on California native American tribes, including the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe, named Ishi.

The influence of anthropology, sociology, psychology, folklore and linguistics in Le Guin’s stories is pervasive, as well as tremendous writing skills that make her prose and stories seem effortless and timeless. While many SF authors use aliens as proxies for various human behaviors and cultures, Le Guin does something very different. In her Hainish universe, humanity arose on the planet Hain and seeded the stars with numerous human colonies (including Terra), but after this League of Worlds collapsed, travel among these worlds ceased and many human worlds lost track of this galactic civilization and their own origins. This allows Le Guin to explore a limitless number of human societies that are frequently at a primitive level of technology, have developed unusual social structures, and in some cases have been modified dramatically via genetic engineering (such as the androgynous characters of The Left Hand of Darkness).

Le Guin’s stories are mainly focused on humanity in a myriad range of diverse societies and cultures. She dispenses with the easy metaphor of “aliens” to show the alienness of all human cultures including our own. The behaviors of these different humans is often bizarre, unexpected, disturbing, and yet familiar. One of her favorite literary tricks is to lull readers into false complacency with a seemingly-familiar setting before suddenly turning things on their head midway or at the end, exposing all the cultural biases and assumptions we bring to our reading experiences, like “Mazes,” “The Author of the Acacia Seeds,” and “The Wife’s Story.” This is particularly the case for gender biases and behaviors, which she explored brilliantly at full-length in The Left Hand of Darkness, but also with great effect in “The Matter of Seggri” and “The Wild Girls.”

Highlights in this collection are:

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1974, Hugo Award for Best Short Story): More of a parable than a story, a thought-experiment about the ethics of the greater good of an entire city vs. the suffering of a single child. Is it okay for a child to suffer, if an entire city of people can live rich and fulfilling lives? I understand this story is used in college classes and it is certainly well-suited to generating healthy debates.

Semley’s Necklace (1964; initially “The Dowry of the Angyar”): The first story set in her Hainish universe, and tells the folklore story of Semley, a high-born woman on the planet Fomalhaut, who enters the underworld in search of a valuable family heirloom that has disappeared long ago. She makes contact with a representative of the Ekumen and gets her wish, but at a heavy cost. This story introduces many of the anthropological themes of her Hainish stories, with a strong mythic fantasy tone.

Nine Lives (1968, Nebula Nominee for Best Novelette): A story about identity, explored by contrasting the friendship of two individual scientists in a remote outpost with a ten-clone, a group of 10 men and women cloned from the same man, John Chow, sent to assist. They seem to be more efficient, self-contained, and mentally stable than the two men, until a crisis situation exposes their weaknesses.

The Shobies’ Story (1990, Nebula Nominee for Best Novelette): This is a fairly challenging story about a diverse crew from the Ekumen group of worlds that suffer the psychological stresses of faster-than-light travel. Using a process called transilience, they must establish a shared reality through story-telling in order to power the ship. Given all their different cultural beliefs and biases, this proves quite challenging. The concept of relativity is explored in very literal terms.

Betrayals (1994): This story is a part of a connected series of stories set in the twin worlds of Werel and Yeowe in the Hainish universe (collected in Four Ways to Forgiveness). It’s the meeting of two people — a retired teacher named Yoss and an exiled leader named Abberkam, whose divergent pasts and beliefs are forced into contact in a desolate place.

The Matter of Seggri (1994, Hugo and Nebula nominee for Best Novelette, James Tiptree Award Winner): This for me was the highlight of this collection. It is a brilliantly developed study of a society in which women are dominant in the economy, politics, education, and all practical professions. That leaves the men with just two roles, isolated in their castles — sports and breeding (siring children and serving as sex workers). In fact, women pay them for their services. While this may seem at first like an enviable position for men, Le Guin meticulously shows us their utter powerlessness. They are reduced to prized breeders and are given no other outlets or means of self-fulfillment.

Switching around familiar gender roles forces the reader to confront all the biases and rigid social barriers that form the basis for men and women’s roles in societies throughout human history, and brings home just how soul-crushing a position women have been frequently subjected to, even to this day and age. In particular, the cruel behavior towards men who are not prized at breeders parallels the intolerant treatment of women who cannot bear children. Towards the end of the story, we also see the vicious in-fighting among the men themselves. There is even the equivalent of an Equal Rights Movement, and it is bittersweet to see the men struggle to gain respect even after they are granted the right to higher education and other roles in society. I think this story is really an eye opener for younger readers in the West who have benefitted from far greater sexual equality than prior generations.

Solitude (1995, Nebula Award for Best Novelette): This is a deeply anthropological study of an female Observer who discovers her only means to study an isolated human society that maintains a strict code of men and women not mingling in adulthood is to use her own children to infiltrate their inner ranks and learn their social practices from within. What they discover is a harsh legacy of rampant overpopulation that led to a collapse in civilization and a warped social response.

Women form aunt rings where they share stories and pass on knowledge. However, they otherwise do not speak to each other. This society is devoted mainly to silence and the development of the soul. The men face their own form of solitude — they spend their teenage years in harsh boy groups in which the strongest bully and sometimes kills the weaker members. For those that survive to adulthood, their fate is to live a hermetic existence in the forest, only being visited by women for child-bearing purposes.

The most powerful part of the story is what happens after the mother takes her children away from these societies in order to gather the information they have learned from their experiences. The son is cooperative but the daughter is extremely resistant and desperately wants to return to her aunt ring and the cultivation of her soul. The conflict in values between mother and daughter is profound, and the difficult position of children bridging vastly divergent cultures is something I have seen first-hand.

The Wild Girls (2003, Hugo Award for Best Novelette): This story also shows the strong anthropological influence of Le Guin’s upbringing. Here we see a practice that is not so unusual in more primitive tribal societies — in this case invading the Dirt people’s tribes and stealing away girls to provide new blood to the Crown people of Sky City. This story is filled with contrasts — the ruthless behavior of the men as they slaughter older people and take only the girls they want, and their fierce protectiveness of the girls as spoils of war. The gender roles of the society are sharply delineated, as are the gaps between the Dirt people and Crown people. The themes of formal slavery (Dirt people) and effective slavery (wives) are also prevalent. This is a grim story with a tragic ending.

The Flyers of Gy (2000): This story reads like a field report about the Gy people, among whom a small minority develop functioning wings at adulthood. However, this is frequently viewed as a curse rather than a gift, and we are shown a myriad of brutal and repressive responses to this trait in various communities. Often the flyers are stoned to death or killed in even more perverse ways. Even when they are not immediately killed, their position in society is strictly proscribed, and the story ends with an interview with a lawyer who has valiantly overcome his “handicap” to be a productive member of society. This is a clear parable of discrimination against those who are different, and how they cope.

The Silence of the Asonu (1998): Here we have a mysterious society that is probably unlikely, but intriguing as a concept. Imagine a society that voluntarily chooses silence after a normal childhood. And yet not a grim silence, but within a well-adjusted and caring social structure, but lacking in both verbal and non-verbal communication. In keeping with religious ascetics, their silence could be a form of spiritual wisdom. Or perhaps just a means of minimizing social conflict. Other people are fascinated by the Asonu, leading to a thriving tourist trade. Some go so far as to kidnap an Asonu child and try to force them to reveal their “secret wisdom.” We are left to draw our own conclusions.

The Author of the Acacia Seeds (1974): Here is a little treat about therolinguistics, the study of animal languages. Written in academic journal style, it is both humorous and completely serious. It reminded me in some ways of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris in its discussion of Solaristics, the study of a possibly sentient ocean by generations of academics. Only someone intimately familiar with academic disciplines could create a story so strange and yet totally convincing.

The article asks “What if art is not communicative? If a non-communicative, vegetative art exists, we must rethink the very elements of our science, and learn a whole new set of techniques. But the problem was far greater. The art he sought, if it exists, is a non-communicative art: and probably a non-kinetic one. It is possible that Time, the essential element, matrix, and measure of all known animal art, does not enter into vegetable art at all. The plants may use the meter of eternity. We do not know.”

[Shalini Gunnasan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book a four because the good stuff is so good, it cancels out all the less than engaging works.
Part 1
Brothers and Sisters - 3/5.

A Week in the Country, Unlocking the Air, Imaginary Countries - dnf

The Diary of the Rose - 4/5. 1984-ish vibe is great. Shades of V in there too.

White Donkey - 1/5. Always found virgin+unicorn myth stupid and problematic. Set in India, which makes it worse, because Indian myths don't have "magical item/ animal" wielded by virgins nonsense. It's quite jarring.

Direction of the Road - 4/5. How strange! Not just the perspective of trees but a complete reversal of perspective itself. Surreal.

Gwilan's Harp - 1/5. Meh.

May's Lion - 2/5. Also meh.

Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight? - 4/5. Surreal and dream-like. The characters are more like spirit representations. I like the others, but Coyote is just batshit-crazy, not just old-lady crazy.

Horse Camp, The Water is Wide - dnf. Who cares.

The Lost Children - 2/5. Yeah... nope.

Texts - dnf

Sleepwalkers - 4/5. Finally, something interesting. Wish this had been longer. Less a story than a character study, but it was engaging.

Hand, Cup, Shell - 2/5

Ether, Or. Half Past Four - dnf. Okay, seriously? Leave the writing exercises for the writers' workshops, lady.

Part 2
The One Who Walk Away from Omelas - 5/5. Excellent. A terrible moral conundrum, but a good story is supposed to make you think.

Semley's Necklace - 4/5. Reminded me of the Urashima Taro fairy tale. See, this is why people read le Guin.

Nine Lives - 4/5. Interesting idea.

Mazes- 4/5. Sad and pitiful, poor little creature. It could just as easily have been an Earth creature.

The First Contact with the Gorgonids - 3/5. Characters seem stereotypes. But this is much fun.

The Shobies' Story & Betrayals-dnf

The Matter of Seggri - 5/5. Anthropological experiment. Not at all one to be aimed for. How horrible.

Solitude - 5/5. Veers into horror territory, at least for me. No matter what, that is a barren existence. Another separation of the sexes experiment.

The Wild Girls-5/5. A look at caste. Just as horrifying as the above social constructs.

The Fliers of Gy - 4/5. Interesting~

The Silence of the Asonu - 4/5. Similar to The Matter of Seggri, this shows silence as an ideal but without the barrenness.

The Ascent of the North Face - 2/5. Meh.

The Author of the Acacia Seeds - 6/5! Superb, I wish there was more of this! Why hasn't she expanded this amazing idea?

The Wife's Story - 3/5. Flipped perspectives. Ok, I guess.

The Rule of Names - 3/5. Started strong, end not satisfying. Predictable.

Small Change - 4/5. How tragic.

The Poacher - 4/5. A Sleeping Beauty tale with a twist. A strange approach.

Sur - 2/5. Meh. Started strong, ended boring.

She Unnames Them - 1/5.

The Jar of Water - 3/5. Fantasy Orient-inspired folk tale. Okay, I suppose.

[Jemppu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Included in this collection, is the story I keep coming back to in my mind as one of the most memorably illusive of Le Guin shorts, "The Direction of the Road" - such unexpectedly still, beautifully captured moment in time.

(More of the impressions detailed in the reading updates below, and the latter half of the book reviewed in the Volume 2 entry of the Selected Short Stories).

[Книжни Криле · Rating 5 out of 5]

На 22 януари тази година, на 88 годишна възраст ни напусна майката на Гед, богинята на Землемория, великата Урсула Ле Гуин. Едно от най-големите имена в съвременното фентъзи и фантастика, тя ни остави богато наследство от истории, различни по дължина, жанр и усещане, но обединени от темите за всичко онова, което ни прави хора – в този свят и отвъд пределите на въображението. Днес си припомням Урсула Ле Гуин и нейния човеколюбив, философски мироглед с „Реално и нереално” – общо издание на двутомника „Къдe, зa бoгa?” и „Външeн кocмoc, вътрeшнa зeмя”, част от поредицата „Велики майстори на фентъзи и фантастика” на изд. „Бард”. Прочетете ревюто на "Книжни Криле":

https://knijnikrile.wordpress.com/201...

[Alex Bright · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mostly fantastic collection of short stories, though I think I generally preferred the second volume over the first. Each story is reviewed/rated within my on-going comments as I read, but I'm giving the overall collection four stars.

Wow. Just realised how long this took me to read. Yikes, I'm slow.

[Диляна Георгиева · Rating 5 out of 5]

... Това ревю започва с мълчание, с тишината, която ме обзе, след като затворих последната страница. Чувствам се дребна и невъзможна да събера в няколко изречения нещо толкова голямо. Невероятно, разтапящо, всепоглъщащо майсторство! Урсула ле Гуин създава толкова неповторими, свои собствени светове, върти гледната точка като пъстър калейдоскоп и разбива клишетата с недостижима лекота. Единственият недостатък на сборника е, че някои разкази са толкова огромни, толкова свои, уникални, толкова невъобразимо различни, че просто е трудно да излезеш от тях и веднага да влезеш в следващия. Затова трябва да се четат бавно, макар че ненаситното желания те подтиква да ги погълнеш на един дъх. Беше ме страх, че трудно ще намеря нещо толкова добро след нея, затова просто ги разтеглих във времето.
Не харесах "Землемория", не я намразих, просто не беше моето четиво, но в разказите откривам величието на Ле Гуин. Толкова леко и тънко тъче своите различни светове - реални и нереални, но повече реални дори и в своята нереалност - че те отнася в шеметна възхита.
Моля ви, четете, четете, четете!

[Andreas]

Orsinian tales were calm, relaxing, and meh.
Imaginary Countries 4/5
The Diary of the Rose 5/5

[Kate Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an absolute joy to sit with Ursula for 700+ pages.

Through all the wild magic of the science fiction and fantasy plots, this shines through: pay attention to other beings. They are valuable. They have their own lives and perspectives. Be a little more respectful and you'll learn something.

This compilation also has my favorite piece by Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Author of the Acacia Seeds," which ends like this:

"Do you realise," the phytolinguist will say to the aesthetic critic, "that they couldn't even read Eggplant?" And they will smile at our ignorance, as they pick up their rucksacks and hike on up to read the newly deciphered lyrics of the lichen on the north face of Pike's Peak.

And with them, or after them, may there not come that even bolder adventurer -- the first geolinguist, who, ignoring the delicate, transient lyrics of the lichen, will read beneath it the still less communicative, still more passive, wholly atemporal, cold, volcanic poetry of the rocks: each one a word spoken, how long ago, by the earth itself, in the immense solitude, the immenser community, of space.

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 1 out of 5]

Книгата е разделена на два тома разкази, подбрани от самата Ле Гуин. Във встъплението тя изрично подчертава, че не е работа на писателя да улеснява читателя. Е, наистина не го прави, даже обратното - забавлява се явно дали някой нещо ще разбере.

В първия том ”Къде за Бога?” разказите са псевдореалистични. Един единствен ми хареса, за розата. Всички останали са без ясен сюжет и послание. Скука, изкуствена неяснота и усложнен текст. Не ги доизчетох. 1 звезда.

Вторият том “Външен Космос, вътрешна Земя” включва научна фантастика и фентъзи. Става, поне сюжетът е ясен. Има 2-3 нелоши попадения. Но войнстващият феминизъм е направо влудяващ. Не че не бих забила един на всеки, който се опита ми отнеме правата, но Ле Гуин изпада в абсурдни крайности и дразнещи натяквания. 3 звезди.

[Shadowdenizen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Not quite perfect, but pretty damn close.

Ursula K Leguin is an icon in the speculative fiction field, and rightfully so: she deserves to be ranked up there with the grandmasters like Heinlein, Sturgeon and Dimak.

That said, while all these stories hold up (fairly) well, as with all anthologies, there were some stories that I liked more than others.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s a lot here, and much of it is not to my taste (by which I mean I found it lifeless, plotless, plodding, and dull). Every now and then, though, Le Guin blew the top of my head off with an amazing story (Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight, for example).

[Rahel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find both reading and rating short story collections to be quite tricky - I'm very picky about my short stories and even Le Guin isn't always my top pick when it comes to them. Personally, I think she really gets going with novella-length stories, so it's not much of a surprise I enjoyed her longer stories in this collection (i.e. Solitude, The Matter of the Seggri, Nine Lives and some other Hainish stories I didn't reread this time around) more than the shorter ones (though I will always have a soft spot in my heart for May's Lion and The Author of the Acacia Seeds).
I think reading these within their original collections or within the cycles (i.e. Hainish or Kesh) that they are set in will do her works more justice than reading them back to back to back as one might when making their way through this hefty tome. The Orsinian tales did little for me for this reason, as I was not as familiar with the world and overarching setting as I was with Hain.
While I listened to these, rather than reading them physically, I do still have to say that I quite like these big book editions and am happy to have them on my shelf - I just wouldn't read them cover to cover again, but rather pick out singular stories to read in this floppy format (rather than the very dense LoA collections, for example). Still, all in all, this is a far more solid short story collection than most authors could ever dream of putting out, owed to Le Guin's breathtaking corpus of work and her dedication to settling herself in different perspectives and trying to see worlds from the eyes of ants, trees, feathered folks and all walks of life inbetween. Her works are full of soul and curiosity and even the works that may seem like writing exercises can go deeper than expected. For that she is, and forever will be, dearly missed.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

These were good, obviously.

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with most collections, this one had its highs & lows but overall, I really liked them. Le Guin generally makes me think about various issues in her writing and many of these stories did that :)

[to'c · Rating 5 out of 5]

A massive collection of Ms. LeGuin's short stories. Some are her favorites, some are others. Each section of the volume (I believe it was originally published as two) starts with an intro containing her ideas about the two genres and a small bit of history of each story.

BUT YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!!!

Admittedly, Ms. Leguin is one of my three favorite authors (along with Jorgé Luis Borges and Italo Calvino) so maybe I'm a bit biased. She has a way with telling a story that almost makes you still feel like you're reading it when you're done. Or perhaps it's just wishful thinking that you are still enjoying it. Even her violent stories have a peace to the way she tells them. And I was surprised to find that I didn't even know she wrote some of these stories! These are stories I read once, decades ago, when I was too young to pay serious attention to authors and titles. They stuck with me all these years, rehashed and re-enjoyed in my mind, only to have them find a home in the hands of one of my three favorites authors. How fitting that they should be hers.

[Loreley · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some gems in this collection, but overall I think Le Guin is best at novella length stories

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kind of amazed that Samuel and I finished it in 2023!

Reading with Samuel!
Started reading in Feb 2023
Finished reading in Dec 2023

Brothers and Sisters: 2.5
A Week in the Country: 3
Unlocking the Air: 4
Imaginary Countries: 3.5
The Diary of the Rose: 5
Direction of the Road: 4.5
The White Donkey: 3.5
Gwilan’s Harp: 4
May’s Lion: 3.5
Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight: 3.5
Horse Camp: 2
The Water Is Wide: -
The Lost Children: 3
Texts: 4.5
Sleepwalkers: 4
Hand, Cup, Shell: 3
Ether, Or: 3.5
Half Past Four: -
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: 4.5
Semely’s Necklace: 4
Nine Lives: 4.5
Mazes: 4.5
The First Contact with the Gorgonids: 3.5
The Shobies’ Story: 5
Betrayals: 4
The Matter of Seggri: 5
Solitude: 4.5
The Wild Girls: -
The Flyers of Gy: 4.5
The Silence of the Asonu: 3.5
The Ascent of the North Face: 3
The Author of the Acacia Seeds: 4
The Wife’s Story: 4.5
The Rule of Names: 4.5
Small Change: 3
The Poacher: 3
Sur: 3
She Unnames Them: 4
The Jar of Water: 3.5

[Luke Burrage · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're interested in Ursula K. Le Guin as a science fiction/fantasy writer, Volume One has only a few truly fulfilling stories. I'd suggest reading "The Diary of the Rose", "The Direction of the Road" and "Buffalo Gals". Apart from those, not much else really resonated with me. Some of it fits in the "weird fiction" bucket, if you're into that kind of thing (I often think I am, but my reading habits would suggest otherwise).

My four star rating really applies to Volume Two, which is the more deliberately science fictional, with many of the best stories set in the Hainish universe. Out of the 20 stories, 10 stand out as VERY GOOD, another 5 are merely good, and the other 5 didn't do much for me, but were at least short enough to not outstay their welcome.

WARNING: The Audible version of Volume One has very confusing chapter breaks, all unlabelled, sometimes not lining up with the start of the next new story. As some of the stories have very similar settings and themes and even repeating characters, not knowing where one story ended and the next began gave the reading experience a dream-like quality. But not in a good way. Please let me just listen to one story at a time.


Full review on my podcast, SFBRP episode #524:



Luke talks to Juliane about his favourite moments in Ursula K LeGuin’s short story collection: The Unreal and the Real volumes 1 and 2.

https://www.sfbrp.com/archives/2148

[Cassidy Brinn]

A revelation. A bundled series of revelations shining and raining and sprouting funny-shaped leaves. Yes! As soon as I finished "Brothers and Sisters" I was in the ecstasy of discovery. This is a story! These are characters! They were as distinct as the stock types of a commedia dell'arte farce, but in the details of their masks, they were realer than me or anyone I know.

Le Guin's writing is humble and fierce. Humble because it lacks ego. She executes formal experiments with exquisite deftness, each genre of "The Matter of Seggri" for example (ship captain's record, anthropology, memoir, short story, autobiographical sketch) is flawless and funny and right, but there is never that smug smile of Look at me! Ooh look what I can do! She just does it, and it's as it needs to be, and she moves on.

Fierce because it burns with moral urgency and integrity. Her words are porcupine quills aimed at authoritarian hubris. Her explorations rattle the bars of unjust cultural inheritance. Thought must be free and all must be free to think.

And fierce on another plane too, not of the head only, but of the burning heart. Her characters love and want with pointed desperation. The end of "Semley's Necklace" made me burst into tears, so brutal was the ruin of Semley's clashing desires. The end of the last story "Jug of Water" made me cry too, and not only because the beautiful shebang had ended. "Come outside. It's raining." Spoken by a lover after a long, mysterious anti-quest through the desert. Indeed. These stories were rain to me.

A couple other stories I have to mention:

"The Poacher" Adored this beyond all reason. Perhaps my all-time favorite spin on a fairy tale. The limitations on the vocabulary in the speaker's voice were perfect. Describing flowers on a hedge: "I liked to see that, and to smell their scent, as heavy as the smell of meat or bread, but sweet." Describing a castle: "The sunlight on it made me think of the firelight on my stepmother's breasts." And the poacher's own role as outsider, interloper in a world or story that doesn't belong to him, distills a theme that resonates throughout the collection. Sometimes in deliciously subtle ways - like the girl in "Solitude" describing her upbringing with the people (persons!) of Eleven-Soro. Her text is labeled as an addition to her mother's anthropological report. So she is speaking to other adults, which her culture forbids her to do, in a world that is foreign but also somehow her own. Yes, Le Guin's fierce morals do not preclude ambiguity or fog.

"The Flyers of Gy" Here we find not ambiguity, but ambivalence. A stark binary decision to be made and no clear winner. For me, "The Flyers of Gy" was a briefer, funnier, and more tragic version of Kierkegaard's "Either/Or". Which life? The romance of the artist, soaring above paltry human concerns, refusing to recognize risk, each breath its own reward? Or the virtue of the family man, contributing to society, suppressing or sublating his ego into the greater good?

"She Unnames Them" Le Guin says this is her favorite story, along with "Sur". Not much to say about the latter, though now that I think about it, "Sur" celebrates the thrill of exploration and discovery without any of the pride of getting credit for being first. A ringing example of that fierce humility I mentioned. But I wanted to talk about "She Unnames Them," because it brings in a theme I haven't touched on yet, the holiness of words and the danger of names. The story seems to be about Eve unnaming all the animal species, including herself. She gives her name up to Adam and God, my guess is she is giving up the name "woman." "You and your father lent me this -- gave it to me, actually. It's been really useful, but it doesn't exactly seem to fit very well lately. But thanks very much! It's really been very useful." Exactly! Exactly Eve my sister. Being a woman has been fab and all, but I think it's time to move on. No more birds, no more dogs, no more dolphins. Move on beyond labels, whether English or German or Latin, move on. Move on and let new words be born, with all the sacred trappings of any divine creation.

"I could not chatter away as I used to do, taking it all for granted. My words now must be as slow, as new, as single, as tentative as the steps I took going down the path away from the house, between the dark-branched, tall dancers motionless against the winter shining."

She says in the intro that she wrote "She Unnames Them" on a cocktail napkin during a bourbon on the rocks in an airplane. "I was feeling good. I was feeling like rewriting the Bible." It was published in 1985, the year I was born. Maybe she unnamed me? So must I be as slow, as new, as single, as tentative as a step away.

[Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A superb collection of Le Guin's short stories - some Hainish, some Earthsea, some standalone. Of course I preferred some to others, some didn't do much to excite me, but overall the quality is very high and I enjoyed my time with the collection.

[Philip Nikolov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Красиви и нежни, безцеремонни и директни, абстрактни или псевдо-тривиални, реални и нереални - всички разкази в тази антология са поредното доказателство за гения на Ле Гуин. Винаги съм бил захласнато-възхитен от начина, по който създава алтернативно общество на някоя си измислена планета и чрез дълбоко вникване и описание на мислите и действията на персонажите си, успява да засегне, разнищи и анализира теми от порядъка на екология, религия, расизъм, любов, секс, феминизъм, кастова система и йерархия, строеж на обществото, политика и всички останали изисквания за една качествена научна фантастика. Не че тя се вписва в толкова тесни рамки като жанрова категоризация, разбира се :) Тя сама си казва:

"Жанрът, понятие, което би могло да служи за полезен разграничител между различните видове художествена литература, е деградирал до положението на прикритие за проста оценка на стойността. Различните "жанрове" сега са преди всичко комерсиални продуктови етикети, чиято цел е да улеснят живота на мързеливите читатели, мързеливите критици и търговските отдели на издателствата.
Аз съм писател и не е моя работа да улеснявам живота на когото и да било.
Искате жанр? Ето ви жанр. Описвам всеки разказ не чрез такива недодялани термини като "реализъм" и "фентъзи", а прецизно: миниатюризиран реализъм, гериатричен реализъм, орегонски реализъм и безкомпромисен реализъм. Сюрреализъм. Митологична фантастика. Темпорална фантастика, зеленчукова фантастика, реална фантастика..."

Към какъвто и жанр да спадат разказите в тази книга, ако сте фенове на Урсула Ле Гуин и искате да посетите отново любимите светове от "Лявата ръка на мрака" или "Землемория", или пък не сте чели никога нищо нейно, но сте интелигентен човек, който иска да разшири кръгозора си - препоръчвам ви горещо "Реално и нереално"!

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Long, rich collection of short stories set on a variety of worlds (countries, eras, planets). Goes beyond the anthropological mission of examining cultures that have been, are, or could be; goes into the philosophical, the spiritual, the empathetic, the playful and the dramatic. Covers a wide range of UKLG’s writings, and every story presents ideas that resonate in your mind long after you’ve put the book down. Example: “I learned that the story has no beginning, and no story has an end. That the story is all muddle, all middle. That the story is never true, but that the lie is indeed a child of silence.”

[Mimi]

Put this on hold at 20%

This short story/novella collection has more misses than hits for me, so I decided to put this book on hold. I'll read it, but not in a foreseeable time, because I absolutely don't like the author's writing style.

[Rhea · Rating 4 out of 5]

1. some of these stories are novella length, so keep that in mind.
2. I've had a hard time with Ursula K. LeGuin's writing style, but after like 1000 pages of exposure over 2 years, I think I've come to appreciate it more.
3. Like a fourth of this book is Hainish-Cycle stuff, if that's your jam.

[Shaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discussed the stories in volume II of this collection with friends and they led to very interesting conversation. I liked many of these very much. I read the stories in volume I on my own and I'd say there were fewer standout ones for me in that volume. Over all this was an excellent collection and very worth reading.

[Kelly Lima · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cada conto um prazer maior que o outro, camada sobre camada de vida. "Solitude" cravado no meu coração.

[Гери · Rating 4 out of 5]

Не кралица в жанрово разнообразие, а императрица...

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I don’t know anything about reality, but I know what I like.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin. August 2012. (p. 328, eBook)

It wasn’t too long ago that I reviewed a novella by a popular fantasy author who shall remain unnamed and frankly, thought it was pretty terrible. Bad prose, two dimensional characters, amateurish. Posting it on social media may have been a mistake, but buried in one of the comments was something that caught my eye: (paraphrasing) “short stories and novellas don’t have enough time to have real, robust characters and unique, evolving tales.” Even then I disagreed. I’ve read Dostoevsky and some of his best work is in shorter form. Still, bringing Dostoevsky into a conversion about modern supermarket fantasy is like bringing in a tactical nuke to a gun fight.

So I did the next best thing: revenge on my intellect. Not running back necessarily to “higher fiction” like our Russian prodigy, but remaining in the fold of speculative fiction (and depending on who pens it can still be considered “higher fiction”!), picking an author known first and foremost for her fantasy output, but also has written in SF and straight fiction as well. And not picking one of her novels nor novellas, but short stories and not just any one, but about 40 of them.

Thus my quest is laid out before me: can short stories written by modern authors tell good tales? Can they be gripping? Can they have realistic characters that evolve in spite of limited page time? Can one experience true immersion in tales sometimes running only ten or so pages? I dive into Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Unreal and the Real, my second outing with her after taking on (and loving) The Dispossessed only a few months ago, with that in mind. It’s time to challenge myself.

A word of note: this is my first time reviewing a short story collection. I’m going to borrow my format from reviewing Festschrift publications (academic books consisting of collections of essays written in honor of someone or some theme) by writing SHORT remarks on EACH* of the 39 stories including choice quotes as they come up. Thus, this review will run long in the tooth, but I hope some find enjoyment. If you rather just digest my overall thoughts, feel free to scroll to the bottom.

*Due to GR's character limit, my review here will omit any stories I found to be ho-hum.

---

Part One: Where on Earth

#1 / Brothers and Sisters / 1976
Remarks: Well, case closed. Because yes, in a span of only a few dozen pages you can get realistic characters with full immersion and then some. Magic not needed. I’ll close this review early—just kidding. What I remember from The Dispossessed is here in full force though here we’ve an additional character serving as an undercurrent: replacing fantasy we get something any human can instantly relate to: melancholy. A mining town that has seen better days and those simply trying to make do. In a way, this story uncannily reminds me of a similar undercurrent in the film adaption of Where the Wild Things Are (2009). There’s yearning, hoping, but life gives what it gives and you gotta take it in stride...or run away or simply look up:

“’Clouds make you dizzy,’ Martin said, ‘like looking up a flagpole.’ They walked with faces upturned, seeing nothing but the motion of the wind. Rosana realised that though their feet were on the earth they themselves stuck up into the sky, it was the sky they were walking through, just as birds flew through it. She looked over at Martin walking through the sky.” (page 31, eBook)

#2 / A Week in the Country / 1976
Remarks: Continuing from the previous story, but we are presented with a strange curve-ball that makes one question just what’s going on to the very end: are we in Ohio in 1962 (as noted in the first sentence) or way off—perhaps in some Central European country? A familiar face from Brothers and Sisters joins us and with that, familiar feelings, but similar these tales are not. Reading closer to most any communist country in the Cold War period, we go from elation to idyll to sorrow and yes, it’s all pulled off in about 20 pages. Impressive, but even more so is Le Guin’s succinct description of any intellectual in these trying times:

“He would get well, would go back a week late to the city, to the three bedsteads and five roommates, shoes on the floor and rust and hairs in the washbasin, classrooms, laboratories, after that employment as an inspector of sanitation on State farms in the north and northeast, a two-room flat in State housing on the outskirts of a town near the State foundries, a black-haired wife who taught the third grade from State-approved textbooks, one child, two legal abortions, and the hydrogen bomb.” (page 59)

#3 / Unlocking the Air / 1990
Remarks: SLIDE! Closer. SLIDE! Closer, nice castle. SLIDE! Closer, blood on pavement, watch out. SLIDE! Closer again, tanks strife. Our third story again is a master class of uniqueness when commencing a tale, short or otherwise. Presumably set within the same world as the previous ones (Le Guin fans, don’t hate on me, I’m purposely avoiding reading background info on any of these stories as I pen these remarks!) as a familiar name joins us soon after the unusual intro, but are things simply resumed from before? Or do we have another—SLIDE!--jolt into the future situation on our hands? A revolution played out in several acts from unique (almost) pebble on pavement point-of-view. Also fun fact: this story originally appeared in Playboy.

#5 / The Diary of the Rose / 1976
Remarks: If there’s one story among this collection that shows just how versatile one can be, this could be it. A tale told through dairy entries that seems to take place in the same communist-leaning country as the previous stories. A tale of a psychologist that seems to incorporate some light SF elements. And one of sorrow both for the doctor and one of her patients as there is indeed a cost for thinking too much out of the box. Democracy, liberalism, frowned upon, shocked out of the system, for the love of country:

“But you wouldn’t betray the nation to an outside enemy.”
He said, “Well, if it was a choice between the nation and humanity, or the nation and a friend, I might. If you call that betrayal. I call it morality.”
He is a liberal. It is exactly what Dr. Katin was talking about on Sunday.
(page 120)

#6 / Direction of the Road / 1973
Remarks: Feeling like one of those “whoa, that’s a student who’s going somewhere!” short stories one would hear in a college level creative writing class, this one’s especially short, but features something you don’t see often: it begins almost as a riddle told via the point of view of an object we need to figure out. The viewpoint is different and makes you think differently about what we as people see compared to other objects: “There were always two of them inside the machine: a young male holding the wheel, and behind him an old female wrapped in rugs, glowering. If they ever said anything to each other I never heard it.” (page 128)

#8 / Gwilan’s Harp / 1977
Remarks: Eight stories in and I remain amazed how much of reality, progression, and simple musings on life can still make for powerful literature. If the first batch of stories in this book had a connected theme of a country that isn’t, one can say the next batch seem linked philosophically; observations on what may seem normal lives from diverse viewpoints. We have what we’re given; we can build upon it, expand upon it, sometimes break away from it, but the base forever remains. A harp broken can lead to a family forged, but even that may not last forever. After all, “what is music but a little wrinkling of the air?” (page 140)

#10 / Buffalo Gals, Won’t You Come Out Tonight / 1994
Remarks: There’s probably no better story in this entire almost 40 story collection that adheres so closely to the book’s name: The Unreal and the Real. A plane crash, a girl who may or may not have lost an eye, landing otherwise miraculously into a wild west unlike any other. Not Kansas, Coyote land is where she’s at and it’s as unreal as it gets. Also features a woman who may or may not be an actual coyote who talks to her own droppings (that talk back to her!).

#15 / Sleepwalkers / 1991
Remarks: If, as noted just above, we’re seeing stories with some grouping going on, this is the best of the last group in that it has more wings to cover more ground, more characters, and a unique ‘hot potato’ POV jumping from misanthrope to misanthrope before landing on perhaps the only normie before finding out…! “No sudden movements." (page 224) Remember that.

#17 / Ether, OR / 1995
Remarks: A standout story in a book full of great stories. Succinctly, this is Route 66 in text form: a town that is neither here nor there. The title, surely a play on what the tale is about and like Sleepwalkers, two tales back, Le Guin employs a shifting POV from character to character. Even though it’s longer than average, it still feels like it could have been fleshed out more.


Part Two: Outer Space, Inner Lands

#19 / The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas / 1973
Remarks: Noted at the beginning about being Le Guin’s take on a theme by William James, as someone who is not familiar with him, but knows a bit of Scripture, this phenomenal extra short story seems like a unique take on the scapegoat theme from Leviticus. The weight of sins—an actual belief during early biblical times—would build and build throughout the year and thus there would be a yearly event where a goat carries them off into the wilderness (and presumably dies there). Is this the price we need to pay for a supposed utopian society? If so, why do some sometimes walk away?

#23 / The First Contact With the Gorgonids / 1992
Remarks: On paper, this should be a ho-hum tale of average people meeting greater than average extraterrestrials. But thanks to Le Guin, we get something that may seem one pastiche on top of another and perhaps due to that, everything is amplified turning a tale of a boisterous couple from American trying to get a real locals-only tour of the outback into a pitstop like no other. “Jerry shoved the camera right up close to its head, and at that it put its hand over the lens.” (page 403) This will not end well for our friend Jerry.

#26 / The Matter of Seggri / 1994
Remarks: Alright, so this one is a bit unlike the others both in length (longest in the book?) and structure (observations from space, reports from a “observe and leave no trace when possible” starfaring civilization, fictional short stories within a short story, and even an autobiography). But what really makes this possibly the standout story in the entire collection is the plot which seems to take The Handmaid's Tale and throw it into a wordsmith centrifuge. This is a very adult story and nothing is what it seems. For those not averse to adults being adults and want to experience Ursula K. Le Guin as unfiltered as possible, look no further.

“Their gender imbalance has produced a society in which, as far as I can tell, the men have all the privilege and the women have all the power. It’s obviously a stable arrangement.” (page 481)

#27 / Solitude / 1994
Remarks: I’m kind of cheating here—or at least acting a bit premature. Only a few pages in and this story feels like Le Guin took all the elements of the previous piece, The Matter of Seggri and shuffled it. Still a world with more women than men, but here without in a society where things for the latter seem quite a bit less “fair” (if one can call Seggri’s world that, but compared to this, I think it’s a fair assumption).

After reading: my assumptions are correct, but what happens later on all things considered is quite unexpected. Reading this as a companion piece to the previous story is highly recommended for anyone who may want to pick up this entire collection but only has time to devour a select number of stories.

#29 / The Fliers of Gy / 2000
Remarks: Less a short story and more of a few pages from an extended anthropology book on a unique intelligent alien species that aside from growing feathers and in a small subset (one in a thousand give or take) of its kind growing full-fledged usable wings (with some MAJOR and unfortunate caveats), feels very similar to human beings. I’ve always had an idea of a history book that also functions as a story though it feels like Le Guin beat me to it by several decades and counting. This is, as noted, less story, more textbook observations but for fans of academic publications, this could be the surprise hit of the entire book.

#30 / The Silence of the Asonu / 1998
Remarks: The structure of The Fliers of Gy is emulated here though in briefer and slightly more nefarious: take a culture with a unique trend, take away its innocence, and see if that is all it takes to crack it—to finally see how the people act the way they do. Of course, this does not seem to be scientifically sound and anything but ethical and here, spoilers be damned, fails (of course). There’s some unintended humor in this one as well especially for those familiar with English Talmud translations.

#36 / The Poacher / 1993
Remarks: Fortunately, the cold streak of the last two tales concludes and while this one isn’t long by any means, it seems to feel more of a ‘proper tale’ rather than a mental exercise. It also feels like that story one may have read decades ago and out of the blue it comes to mind like an idle shower thought...“what was that story I read about that huge mountain-sized hedge and when the guy cuts through it it’s like a fairy tale castle full of people and animals sleeping?” This is the one!

#39 / Jar of Water / 2014
Remarks: And we reach the finish line with a story that functions as a literary oasis in the desert. This was a great tale reminding me of perhaps the Arabian peninsula in times long gone by. It also shows you can have real characters, a proper beginning, middle, danger near the end, and a pleasant ending all within a small number of pages. Don’t ever disregard short stories for simply being short!

---

Short story collections I don’t read that often. The Unreal and the Real was the first in a few years and the first ever I penned a review on while including my thoughts on each entry. As noted above, some were great, others so-so, but literary talent Ursula K. Le Guin has and then some. Many of these stories are proof-positive the novel form is not a requirement to telling a good tale and also proof-positive an author can still write full-fleshed engaging material even in under a dozen pages.

I am going to conclude by listing my favorite three stories from each half so if you want to tackle this, but feel reservations about taking on a 700 page collection of almost 40 tales, perhaps first read these and then take the next step in conquering them all: The Diary of the Rose, Gwilan’s Harp, Buffalo Gals Won’t You Come Out Tonight, Nine Lives, The Matter of Seggri, and The Fliers of Gy.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wide range of stories spanning Le Guin’s career.

[Mjhancock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is a set of 39 short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. It's absolutely massive, and chosen (as she says) by whether she likes it a lot, how it fits with the others, and how well-known it is already. The result is a lot that I've read before, and a lot of new favorites. I think what really surprised me was how much was fiction, without any element of sci-fi or fantasy; I really had no idea that Le Guin wrote so much of it.

There's no way I'm going to go over 39 stories, plus I kind of fell behind on my reviews so I finished this some time ago and don't remember everything well. So here's some stuff that made a good impression.
"Unlocking the Air" constantly recontextualizes itself every few pages, declaring it to be a new thing: a story, a committee meeting, history, a fairy tale. I'm not sure it all came together for me, but it's the sort of experimentalism I associate with Le Guin.

"The Diary of the Rose" is about the disillusionment of a psychologist, as she learns her government's definitions of political dissident and potential shock treatment candidate have a lot of overlap. Chilling, especially given the narrator's breakdown of clinical detachment.

"Gwilan's Harp" is one of the first openly fantasy stories (and even then, it's more pseudo-medieval than fantastic); it's short, but had a huge impact on me. It's about identity, and realizing who you are after the story you thought you were in ends.

"Hand, Cup, Shell" is definitely my favorite non-speculative fiction of the bunch. I've found myself poring through it multiple times, trying to find a single passage to show people to demonstrate why it meant so much to me, but it's really the whole. I don't think I can describe it well, but it's basically about women, and academia, and family, and what it means to navigate those spaces.

Part II tends more towards that speculative fiction. I was more familiar with these stories, but generally in a good way.

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is peak Le Guin for me, maybe the single purest example of her writing. It looks at a single moral question: what sort of evils would you allow to exist to keep yourself comfortable?

"The Matter of Seggri" is one I've read in a few different places--it's about a culture that practices extreme segregation of men and women. I think it's a good example of another of Le Guin's strengths, crafting cultures and histories based on sociological configuration. The story unfolds in several smaller stories about the culture over time, which is a nice, mosiac sort of approach.

"Solitude" is very similar--a society that takes individual sovereignty to an extreme, and the effect it has on two children with a mother who makes... questionable archaeological decisions. I've seen this story in a few different collections, and it's one of the few I skip over--not because it isn't good, but because I find it so unsettling.

"The Fliers of Gy" is perhaps the extreme form of Le Guin's cultural approach, as it's all cultural outline, with small stories attached. It's originally from Le Guin's "Changing Planes" story collection, where every story is like that. I love it, and barely anyone I've met has heard of it. This particular one is about a society of bird people, and the horrible stigma of those capable of flight.

The next story, "The Silence of the Asonu," is from the same collection; it quickly sketches out a culture that has agreed on a maximum muteness, and what that means for language and social behaviour.

"The Rule of Names" is from the Earthsea books, and it's essentially about when it's better to leave sleeping dragons alone. (Answer: always.)

"The Poacher" is one I read somewhere else first, and it always stuck with me; until finding it here, I had actually forgotten Le Guin wrote it. A poacher barely living above the poverty line finds his way into the Sleeping Beauty castle; and since he is a poacher, he knows he shouldn't be there, isn't the one to wake her... and just lives out his life in the enchanted sleeping castle.

Bottom line: this is a massive, 752 page collection from one of the best speculative fiction writers.
"Must-have" seems a insufficient way of describing how great it is.