Reading: The Birthday of the World

Reading: The Birthday of the World.

Ursula Le Guin is a genius who's work is an essential part of the science fiction genre, and she is at her best in short novels. Without the need for a lengthy plot she can focus on what she does best - presenting novel worlds and societies through the eyes of very real and human - however alien - characters.

She may tell us about the hermaphrodite hitting puberty, the fifth generation on a generation-ship or the alien anthropologists' daughter. In the end she holds up a mirror, and what we see is ourselves in all our strangeness and glory.