Book Review: The Unreal and the Real

Can a perfect society exist without some terrible cost? What happens when an obnoxious tourist drives to a remote area to investigate rumors of something strange? What if anthropologists could study the inhabitants of different planets - what sorts of societies would they find? Award-winning author Ursula K. LeGuin takes on these questions in The Unreal and the Real, a collection of short fiction. The stories in this two-volume set cover thirty-eight years of LeGuin's notable career, and the second volume, Outer Space, Inner Lands, focuses on her science fiction and fantasy. Having begun writing during the 1960s and 70s, when science fiction writers challenged social conventions head-on, LeGuin tackles issues such as what happens when a society emerges from slavery in "Betrayals." "The Matter of Seggri" investigates whether societies run by women are better, or whether they develop their own sorts of oppression. "Solitude" is a heartbreaking take on the difficulty of mother-daughter relationships, where an anthropologist takes her young daughter to live in a community with a radically different social structure, and the daughter grows up a part of the new community, a stranger to her mother. Like the best science fiction, Outer Space, Inner Lands will inspire you to think about the way things could be, and force you to question your own assumptions about the way things are. - Michelle (Sunset)