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Orsinia
The Compass Rose
North to Orsinia and the boundaries between reality and madness... South to discover Antarctica with three ladies from Chile... West to find an enchanted harp and the borderland between life and death... and onward to all points on and off the compass.
Contents:
The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics (1974)
The New Atlantis (1975)
Schrödinger's Cat (1974)
Two Delays on the Northern Line (1979)
SQ (1978)
Small Change (1981)
The First Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb (1978)
The Diary of the Rose (1976)
The White Donkey (1980)
The Phoenix (1982)
Intracom (1974)
The Eye Altering (1974)
Mazes (1975)
The Pathways of Desire (1979)
Gwilan's Harp (1977)
Malheur County (1979)
The Water Is Wide (1976)
The Wife's Story (1982)
Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time (1979)
Sur (1982)
Contents:
The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics (1974)
The New Atlantis (1975)
Schrödinger's Cat (1974)
Two Delays on the Northern Line (1979)
SQ (1978)
Small Change (1981)
The First Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb (1978)
The Diary of the Rose (1976)
The White Donkey (1980)
The Phoenix (1982)
Intracom (1974)
The Eye Altering (1974)
Mazes (1975)
The Pathways of Desire (1979)
Gwilan's Harp (1977)
Malheur County (1979)
The Water Is Wide (1976)
The Wife's Story (1982)
Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time (1979)
Sur (1982)
271 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
115 people are currently reading
2925 people want to read
About the author
Ursula K. Le Guin
1,045 books30.8k followersUrsula 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 204 reviews
November 24, 2010
I just discovered that the following short story is available on the Web. How often do you see something that wittily satirises both linguistics research and nihilist poetry and still manages to be thought-provoking and moving?
MS. Found in an Anthill
The messages were found written in touch-gland exudation on degerminated acacia seeds laid in rows at the end of a narrow, erratic tunnel leading off from one of the deeper levels of the colony. It was the orderly arrangement of the seeds that first drew the investigator's attention.
The messages are fragmentary, and the translation approximate and highly interpretative; but the text seems worthy of interest if only for its striking lack of resemblance to any other Ant texts known to us.
We venture to suggest that the confusion over Seed 31 may result from an ethnocentric interpretation of the word "up." To us, "up" is a "good" direction. Not so, or not necessarily so, to an ant. "Up" is where the food comes from, to be sure; but "down" is where security, peace, and home are to be found. "Up" is the scorching sun; the freezing night; no shelter in the beloved tunnels; exile; death. Therefore we suggest that this strange author, in the solitude of her lonely tunnel, sought with what means she had to express the ultimate blasphemy conceivable to an ant, and that the correct reading of Seeds 30-31, in human terms, is:
- G. D'Arbay, T.R. Bardol
MS. Found in an Anthill
The messages were found written in touch-gland exudation on degerminated acacia seeds laid in rows at the end of a narrow, erratic tunnel leading off from one of the deeper levels of the colony. It was the orderly arrangement of the seeds that first drew the investigator's attention.
The messages are fragmentary, and the translation approximate and highly interpretative; but the text seems worthy of interest if only for its striking lack of resemblance to any other Ant texts known to us.
Seeds 1-13Alternatively, this passage may be read:
[I will] not touch feelers. [I will] not stroke. [I will] spend on dry seeds [my] soul's sweetness. It may be found when [I am] dead. Touch this dry wood! [I] call! [I am] here!
[Do] not touch feelers. [Do] not stroke. Spend on dry seeds [your] soul's sweetness. [Others] may find it when [you are] dead. Touch this dry wood! Call: [I am] here!No known dialect of Ant employs any verbal person except the third person singular and plural and the first person plural. In this text, only the root forms of the verbs are used; so there is no way to decide whether the passage was intended to be an autobiography or a manifesto.
Seeds 14-22The mark translated "Praise!" is half of the customary salutation "Praise the Queen!" or "Long live the Queen!" or "Huzza for the Queen!" but the word/mark signifying "Queen" has been omitted.
Long are the tunnels. Longer is the untunneled. No tunnel reaches the end of the untunneled. The untunneled goes on farther than we can go in ten days [i.e., forever]. Praise!
Seeds 23-29An ant intruding in a colony not its own is usually killed. Isolated from other ants, it invariably dies within a day or so. The difficulty in this passage is the word/mark "without ants," which we take to mean "alone" - a concept for which no word/mark exists in Ant.
As the ant among foreign-enemy ants is killed, so the ant without ants dies, but being without ants is as sweet as honeydew.
Seeds 30-31There has already been considerable dispute over the interpretation of the phrase on Seed 31. It is an important question, since all the preceding seeds can be fully understood only in the light cast by this ultimate exhortation. Dr. Rosbone ingeniously argues that the author, a wingless neuter-female worker, yearns hopelessly to be a winged male, and to found a new colony, flying upward in the nuptial flight with a new Queen. Though the text certainly permits such a reading, our conviction is that nothing in the text supports it - least of all the text of the immediately preceding seed, No. 30: "Eat the eggs!" This reading, though shocking, is beyond disputation.
Eat the eggs! Up with the Queen!
We venture to suggest that the confusion over Seed 31 may result from an ethnocentric interpretation of the word "up." To us, "up" is a "good" direction. Not so, or not necessarily so, to an ant. "Up" is where the food comes from, to be sure; but "down" is where security, peace, and home are to be found. "Up" is the scorching sun; the freezing night; no shelter in the beloved tunnels; exile; death. Therefore we suggest that this strange author, in the solitude of her lonely tunnel, sought with what means she had to express the ultimate blasphemy conceivable to an ant, and that the correct reading of Seeds 30-31, in human terms, is:
Eat the eggs! Down with the Queen!The desiccated body of a small worker was found beside Seed 31 when the manuscript was discovered. The head had been severed from the thorax, probably by the jaws of a soldier of the colony. The seeds, carefully arranged in a pattern resembling a musical stave, had not been disturbed. (Ants of the soldier caste are illiterate; thus the soldier was presumably not interested in the collection of useless seeds from which the edible germs had been removed.) No living ants were left in the colony, which was destroyed in a war with a neighbouring anthill at some time subsequent of the death of the Author of the Acacia Seeds.
- G. D'Arbay, T.R. Bardol
May 5, 2018
I read both this and another Le Guin story collection, The Wind's Twelve Quarters, sometime in the late 80s or early 1990s; 1992 is a best guess. The author's death earlier this year gave me some impetus to finally review it now. Le Guin is an author I count as a favorite; but while I've enjoyed all of her novels that I've read, her short fiction is a more mixed bag. Some of her stories I really like; some I can't appreciate at all. They're also a mixture in terms of genre; many of the 20 stories here are science fiction (or exercises in surrealism, which since the 60s have sometimes been lumped in with SF), the field with which Le Guin was most often identified, but several, including some of the best, represent other genres entirely. As the author notes in the Preface, "the stories it contains tend to go off each in its own direction" (hence the title). They're grouped in six roughly equal sections each named after a compass point, including above and below (Zenith and Nadir); but the organizing principles governing the choice of what stories go where "are not very serious," and don't always reflect the similarities or differences I'd divide them by. (In all honesty, I should also state that a number of the stories didn't make much impression on my memory; though I have a copy of the book before me to refer to.)
The dates of composition for these selections range from 1974 to 1982; all of them but "The Water Is Wide" (which the author originally published as a chapbook) "The Phoenix" and "The Wife's Story" previously appeared in various magazines or anthologies. The latter is very difficult to discuss, or even to identify by genre, without a spoiler; but it's one of the best in the book, and a masterpiece of its type. My favorite is "Sur," one of the most original pieces of historical fiction ever written, set in the early 1900s, before the discovery of the South Pole, and featuring a small group of upper class South American women who are quite fascinated by the idea of Antarctic exploration. Of course society, and their husbands, would never allow them to do anything so far-fetched as to take part in it; but.... :-) Like much of Le Guin's fiction, this is a story that invites us to see people as individuals, not as walking gender stereotypes, and to think outside of gender role boxes. "Gwilan's Harp" is also historical fiction (the setting isn't explicitly given, but is in the Celtic lands in pre-technological times); it's an excellent story, which compares and contrasts thematically with "Malheur County," one of the author's rare forays into contemporary general fiction, to the disadvantage of the latter. (Both feature older female protagonists who have experienced loss, but their different attitudes determine the tone of the stories, and whether the message is optimistic or defeated and downbeat.) Another strong story here is "The Diary of the Rose," a very powerful and poignant dystopian vision, which of course (like all literary dystopias) is meant to motivate us to think and act in ways that aren't dystopian, so as to prevent real-life dystopias from coming to being.
Most of the rest of the stories are surrealist, and/or influenced by the "New Wave" school, which in the 70s was still considered "in" and trendy. There's also a noticeable tendency in several of them to be self-consciously "literary," in the sense that the postmodernist academic/critical establishment uses (or perverts) the term. The earlier collection, which has slightly fewer stories but a much higher proportion of memorable and good quality ones, has much less of this tendency. It's not hard to guess that as Le Guin's standing with the latter establishment rose in the 70s, so did the inclination to write for that milieu. ("Malheur County," for instance, was actually first published in the very prestigious Kenyon Review --and probably wouldn't have been if it was as positive and life-affirming as "Gwilan's Harp" is.) It's not irrelevant to note that this is the milieu she grew up in and probably always found most psychologically congenial. (Her father Alfred Kroeber was a Univ. of California anthropologist with a worldwide reputation --which likely also influenced the interest in social science that's notable in her SF). My rating splits the difference between the outstanding stories and those I didn't care for (and sometimes didn't finish).
The dates of composition for these selections range from 1974 to 1982; all of them but "The Water Is Wide" (which the author originally published as a chapbook) "The Phoenix" and "The Wife's Story" previously appeared in various magazines or anthologies. The latter is very difficult to discuss, or even to identify by genre, without a spoiler; but it's one of the best in the book, and a masterpiece of its type. My favorite is "Sur," one of the most original pieces of historical fiction ever written, set in the early 1900s, before the discovery of the South Pole, and featuring a small group of upper class South American women who are quite fascinated by the idea of Antarctic exploration. Of course society, and their husbands, would never allow them to do anything so far-fetched as to take part in it; but.... :-) Like much of Le Guin's fiction, this is a story that invites us to see people as individuals, not as walking gender stereotypes, and to think outside of gender role boxes. "Gwilan's Harp" is also historical fiction (the setting isn't explicitly given, but is in the Celtic lands in pre-technological times); it's an excellent story, which compares and contrasts thematically with "Malheur County," one of the author's rare forays into contemporary general fiction, to the disadvantage of the latter. (Both feature older female protagonists who have experienced loss, but their different attitudes determine the tone of the stories, and whether the message is optimistic or defeated and downbeat.) Another strong story here is "The Diary of the Rose," a very powerful and poignant dystopian vision, which of course (like all literary dystopias) is meant to motivate us to think and act in ways that aren't dystopian, so as to prevent real-life dystopias from coming to being.
Most of the rest of the stories are surrealist, and/or influenced by the "New Wave" school, which in the 70s was still considered "in" and trendy. There's also a noticeable tendency in several of them to be self-consciously "literary," in the sense that the postmodernist academic/critical establishment uses (or perverts) the term. The earlier collection, which has slightly fewer stories but a much higher proportion of memorable and good quality ones, has much less of this tendency. It's not hard to guess that as Le Guin's standing with the latter establishment rose in the 70s, so did the inclination to write for that milieu. ("Malheur County," for instance, was actually first published in the very prestigious Kenyon Review --and probably wouldn't have been if it was as positive and life-affirming as "Gwilan's Harp" is.) It's not irrelevant to note that this is the milieu she grew up in and probably always found most psychologically congenial. (Her father Alfred Kroeber was a Univ. of California anthropologist with a worldwide reputation --which likely also influenced the interest in social science that's notable in her SF). My rating splits the difference between the outstanding stories and those I didn't care for (and sometimes didn't finish).
August 15, 2008
I've come to the conclusion that with Le Guin's work, by far the smartest thing to do in a review is to do the linguistic equivalent of smiling, vaguely, mysteriously, and nodding slightly. You look smarter that way.
Probably the best way to read The Compass Rose does not involve a distracting girlfriend or a reading list as long as your leg with a time limit of about a month. As always, though, Ursula Le Guin's writing is beautiful, and her ideas are amazing and clever. "Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time", for example. A touch silly, a touch political (or I thought so, anyway: it looks much like commentary on global warming to me!). Some of her little phrases or conversations in this book made me grin. For example, from "The Water is Wide":
"I have to get out, Anna."
"You're not well yet."
"I am not a patient. I am impatient. Help me get out. Please."
"Why, Gid? What for?"
"They won't let me go where I have to go."
"Where do you have to go?"
"Mad."
Some of the stories, though, I just didn't get. I like Le Guin best when she's expanding her ideas out into a novel.
Probably the best way to read The Compass Rose does not involve a distracting girlfriend or a reading list as long as your leg with a time limit of about a month. As always, though, Ursula Le Guin's writing is beautiful, and her ideas are amazing and clever. "Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time", for example. A touch silly, a touch political (or I thought so, anyway: it looks much like commentary on global warming to me!). Some of her little phrases or conversations in this book made me grin. For example, from "The Water is Wide":
"I have to get out, Anna."
"You're not well yet."
"I am not a patient. I am impatient. Help me get out. Please."
"Why, Gid? What for?"
"They won't let me go where I have to go."
"Where do you have to go?"
"Mad."
Some of the stories, though, I just didn't get. I like Le Guin best when she's expanding her ideas out into a novel.
June 22, 2019
I always feel that Le Guin's writing is strongest when she's working in some sort of mythical vein, and, accordingly, some of my favourites from this collection were the opening "'The Author of the Acacia Seeds' and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics", "The Pathways of Desire", and "Gwilan's Harp". Several of the other stories share themes with her novels: "The Diary of the Rose" shares many characteristics with The Lathe of Heaven, while "The Eye Altering" is reminiscent of The Dispossessed and especially The Eye of the Heron in its focus on a particularly inhospitable world. The Antarctic crossing of "Sur" feels like something right out of the similar passages of The Left Hand of Darkness. However, these stories' similarities with her other work do not detract at all from their quality.
Some of the stories are quite weak though. The political dystopia of "The New Atlantis" (though it alternates with sections of very beautiful prose) and "SQ" are a little embarrassing when read today, and the silliness of "Intracom" feels very out of place in this collection.
Some of the stories are quite weak though. The political dystopia of "The New Atlantis" (though it alternates with sections of very beautiful prose) and "SQ" are a little embarrassing when read today, and the silliness of "Intracom" feels very out of place in this collection.
July 14, 2015
5% of these stories were lame.
But, 95% of these stories had all the magic, wonder, anxiety, and WTFery of Ursula K. Le Guin at her finest.
And let's be real: "lame" Ursula still kicks the pants off your local sparkling vampire.
Buy this title from Powell's Books.
But, 95% of these stories had all the magic, wonder, anxiety, and WTFery of Ursula K. Le Guin at her finest.
And let's be real: "lame" Ursula still kicks the pants off your local sparkling vampire.
Buy this title from Powell's Books.
June 20, 2015
Rereading this after many years, I admire the art of Le Guin's writing and the playfulness of her imagination. I found "The Diary of the Rose" especially moving. A young woman psychologist treats a political prisoner and gradually loses her innocence. Read it to decide for yourself what she gains.
Other stories are romps, spoofs, parodies, like "Intracom" and "Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time." Yet others are fables, myths, with a touch of the horror story about them: read "The Wife's Tale" and you'll be surprised that the ending is a surprise, because the beginning is so familiar.
It's remarkable that one writer can produce all these different stories--and yet it's Le Guin's voice throughout, no mistaking it. I'm surprised she's not more acclaimed than she already is.
Other stories are romps, spoofs, parodies, like "Intracom" and "Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time." Yet others are fables, myths, with a touch of the horror story about them: read "The Wife's Tale" and you'll be surprised that the ending is a surprise, because the beginning is so familiar.
It's remarkable that one writer can produce all these different stories--and yet it's Le Guin's voice throughout, no mistaking it. I'm surprised she's not more acclaimed than she already is.
July 8, 2020
Ursula K. Le Guin hat in Deutschland nie die Bekanntheit erlangt die sie verdient gehabt hätte, was zweifelsohne daran liegt dass dass die Phantastik im Allgemeinen keinen besonders hohen Stellenwert genießt, zumindest in der traditionellen Literaturkritik. Aber das ist ein Thema für sich. Wenn man doch mal etwas von Le Guin hört, dann meistens im Zusammenhang mit ihren berühmten Science-Fiction-Romanen, besonders „The Left Hand of Darkness“ und „The Dispossessed“. Manchmal wird auch noch der Erdsee-Zyklus, ihre fast ebenso bedeutende Fantasy-Serie, erwähnt. Ihr Schaffen als Autorin von Kurzgeschichten habe ich allerdings noch nirgends gewürdigt gesehen. Und das ist ebenso bedauerlich wie unverdient, sind doch sehr viele ganz großartige dabei und manche sogar Ausgangspunkt für spätere Romane.
Die hier besprochene Sammlung „Die Kompassrose“ ist für mein Empfinden zwar nicht ganz so stark wie der Quasi-Vorgänger „Die zwölf Striche der Windrose“, aber immer noch ausgesprochen lesenswert. Ein paar der sehr kurzen Erzählungen, besonders „Intercom“ und „Einige Stellungnahmen zum Problem der Zeitknappheit“ sind ein wenig zu sehr auf die Idee und die Form fixiert und vergessen dabei vollkommen eine Geschichte zu erzählen, aber das sind Ausnahmen. Die allermeisten Geschichten sind ausgesprochen kreativ und wundervoll erzählt, und ein paar Höhepunkte ihres Schaffens in diesem Bereich sind auch darunter, unter anderem die ebenso bedrückende wie faszinierende Dystopie „Das Tagebuch der Rose“ und die verblüffende, sehr intelligent mit Seins-Fragen und Geschlechter-Klischees spielende „Die Pfade des Verlangens“, beides vermutlich nicht zufällig mit die längsten der vorhanden zwanzig Geschichten.
Für jeden der auch nur im Ansatz etwas mit Ursula K. Le Guins Romanen anfangen kann (und nicht gerade eine ausgesprochene Abneigung gehen Kurzgeschichten hegt), unbedingt eine Empfehlung!
Die hier besprochene Sammlung „Die Kompassrose“ ist für mein Empfinden zwar nicht ganz so stark wie der Quasi-Vorgänger „Die zwölf Striche der Windrose“, aber immer noch ausgesprochen lesenswert. Ein paar der sehr kurzen Erzählungen, besonders „Intercom“ und „Einige Stellungnahmen zum Problem der Zeitknappheit“ sind ein wenig zu sehr auf die Idee und die Form fixiert und vergessen dabei vollkommen eine Geschichte zu erzählen, aber das sind Ausnahmen. Die allermeisten Geschichten sind ausgesprochen kreativ und wundervoll erzählt, und ein paar Höhepunkte ihres Schaffens in diesem Bereich sind auch darunter, unter anderem die ebenso bedrückende wie faszinierende Dystopie „Das Tagebuch der Rose“ und die verblüffende, sehr intelligent mit Seins-Fragen und Geschlechter-Klischees spielende „Die Pfade des Verlangens“, beides vermutlich nicht zufällig mit die längsten der vorhanden zwanzig Geschichten.
Für jeden der auch nur im Ansatz etwas mit Ursula K. Le Guins Romanen anfangen kann (und nicht gerade eine ausgesprochene Abneigung gehen Kurzgeschichten hegt), unbedingt eine Empfehlung!
Want to read
July 16, 2019A very moving review of Le Guin's promising short story collection, featuring Sur, and nineteen additional tales:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
July 7, 2016
Short stories are a tough area for me. I want to like them, but often they fall flat for me; this collection is no different. The nice thing is that if one story doesn't touch me, the next one is coming soon.
So, honestly, it's a 3.5 read for me.
These are not generally upbeat stories. There is a lot of dark, near-future stuff, stuff that is, like good dystopian-style stuff, frightening because I can see how it could happen. I wish more people read this kind of writing, to be warned, to be aware of how today will affect tomorrow.
Many of the stories are set in my region, which is, of course, extra fun.
I'll probably read more Le Guin collections as the years go by.
So, honestly, it's a 3.5 read for me.
These are not generally upbeat stories. There is a lot of dark, near-future stuff, stuff that is, like good dystopian-style stuff, frightening because I can see how it could happen. I wish more people read this kind of writing, to be warned, to be aware of how today will affect tomorrow.
Many of the stories are set in my region, which is, of course, extra fun.
I'll probably read more Le Guin collections as the years go by.
February 2, 2009
Very good stories - some about old women - hey we need more stories about old women.
June 4, 2024
This book has lived on the corner of my bed since December. We have been through some stuff. It is wonderful and Le Guin remains the GOAT
November 10, 2018
It just did not work for me.
Very little substance, too much pretension. What also killed it for me was the recurrence of forced, mixed-quality, artificial attempts to build atmospheric settings to compensate for the vacuousness of the narrative, resulting in such an exasperatingly boring reading experience as to force me to abandon this book half way through.
Sorry - but not for me. I gave it a supplementary star as I could not complete this book - maybe the second part is better, but I just was not ready to take the risk to have to suffer another half book of the same stuff.
Very little substance, too much pretension. What also killed it for me was the recurrence of forced, mixed-quality, artificial attempts to build atmospheric settings to compensate for the vacuousness of the narrative, resulting in such an exasperatingly boring reading experience as to force me to abandon this book half way through.
Sorry - but not for me. I gave it a supplementary star as I could not complete this book - maybe the second part is better, but I just was not ready to take the risk to have to suffer another half book of the same stuff.
June 24, 2021
no surprise to anyone that I simp for Ursula le Guin!
Do I dare detect an element of Foucault in these? The preoccupation with diffuse power and control, the critique of modern psychiatry as a tool of order, the frequent bureaucratised dystopias !! She is a true anarchist - le Guin's fear is order, order, her solution is interpersonal relations, old women, letting grief take its course, looking deeper.
My favourite, I think, was the story where a bunch of space anthropologists go to a supposedly unvisited planet which is exactly, eerily, like a Gauguin esque summer island colonialist fantasy - and then they find out that the island is actually a product of a little white boy's imagination, a boy who has read too many adventure books.
:')
Do I dare detect an element of Foucault in these? The preoccupation with diffuse power and control, the critique of modern psychiatry as a tool of order, the frequent bureaucratised dystopias !! She is a true anarchist - le Guin's fear is order, order, her solution is interpersonal relations, old women, letting grief take its course, looking deeper.
My favourite, I think, was the story where a bunch of space anthropologists go to a supposedly unvisited planet which is exactly, eerily, like a Gauguin esque summer island colonialist fantasy - and then they find out that the island is actually a product of a little white boy's imagination, a boy who has read too many adventure books.
:')
Read
February 21, 2012Again, most reviews don't contain a table of contents, so I'll add mine as I (re)read. One disappointment: I had expected to see an illustration of an actual compass rose, which is not in this edition. The early compass-makers were making works of utility and beauty. We haven't completely lost this combination: but it's apparently not as much of a priority anymore.
Contents:
Preface: Really an explanation of the name and theme of the book
First Section: NADIR
(1) The Author of The Acacia Seeds: And other extracts from the Journal Of The Association of Therolinguists (with an appeal for the establishment of a Society of Phytolinguistics; or at least of Phytoaesthetics). I should say that I'm not so sure that it's a 'fact' that plants don't communicate. I remember a suggestion from the roundtable discussion at the end of A Glorious Accident: what if plants could work out a compromise, and not compete for their own advantage at the expense of others? Well, what if sometimes they do? Spanish moss and other epiphytes are not parasitic. They use living trees essentially as scaffolding, to get them up in the air, where they can trap airborne water and nutrients. And they may benefit the trees thereby, by attracting other life to the canopy level. But strictly speaking, the relationship between them is mostly structural. And there are many plants that live more or less symbiotically with animals, and not just in matters of pollination, seed dispersion, etc. Some plants depend on insects so heavily that, for example, peonies couldn't bloom without ants to eat the waxy material sealing their buds shut. Maybe plants DO communicate, in subtle ways like providing succulent fruits, copious nectar, ultraviolet 'landing strips' on their flower petals, etc. And then there are, for example, some jellyfish and tubeworms which cultivate nutrient-producing bacteria, algae, etc, in their tissues.)
(2) The New Atlantis: A depiction of a decidedly dystopian Oregon, set in some near-future time. With interspersions from the point of view of...ghosts? statues? corpses? Or maybe people just in some sort of suspended animation?...as Atlantis rises again.
The dystopian elements are almost entirely unexplained. Hypernationalism is perhaps credible. There may even be some explanation for the ban on marriage, though it's never really explained. But why no woman doctors? Why limit science to those who can pass background checks?
The narrator of the framing story is surprisingly well-informed in history for someone who has never been to any but approved schooling (which only permits MBAs and other financial training, really). I suspect some bootleg educating.
A few technical notes: (a) The description of the deep sea is somewhat accurate: but the description of the midrange is provably inaccurate. (b) Though it's true that Oregon is not subject to the same types of earthquakes as much of California, it is part of the circum-Pacific Ring of Fire: and the subduction earthquakes in the northern areas, though rarer, are much more devastating; and (c) the term rendered 'Sammy's Dot' is from the Russian 'samizdat'. Roughly translated, 'sameness'; it referred to a machine like the English 'mimeograph'--hence the purple fingers, because if you're old enough to remember mimeographs, you'd probably remember that they used purple ink. Using such machines for underground publications is an old tradition. It would be hard to do now, because the machines have been orphaned. But some equivalent technology would probably replace it, in a world with such a limited power supply as proposed.
(3) Schrodinger's Cat: A favorite of many people. What if the laws of the quantum level should begin to apply on the observable level? How would we cope with the loss of certainty and causality? A man (or maybe it's a dog) tries to restore causality by physically performing Schrodinger's gedankenexperiment. But why would that work? And whatEVER possessed Schrodinger to choose such an uncanny animal as a cat for his exemplar?
Second Section: NORTH
(4) Two Delays on The Northern Line: I had to look up 'Krasnoy', which I vaguely (and, it appears, correctly) associated with Russia. These two stories are only tangentially related, though they have a common theme, and a common time (there's a flood that affects the train tracks in both cases). (a) Going to Paraguananza: A man fails to realize that he's been grieving the loss of his mother incrementally since he reached adulthood and established his own life. So he castigates himself for not feeling 'appropriate' grief at the prescribed time. But since he never recognizes the actual process, he can't really come to a resolution. I also had to look up the word 'Paraguanza', which I knew was NOT the capital of Paraguay (that's 'Asuncion'). The consensus seems to be that LeGuin made up the name.
(B) Metempsychosis: Another word to look up. It refers to reincarnation, apparently, except that in this case the subject has not disincarnated, exactly. In mourning his dead wife, he pays little attention to the fact that he's inherited a house he never lived in (he visited elderly relatives there as a child). But going there to prepare the place for sale, he is surprised to find he feels he's coming home.
(5) SQ: Many of LeGuin's stories remind me of Ashleigh Brilliant's aphorism: "As long as you make one or two ridiculous assumptions, you'll find everything I do or say completely justified."
In this case the ridiculous assumption is the idea that there's an absolute and infallible test of sanity...which more and more people keep failing all the time. It's nonsense, of course. There's no such test, and (pretty much by definition) there can't be. But the totalitarian measures instituted on the basis on the argument would still be unjustifiable. Who SAYS you can't be free, or happy, just because you're mad? Nobody seems to question this basic assumption. The next but two story deals with this absurdity in more depth.
(6) Small Change: A recently dead woman explores the 'other rooms' in her two room house...and has to deal with the fact that her niece can't survive without her.
Many of these stories have unexplained details. Since WHAT invasion has the aunt always felt more comfortable with her back to the wall?
Section Three: EAST
(7) The First Report of The Shipwrecked Foreigner to The Kadanh of Derb: The foreigner, despairing of the possibility of describing Earth, tries describing Venice, instead (and his Great Aunt Elizabeth, who may or may not have been to Venice herself).
(8) The Diary of The Rose: This title sets off odd reverberations in the mind. Given the love of classical music by both parties, for example, the first thing that I was reminded of was La Spectre de La Rose.
The plot device of the 'psychoscope' is really not necessary to the story. Whether such a mindreading device is actually possible is not really the point.
The issue is, of course, the familiar practice of secret police in totalitarian states using psychology as a tool to 'cure' people of freedom and the desire therefor. The 'Rose' (a trainee psychologist named Rosa) naively assumes that the diagnoses (paranoia, violent tendencies, etc) are valid. She worries that she's overidentifying with the patient. But the more she thinks about it, the surer she is that he's the sane one: and that he's not at all wrong to assume that his mind will be destroyed, in the name of 'curing' him of his political dissent (including, most especially, the protection of his mental privacy).
The question of what the therapist will do with her newfound knowledge is never really resolved.
(9) The White Donkey: A child goatherd (it's never really clear how old she is, but I'd say not over 11), who has either never seen a horse, or encounters a less horsy version, treats the unicorn who leads her to a good grazing place as only another part of a complex reality. But when she's told she's going to be married (willy-nilly, though it's not obvious that she's mature enough to make a choice of her own), she has to give up all her childhood. It's not clear where this is set, but it may be in the forested areas of India.
(10) The Phoenix: A retired actor tries to save the life of a librarian who was injured trying to keep his library from being burned, though she can't really justify it to herself--perhaps because she can't escape the trap of hatred and vengeance herself.
Section Four: ZENITH
(11) Intracom: An absurdist script about a starship on a journey. Nobody's quite sure where or why. The crew are all mad, and they become foster parents of an alien...but from where?
(12) The Eye Altering: Refugees on a planet with a different light regime realize that young people whom they think are even less well adapted to the alien environment are in fact better adapted to the new world than the 'normal' people.
I have to say that I think there's no real genetic alteration: it's simply that people who wouldn't have been able to thrive on Earth are coming to the fore because they CAN thrive on the new world.
Personally, I identify with the 'weaklies', since I have more in common with them, and have difficulty understanding the viewpoint of the protagonist--what she finds ugly, I'm pretty sure I would find beautiful.
(13) Mazes: A criticism of ethnocentrism, from the point of view of a sentient which can't recognize its own ethnocentrism. I can't be sure, but I think the protagonist is deaf. It considers that everybody will communicate by elaborate maze dances, if they're intelligent at all.
(14) The Pathways of Desire: Anthropologists observing the Ndif begin to suspect that they're subject to an elaborate theatrical performance...but why?
Section Five: WEST
(15) Gwilan's Harp: Sort of a precursor for Mr Holland's Opus. I found this story quite depressing. I don't object to the woman having a home life. But it's not a very fulfilling life, in my opinion.
(16) Malheur County: A widowed woman tries to help her son-in-law through his own grieving when he also is widowed. It's interesting that LeGuin seems to have agreed with Charlotte Bronte that there are some people who are born to be 'curled darling(s) of Nature and Fortune' (as Bronte put in in discussing Villette), and others who are fated to ill-fortune and non-thriving from birth.
(17) The Water is Wide: A bizarre and frankly incestuous tale of suicidal and mad siblings. It's not mad to feel guilt at the sufferings of others, even if it's recognized as excessive. But it is mad to try to exorcise the guilt by suicide.
Section Six: SOUTH
(18) The Wife's Story: A more social version of the older(?) story "Wolves Don't Cry".
(19) Some Approaches to The Theory of Lost Time: (a) The Little Tiny Hole Theory; (b) The Nonbiodegradable Moment; Bleeding Hearts? The Temporal Conservation Movement.: Pure silliness: and yet with a sting in its tail.
(20) Sur--A Summary Report of The Yelcho Expedition to The Antarctic. 1909-1910: A women's expedition to the South Pole. Not written for publication, but just for family history purposes. People who have read both will notice similarities to the polar journey in The Left Hand of Darkness, especially as regards the technology and supplies.
The women involved act only for their own spiritual enrichment. They want the experience, but don't care for the glory. This is one of the primary reasons they don't publish their advertures.
Contents:
Preface: Really an explanation of the name and theme of the book
First Section: NADIR
(1) The Author of The Acacia Seeds: And other extracts from the Journal Of The Association of Therolinguists (with an appeal for the establishment of a Society of Phytolinguistics; or at least of Phytoaesthetics). I should say that I'm not so sure that it's a 'fact' that plants don't communicate. I remember a suggestion from the roundtable discussion at the end of A Glorious Accident: what if plants could work out a compromise, and not compete for their own advantage at the expense of others? Well, what if sometimes they do? Spanish moss and other epiphytes are not parasitic. They use living trees essentially as scaffolding, to get them up in the air, where they can trap airborne water and nutrients. And they may benefit the trees thereby, by attracting other life to the canopy level. But strictly speaking, the relationship between them is mostly structural. And there are many plants that live more or less symbiotically with animals, and not just in matters of pollination, seed dispersion, etc. Some plants depend on insects so heavily that, for example, peonies couldn't bloom without ants to eat the waxy material sealing their buds shut. Maybe plants DO communicate, in subtle ways like providing succulent fruits, copious nectar, ultraviolet 'landing strips' on their flower petals, etc. And then there are, for example, some jellyfish and tubeworms which cultivate nutrient-producing bacteria, algae, etc, in their tissues.)
(2) The New Atlantis: A depiction of a decidedly dystopian Oregon, set in some near-future time. With interspersions from the point of view of...ghosts? statues? corpses? Or maybe people just in some sort of suspended animation?...as Atlantis rises again.
The dystopian elements are almost entirely unexplained. Hypernationalism is perhaps credible. There may even be some explanation for the ban on marriage, though it's never really explained. But why no woman doctors? Why limit science to those who can pass background checks?
The narrator of the framing story is surprisingly well-informed in history for someone who has never been to any but approved schooling (which only permits MBAs and other financial training, really). I suspect some bootleg educating.
A few technical notes: (a) The description of the deep sea is somewhat accurate: but the description of the midrange is provably inaccurate. (b) Though it's true that Oregon is not subject to the same types of earthquakes as much of California, it is part of the circum-Pacific Ring of Fire: and the subduction earthquakes in the northern areas, though rarer, are much more devastating; and (c) the term rendered 'Sammy's Dot' is from the Russian 'samizdat'. Roughly translated, 'sameness'; it referred to a machine like the English 'mimeograph'--hence the purple fingers, because if you're old enough to remember mimeographs, you'd probably remember that they used purple ink. Using such machines for underground publications is an old tradition. It would be hard to do now, because the machines have been orphaned. But some equivalent technology would probably replace it, in a world with such a limited power supply as proposed.
(3) Schrodinger's Cat: A favorite of many people. What if the laws of the quantum level should begin to apply on the observable level? How would we cope with the loss of certainty and causality? A man (or maybe it's a dog) tries to restore causality by physically performing Schrodinger's gedankenexperiment. But why would that work? And whatEVER possessed Schrodinger to choose such an uncanny animal as a cat for his exemplar?
Second Section: NORTH
(4) Two Delays on The Northern Line: I had to look up 'Krasnoy', which I vaguely (and, it appears, correctly) associated with Russia. These two stories are only tangentially related, though they have a common theme, and a common time (there's a flood that affects the train tracks in both cases). (a) Going to Paraguananza: A man fails to realize that he's been grieving the loss of his mother incrementally since he reached adulthood and established his own life. So he castigates himself for not feeling 'appropriate' grief at the prescribed time. But since he never recognizes the actual process, he can't really come to a resolution. I also had to look up the word 'Paraguanza', which I knew was NOT the capital of Paraguay (that's 'Asuncion'). The consensus seems to be that LeGuin made up the name.
(B) Metempsychosis: Another word to look up. It refers to reincarnation, apparently, except that in this case the subject has not disincarnated, exactly. In mourning his dead wife, he pays little attention to the fact that he's inherited a house he never lived in (he visited elderly relatives there as a child). But going there to prepare the place for sale, he is surprised to find he feels he's coming home.
(5) SQ: Many of LeGuin's stories remind me of Ashleigh Brilliant's aphorism: "As long as you make one or two ridiculous assumptions, you'll find everything I do or say completely justified."
In this case the ridiculous assumption is the idea that there's an absolute and infallible test of sanity...which more and more people keep failing all the time. It's nonsense, of course. There's no such test, and (pretty much by definition) there can't be. But the totalitarian measures instituted on the basis on the argument would still be unjustifiable. Who SAYS you can't be free, or happy, just because you're mad? Nobody seems to question this basic assumption. The next but two story deals with this absurdity in more depth.
(6) Small Change: A recently dead woman explores the 'other rooms' in her two room house...and has to deal with the fact that her niece can't survive without her.
Many of these stories have unexplained details. Since WHAT invasion has the aunt always felt more comfortable with her back to the wall?
Section Three: EAST
(7) The First Report of The Shipwrecked Foreigner to The Kadanh of Derb: The foreigner, despairing of the possibility of describing Earth, tries describing Venice, instead (and his Great Aunt Elizabeth, who may or may not have been to Venice herself).
(8) The Diary of The Rose: This title sets off odd reverberations in the mind. Given the love of classical music by both parties, for example, the first thing that I was reminded of was La Spectre de La Rose.
The plot device of the 'psychoscope' is really not necessary to the story. Whether such a mindreading device is actually possible is not really the point.
The issue is, of course, the familiar practice of secret police in totalitarian states using psychology as a tool to 'cure' people of freedom and the desire therefor. The 'Rose' (a trainee psychologist named Rosa) naively assumes that the diagnoses (paranoia, violent tendencies, etc) are valid. She worries that she's overidentifying with the patient. But the more she thinks about it, the surer she is that he's the sane one: and that he's not at all wrong to assume that his mind will be destroyed, in the name of 'curing' him of his political dissent (including, most especially, the protection of his mental privacy).
The question of what the therapist will do with her newfound knowledge is never really resolved.
(9) The White Donkey: A child goatherd (it's never really clear how old she is, but I'd say not over 11), who has either never seen a horse, or encounters a less horsy version, treats the unicorn who leads her to a good grazing place as only another part of a complex reality. But when she's told she's going to be married (willy-nilly, though it's not obvious that she's mature enough to make a choice of her own), she has to give up all her childhood. It's not clear where this is set, but it may be in the forested areas of India.
(10) The Phoenix: A retired actor tries to save the life of a librarian who was injured trying to keep his library from being burned, though she can't really justify it to herself--perhaps because she can't escape the trap of hatred and vengeance herself.
Section Four: ZENITH
(11) Intracom: An absurdist script about a starship on a journey. Nobody's quite sure where or why. The crew are all mad, and they become foster parents of an alien...but from where?
(12) The Eye Altering: Refugees on a planet with a different light regime realize that young people whom they think are even less well adapted to the alien environment are in fact better adapted to the new world than the 'normal' people.
I have to say that I think there's no real genetic alteration: it's simply that people who wouldn't have been able to thrive on Earth are coming to the fore because they CAN thrive on the new world.
Personally, I identify with the 'weaklies', since I have more in common with them, and have difficulty understanding the viewpoint of the protagonist--what she finds ugly, I'm pretty sure I would find beautiful.
(13) Mazes: A criticism of ethnocentrism, from the point of view of a sentient which can't recognize its own ethnocentrism. I can't be sure, but I think the protagonist is deaf. It considers that everybody will communicate by elaborate maze dances, if they're intelligent at all.
(14) The Pathways of Desire: Anthropologists observing the Ndif begin to suspect that they're subject to an elaborate theatrical performance...but why?
Section Five: WEST
(15) Gwilan's Harp: Sort of a precursor for Mr Holland's Opus. I found this story quite depressing. I don't object to the woman having a home life. But it's not a very fulfilling life, in my opinion.
(16) Malheur County: A widowed woman tries to help her son-in-law through his own grieving when he also is widowed. It's interesting that LeGuin seems to have agreed with Charlotte Bronte that there are some people who are born to be 'curled darling(s) of Nature and Fortune' (as Bronte put in in discussing Villette), and others who are fated to ill-fortune and non-thriving from birth.
(17) The Water is Wide: A bizarre and frankly incestuous tale of suicidal and mad siblings. It's not mad to feel guilt at the sufferings of others, even if it's recognized as excessive. But it is mad to try to exorcise the guilt by suicide.
Section Six: SOUTH
(18) The Wife's Story: A more social version of the older(?) story "Wolves Don't Cry".
(19) Some Approaches to The Theory of Lost Time: (a) The Little Tiny Hole Theory; (b) The Nonbiodegradable Moment; Bleeding Hearts? The Temporal Conservation Movement.: Pure silliness: and yet with a sting in its tail.
(20) Sur--A Summary Report of The Yelcho Expedition to The Antarctic. 1909-1910: A women's expedition to the South Pole. Not written for publication, but just for family history purposes. People who have read both will notice similarities to the polar journey in The Left Hand of Darkness, especially as regards the technology and supplies.
The women involved act only for their own spiritual enrichment. They want the experience, but don't care for the glory. This is one of the primary reasons they don't publish their advertures.
March 9, 2024
Actual rating: 4.5 stars 💫
May 9, 2022
In one of the short stories in Gerald Murnane’s Stream System, the narrator recalls being fascinated by a book with the title “Portrait Into Landscape.” One can talk of a “Portrait of a Landscape,” sure, but “Portrait Into Landscape”? What is that?
A similar mystification drew me to Ursula K. Le Guin’s book, The Compass Rose. Being a landlubber, I had no idea what a “compass rose” was. Did the title refer to a compass rising in the past tense? A rose in the shape of the compass? Or a compass with the name “Rose”? I felt a brief sense of the mystery of language, which is exactly what the best stories in this collection convey.
The opening story, The Author of the Acacia Seeds, is its most intriguing. It is a collection of research papers on decoded animal “languages”. The first paper discusses a series of messages written on some acacia seeds found in a hidden tunnel of an ant colony. The author gives a linguistic analysis, but is not able to say what the poem is actually about; for instance, because the ant language only has 3rd person singular and 1st person plural, it is not possible to determine whether the text was meant as an autobiography or a manifesto. The author therefore notes two possible ways to interpret seeds 1-13 (4):
Lovely. The final two seeds seem to indicate that the entire poem is an incitement to rebellion: “Eat the eggs! Up with the Queen!” (5)
In The New Atlantis, two stories are interwoven to depict a future in which humanity is on the brink of its knees from authoritarian government and ecological disaster. In the first story, a group of amateur scientists are working in secret on a breakthrough in solar energy. They are also being monitored by the government. One of them is taken away for being “unwell”—the government “must look after him and restore him to health, because health is the inalienable right of the citizens of a democracy.” (5)
Meanwhile, on the radio in the background, the news breaks of a new continent that is rising from the ocean. In the second story, the continent’s inhabitants, the lantern-creatures, begin to wake up:
There is no explicit connection between the two stories. Perhaps, civilisation having doomed itself, the earth is moving into a new epoch, one in which humans are extinct and the lantern-creatures are supreme. Their emergence from water mimics the evolution of earlier aquatic life-forms into vertebrates (and from there, into mammals and humans).
The lantern-creatures are simple and primitive, but in their woken state they seem gripped by a new tenderness. To them, humans must seem like ancient gods who have departed earth. The story’s end is their haunting cry of loneliness, a desire to belong somewhere on an earth made for them: “Where are you? We are here. Where have you gone?” (52).
In this late-stage civilisation, psychiatry is wielded as a means of political subjugation. This is a recurring theme. It comes up again in SQ, a short, funny satire about a world that becomes dominated by sanity testing. It is told in the form of the journal of the secretary of Dr. Speakie, the inventor of the test. Those who measure above a certain threshold on the test (i.e. those who are insane) are put into his rehabilitation programs.
This has major ramifications when various heads of state test as insane. Since the test is scientific and rational, there is no effective way for them to deny its conclusions without indicting themselves as unscientific and irrational. It’s a lose-lose. While they’re checked into rehab, the UN Bureau of Psychometrics assumes control of their countries, forming the nucleus of a world government. Most people in the world go crazy at least once, hence everyone is slowly inducted into the new political order.
Even Dr. Speakie goes insane and has to be rehabilitated against his will. His secretary is shocked, but she maintains her belief in the test and her respect for the doctor. She goes to visit him every week, in between running the world government, which she does alone with some help from the janitor: “It really isn’t as difficult as you think.” (104).
The Diary of the Rose is a similar story. It is presented as a journal kept by Rosa, a psychoscopist, someone who monitors and examines the thoughts and mental images of the mentally unwell using a tool called a psychoscope. One of her patients, Flores Sorde, has been referred for psychotic thoughts. If her observations confirm these, he will be referred on for shock therapy; in addition to having his thinking corrected, he will lose most of his memories.
Neither patient nor doctor know exactly what Flores did which caused him to be brought in for observation. Rosa believes he will be a routine case, interpreting his resistance as a sign of irrationality and ill-health in itself. “Of course I’m irrational,” complains Sorde, “faced with the imminent destruction of my memory—my self. But I’m not inaccurate. You know they’re not going to let me out of here unchanged.” (155)
We learn that Flores is some kind of political subversive. He has already been undergone shock therapy numerous times. He had a traumatic experience when he saw police beating up peaceful protestors. And he had some kind of acquaintance with Dr. Arca, a professor who wrote a politically subversive book on liberty, whose mind was subsequently obliterated by shock therapy.
Unlike most of Rosa’s other patients—depressives with insipid, grey thoughts—Flores has exceptionally vivid and concrete images in his mind, especially that of a rose, which connects him to his vision of a humane, hopeful democracy. Unlike Dr. Arca’s more rationally, deliberately ordered mind, Flores has a more muddled mind, preferring more practical thoughts and concrete images. His convictions are strong, but he does not conceptualise them in abstract certainties, so the doctors struggle to locate and shock the hope and democracy out of him.
According to the experts, Flores is suffering from political psychosis. Rosa begins to doubt her medical training—“There is no judge here to give him a life sentence. Only doctors to give death sentences” (161)—and tries to save him from being referred for shock therapy. She fails. Her diary ends with her resignation and a final shocking piece of word salad: “I am Rosa. I am the rose. The rose, I am the rose. The rose with no flower, the rose all thorns, the mind he made, the hand he touched, the winter rose.” (163)
This is the kind of striking writing that contains the whole story within. Either it shows the kind of powerful image that helped Flores cling to democracy through all his shock treatments. Or it is the painful discovery that everything Rosa knows and believes has been conditioned into her, that her thoughts are not—have never been—her own; failing to accept this, her mind falls apart.
This book is divided into six parts, each named after a direction: nadir, north, east, zenith, west, and south. This suggests that its stories form some kind of overarching journey or discovery. In the preface, Le Guin says that they “take place all over the map, including the margins. It is not even clear to me what the map is a map of.” (ix)
The one clue she offers is that certain stories contain “excursions outwards” which are, in fact, “excursions inwards.” This is so vague, though, that it could apply to just about any story. It reminds me of that clever observation that there are only two plots:
1. A person goes on a journey
2. A stranger comes to town
(Depending on how you look at it, you might even see these two plots as the same.)
Point being, it’s hard to see how these stories form any kind of overarching journey; many are about travel or discoveries, but just as many are not, and are often too small or inconsequential to be good reading in their own right. Therefore, despite flashes of brilliance, The Compass Rose doesn’t always stand up as a whole.
Thankfully it arrives at something memorable: Sur, a feminist reimagining of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. Presented as a journal found in an attic, it tells of an expedition of South American women to the South Pole in the winter of 1909/1910—a year before Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott got there.
Dropped off by Luis Pardo (the Chilean captain who later rescued Shackleton’s expedition from Elephant Island), the ladies marvel at the Ross Ice Shelf’s “sheer cliffs and azure and violet water-worn caves.” (351) They visit Scott’s Hut, which is in a disgusting state: seal skins, penguin bones, empty tins... “No doubt the last occupants had had to leave in a hurry, perhaps even in a blizzard. All in the same, they could have closed the tea tin. But housekeeping, the art of the infinite, is no game for amateurs.” (352) I’m sure my missus would agree.
From there, they strike out for the South Pole in two sleigh teams, crossing a glacier which they name after Florence Nightingale—a year later, Shackleton will christen it “Beardmore.” After making it back, their youngest, an illiterate, uneducated Peruvian girl, realises that she is pregnant. She gives birth just as Captain Pardo comes back to pick the ladies up. The baby is named Rosa de la Sur. The ladies toast to her with the last of the Veuve Clicquot.
This incredible journey, kept secret by Pardo and by the women, is slowly being forgotten. All the women grow apart; they get married and go their own ways. A year later Amundsen and Scott will show up, make some fuss, skin some seals, plant some flags, take some photos, and be celebrated for it. The memoirist, not wishing to embarrass the boys, implores the reader not to tell them! She prefers it to live on only as a crazy grandma’s tale.
While Sur is about a journey to the South Pole, the actual arrival there is only a single sentence. Much more is made of the continent’s beauty, the friendship that develops between the ladies, the way they find comfort and amusement with their limited furnishings, the birth of Rosa de la Sur. Like other women before and after them, their deeds are erased by history—for they left no traces, “no footprints even.” (368)
A similar mystification drew me to Ursula K. Le Guin’s book, The Compass Rose. Being a landlubber, I had no idea what a “compass rose” was. Did the title refer to a compass rising in the past tense? A rose in the shape of the compass? Or a compass with the name “Rose”? I felt a brief sense of the mystery of language, which is exactly what the best stories in this collection convey.
The opening story, The Author of the Acacia Seeds, is its most intriguing. It is a collection of research papers on decoded animal “languages”. The first paper discusses a series of messages written on some acacia seeds found in a hidden tunnel of an ant colony. The author gives a linguistic analysis, but is not able to say what the poem is actually about; for instance, because the ant language only has 3rd person singular and 1st person plural, it is not possible to determine whether the text was meant as an autobiography or a manifesto. The author therefore notes two possible ways to interpret seeds 1-13 (4):
[I will] not touch feelers. [I will] not stroke. [I will] spend on dry seeds [my] soul’s sweetness. It may be found when [I am] dead. Touch this dry wood! [I] call! [I am] here!
[Do] not touch feelers. [Do] not stroke. Spend on dry seeds [your] soul’s sweetness. [Others] may find it when [you are] dead. Touch this dry wood! Call: [I am] here!
Lovely. The final two seeds seem to indicate that the entire poem is an incitement to rebellion: “Eat the eggs! Up with the Queen!” (5)
In The New Atlantis, two stories are interwoven to depict a future in which humanity is on the brink of its knees from authoritarian government and ecological disaster. In the first story, a group of amateur scientists are working in secret on a breakthrough in solar energy. They are also being monitored by the government. One of them is taken away for being “unwell”—the government “must look after him and restore him to health, because health is the inalienable right of the citizens of a democracy.” (5)
Meanwhile, on the radio in the background, the news breaks of a new continent that is rising from the ocean. In the second story, the continent’s inhabitants, the lantern-creatures, begin to wake up:
They were dark-coloured, most often a dark red, and they were all mouth. They ate one another whole. Light swallowed light all swallowed together in the vaster mouth of the darkness... Their eyes, round with fear, were never closed. Their bodies were tiny and bony, behind the gaping jaws. They wore queer, ugly decorations on their lips and skulls: fringes, serrated wattles, feather-like fronds, gauds, bangles, lures. Poor little sheep of the deep pastures! Poor ragged, hunch-jawed dwarfs squeezed to the bone by the weight of the darkness, chilled to the bone by the cold of the darkness, tiny monsters burning with bright hunger, who brought us back to life! (30)
There is no explicit connection between the two stories. Perhaps, civilisation having doomed itself, the earth is moving into a new epoch, one in which humans are extinct and the lantern-creatures are supreme. Their emergence from water mimics the evolution of earlier aquatic life-forms into vertebrates (and from there, into mammals and humans).
The lantern-creatures are simple and primitive, but in their woken state they seem gripped by a new tenderness. To them, humans must seem like ancient gods who have departed earth. The story’s end is their haunting cry of loneliness, a desire to belong somewhere on an earth made for them: “Where are you? We are here. Where have you gone?” (52).
In this late-stage civilisation, psychiatry is wielded as a means of political subjugation. This is a recurring theme. It comes up again in SQ, a short, funny satire about a world that becomes dominated by sanity testing. It is told in the form of the journal of the secretary of Dr. Speakie, the inventor of the test. Those who measure above a certain threshold on the test (i.e. those who are insane) are put into his rehabilitation programs.
This has major ramifications when various heads of state test as insane. Since the test is scientific and rational, there is no effective way for them to deny its conclusions without indicting themselves as unscientific and irrational. It’s a lose-lose. While they’re checked into rehab, the UN Bureau of Psychometrics assumes control of their countries, forming the nucleus of a world government. Most people in the world go crazy at least once, hence everyone is slowly inducted into the new political order.
Even Dr. Speakie goes insane and has to be rehabilitated against his will. His secretary is shocked, but she maintains her belief in the test and her respect for the doctor. She goes to visit him every week, in between running the world government, which she does alone with some help from the janitor: “It really isn’t as difficult as you think.” (104).
The Diary of the Rose is a similar story. It is presented as a journal kept by Rosa, a psychoscopist, someone who monitors and examines the thoughts and mental images of the mentally unwell using a tool called a psychoscope. One of her patients, Flores Sorde, has been referred for psychotic thoughts. If her observations confirm these, he will be referred on for shock therapy; in addition to having his thinking corrected, he will lose most of his memories.
Neither patient nor doctor know exactly what Flores did which caused him to be brought in for observation. Rosa believes he will be a routine case, interpreting his resistance as a sign of irrationality and ill-health in itself. “Of course I’m irrational,” complains Sorde, “faced with the imminent destruction of my memory—my self. But I’m not inaccurate. You know they’re not going to let me out of here unchanged.” (155)
We learn that Flores is some kind of political subversive. He has already been undergone shock therapy numerous times. He had a traumatic experience when he saw police beating up peaceful protestors. And he had some kind of acquaintance with Dr. Arca, a professor who wrote a politically subversive book on liberty, whose mind was subsequently obliterated by shock therapy.
Unlike most of Rosa’s other patients—depressives with insipid, grey thoughts—Flores has exceptionally vivid and concrete images in his mind, especially that of a rose, which connects him to his vision of a humane, hopeful democracy. Unlike Dr. Arca’s more rationally, deliberately ordered mind, Flores has a more muddled mind, preferring more practical thoughts and concrete images. His convictions are strong, but he does not conceptualise them in abstract certainties, so the doctors struggle to locate and shock the hope and democracy out of him.
According to the experts, Flores is suffering from political psychosis. Rosa begins to doubt her medical training—“There is no judge here to give him a life sentence. Only doctors to give death sentences” (161)—and tries to save him from being referred for shock therapy. She fails. Her diary ends with her resignation and a final shocking piece of word salad: “I am Rosa. I am the rose. The rose, I am the rose. The rose with no flower, the rose all thorns, the mind he made, the hand he touched, the winter rose.” (163)
This is the kind of striking writing that contains the whole story within. Either it shows the kind of powerful image that helped Flores cling to democracy through all his shock treatments. Or it is the painful discovery that everything Rosa knows and believes has been conditioned into her, that her thoughts are not—have never been—her own; failing to accept this, her mind falls apart.
This book is divided into six parts, each named after a direction: nadir, north, east, zenith, west, and south. This suggests that its stories form some kind of overarching journey or discovery. In the preface, Le Guin says that they “take place all over the map, including the margins. It is not even clear to me what the map is a map of.” (ix)
The one clue she offers is that certain stories contain “excursions outwards” which are, in fact, “excursions inwards.” This is so vague, though, that it could apply to just about any story. It reminds me of that clever observation that there are only two plots:
1. A person goes on a journey
2. A stranger comes to town
(Depending on how you look at it, you might even see these two plots as the same.)
Point being, it’s hard to see how these stories form any kind of overarching journey; many are about travel or discoveries, but just as many are not, and are often too small or inconsequential to be good reading in their own right. Therefore, despite flashes of brilliance, The Compass Rose doesn’t always stand up as a whole.
Thankfully it arrives at something memorable: Sur, a feminist reimagining of the heroic age of Antarctic exploration. Presented as a journal found in an attic, it tells of an expedition of South American women to the South Pole in the winter of 1909/1910—a year before Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott got there.
Dropped off by Luis Pardo (the Chilean captain who later rescued Shackleton’s expedition from Elephant Island), the ladies marvel at the Ross Ice Shelf’s “sheer cliffs and azure and violet water-worn caves.” (351) They visit Scott’s Hut, which is in a disgusting state: seal skins, penguin bones, empty tins... “No doubt the last occupants had had to leave in a hurry, perhaps even in a blizzard. All in the same, they could have closed the tea tin. But housekeeping, the art of the infinite, is no game for amateurs.” (352) I’m sure my missus would agree.
From there, they strike out for the South Pole in two sleigh teams, crossing a glacier which they name after Florence Nightingale—a year later, Shackleton will christen it “Beardmore.” After making it back, their youngest, an illiterate, uneducated Peruvian girl, realises that she is pregnant. She gives birth just as Captain Pardo comes back to pick the ladies up. The baby is named Rosa de la Sur. The ladies toast to her with the last of the Veuve Clicquot.
This incredible journey, kept secret by Pardo and by the women, is slowly being forgotten. All the women grow apart; they get married and go their own ways. A year later Amundsen and Scott will show up, make some fuss, skin some seals, plant some flags, take some photos, and be celebrated for it. The memoirist, not wishing to embarrass the boys, implores the reader not to tell them! She prefers it to live on only as a crazy grandma’s tale.
While Sur is about a journey to the South Pole, the actual arrival there is only a single sentence. Much more is made of the continent’s beauty, the friendship that develops between the ladies, the way they find comfort and amusement with their limited furnishings, the birth of Rosa de la Sur. Like other women before and after them, their deeds are erased by history—for they left no traces, “no footprints even.” (368)
June 11, 2025
The Compass Rose on Ursula K. Le Guinin novellikokoelma, jossa on runsas kattaus luettavaa: kirjassa on kaikkiaan 20 novellia, jotka ovat ilmestyneet pääasiassa erilaisissa lehdissä 1970-luvun lopulla.
Kokoelma on varsin sekalainen valikoima. Tuttuja hainilaisia maailmoja ei kartoiteta, vaan sen sijaan tarjolla on hyvinkin erikoisia näkökulmia. Parikin mielenkiintoista totalitaristista maailmaa, omituista avaruushuumoria, pienimuotoista ihmiselämän lähitarkastelua ilman minkäänlaisia spefielementtejä… Le Guin on taitava vanhojen naisten ja pienen, mutta onnellisen elämän kuvaaja, molemmista löytyy hyviä esimerkkejä tästäkin kokoelmasta. Kirjassa on myös kuvaus hyvin omaperäisestä matkasta Etelänavalle.
The Compass Rose on vähemm��n tunnettu kuin joitain vuosia aikaisemmin ilmestynyt Pimeälipas ja muita kertomuksia, eikä syyttä – Pimeälipas on kyllä tasalaatuisempi kokoelma novelleja. Mutta ei tämäkään hullumpi paketti ole ja sisältää muutaman oikein oivallisen novellin, joiden vuoksi ainakin Le Guinin tuotannon ystävien kannattaa tämä kokoelma käsiinsä metsästää. (30.1.2015)
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Olen lukenut tämän Ursula K. Le Guinin erinäisissä lehdissä 1970-luvulla ilmestyneitä novelleja kokoavan kokoelman englanniksi kymmenkunta vuotta sitten, mutta Titia Schuurmanin tuore suomennos oli kelpo syy tarttua kokoelmaan uudestaan. Kokoelma on nimensä mukaisesti jaettu ilmansuuntien mukaisiin osioihin, joita täydentävät myös nadiiri ja zeniitti. 20 novellin joukkoon mahtuu monenlaista kekseliästä ja oivaltavaa. Tarinoissa on silkkaa scifiä, fantastisia elementtejä ja myös realistisempaa kerrontaa.
Le Guin kun on asialla, monissa novelleissa on yhteiskunnallisia näkökulmia. Niissä painottuu naisnäkökulma ja lempeä ymmärrys. Feministisen ilkikurisuuden huipennus on kokoelman päätösnovelli ”Sur”, joka kuvaa vaihtoehtoisen naparetken. Tarina on huvittava ja hauskuudessaan viisas. ”Gwilanin harppu” on kaunis kuvaus vanhenemisesta ja asioista luopumisesta. ”Toisin silmin” kuvaa hienosti ihmisten siirtokuntaa uudella planeetalla ja sopeutumista uuteen maailmaan.
Suomennos on laatutyötä. Paikoittain Schuurman on saanut pähkäillä enemmän. ”Halun harhapolut”-novellin sovittaminen suomeksi lienee ollut sieltä työläimmästä päästä, mutta oivallisesti Schuurman on siitäkin selvinnyt. Le Guin ei ole kaikista helpoin kirjailija, joten on ilo, että hänen teksteihinsä tarttuu kokenut, taitava suomentaja. (11.6.2025)
Kokoelma on varsin sekalainen valikoima. Tuttuja hainilaisia maailmoja ei kartoiteta, vaan sen sijaan tarjolla on hyvinkin erikoisia näkökulmia. Parikin mielenkiintoista totalitaristista maailmaa, omituista avaruushuumoria, pienimuotoista ihmiselämän lähitarkastelua ilman minkäänlaisia spefielementtejä… Le Guin on taitava vanhojen naisten ja pienen, mutta onnellisen elämän kuvaaja, molemmista löytyy hyviä esimerkkejä tästäkin kokoelmasta. Kirjassa on myös kuvaus hyvin omaperäisestä matkasta Etelänavalle.
The Compass Rose on vähemm��n tunnettu kuin joitain vuosia aikaisemmin ilmestynyt Pimeälipas ja muita kertomuksia, eikä syyttä – Pimeälipas on kyllä tasalaatuisempi kokoelma novelleja. Mutta ei tämäkään hullumpi paketti ole ja sisältää muutaman oikein oivallisen novellin, joiden vuoksi ainakin Le Guinin tuotannon ystävien kannattaa tämä kokoelma käsiinsä metsästää. (30.1.2015)
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Olen lukenut tämän Ursula K. Le Guinin erinäisissä lehdissä 1970-luvulla ilmestyneitä novelleja kokoavan kokoelman englanniksi kymmenkunta vuotta sitten, mutta Titia Schuurmanin tuore suomennos oli kelpo syy tarttua kokoelmaan uudestaan. Kokoelma on nimensä mukaisesti jaettu ilmansuuntien mukaisiin osioihin, joita täydentävät myös nadiiri ja zeniitti. 20 novellin joukkoon mahtuu monenlaista kekseliästä ja oivaltavaa. Tarinoissa on silkkaa scifiä, fantastisia elementtejä ja myös realistisempaa kerrontaa.
Le Guin kun on asialla, monissa novelleissa on yhteiskunnallisia näkökulmia. Niissä painottuu naisnäkökulma ja lempeä ymmärrys. Feministisen ilkikurisuuden huipennus on kokoelman päätösnovelli ”Sur”, joka kuvaa vaihtoehtoisen naparetken. Tarina on huvittava ja hauskuudessaan viisas. ”Gwilanin harppu” on kaunis kuvaus vanhenemisesta ja asioista luopumisesta. ”Toisin silmin” kuvaa hienosti ihmisten siirtokuntaa uudella planeetalla ja sopeutumista uuteen maailmaan.
Suomennos on laatutyötä. Paikoittain Schuurman on saanut pähkäillä enemmän. ”Halun harhapolut”-novellin sovittaminen suomeksi lienee ollut sieltä työläimmästä päästä, mutta oivallisesti Schuurman on siitäkin selvinnyt. Le Guin ei ole kaikista helpoin kirjailija, joten on ilo, että hänen teksteihinsä tarttuu kokenut, taitava suomentaja. (11.6.2025)
December 12, 2025
5 stars; to the surprise of no one, Ursula Le Guin is a great short story writer
Compass Rose is a fantastic collection and you'd be hard pressed to find a dud story in it. Le Guin takes great pleasure in showing off her writing range as she explores themes of...well...exploration (as you'd expect of a collection named after one of the most famous navigational instruments). All of the stories are thoughtful, many are powerful, and they span a wide array of genres and emotional tones that make this collection a delight to read.
My one complaint is that this collection is divided into six subsections (North, South, East, and West as well as Zenith and Nadir, though not specifically in that order) but I had trouble figuring out what theme bound these subsections. Maybe 3-4 stories is just not enough content to figure out a subtheme but the stories also seem to almost be defiant in how explicitly they do not fit in their chosen subsections (most notably, the closing short story Sur features a trip to the Antarctic but is placed in the East subsection). I wonder if this is Le Guin playing a joke on the reader, that the stories are "lost" in the wrong subsections but I wasn't quite able to unpack it fully before the book ended.
Maybe someday I'll reread and find out if my little theory is right but regardless of that issue, it's still a phenomenal book with tons of memorable stories.
Compass Rose is a fantastic collection and you'd be hard pressed to find a dud story in it. Le Guin takes great pleasure in showing off her writing range as she explores themes of...well...exploration (as you'd expect of a collection named after one of the most famous navigational instruments). All of the stories are thoughtful, many are powerful, and they span a wide array of genres and emotional tones that make this collection a delight to read.
My one complaint is that this collection is divided into six subsections (North, South, East, and West as well as Zenith and Nadir, though not specifically in that order) but I had trouble figuring out what theme bound these subsections. Maybe 3-4 stories is just not enough content to figure out a subtheme but the stories also seem to almost be defiant in how explicitly they do not fit in their chosen subsections (most notably, the closing short story Sur features a trip to the Antarctic but is placed in the East subsection). I wonder if this is Le Guin playing a joke on the reader, that the stories are "lost" in the wrong subsections but I wasn't quite able to unpack it fully before the book ended.
Maybe someday I'll reread and find out if my little theory is right but regardless of that issue, it's still a phenomenal book with tons of memorable stories.
November 10, 2018
Prije par godina sam procitao ovih par Ursulinih zbirki i tada mi je Dvanaest cetvrti vetra bila onako vrh, a ove druge ni blizu nje. No, eto sad sam ponovio i ova zbirka prica mi se jako svidja, i komotno moze stajat rame uz rame sa Dvanaest cetvrti vetra.
Price Dnevnik Ruze, Beli Magarac, Promena oka, Gvilanina Harfa (mozda meni najbolja u zbirci), Suprugina prica i Sur (odlicna), su stvarno jaaaako dobre. Mislim, u zbirci nema lose price, nego neke mi jednostavno nisu toliko mocne kao ove koje sam naveo.
Price Dnevnik Ruze, Beli Magarac, Promena oka, Gvilanina Harfa (mozda meni najbolja u zbirci), Suprugina prica i Sur (odlicna), su stvarno jaaaako dobre. Mislim, u zbirci nema lose price, nego neke mi jednostavno nisu toliko mocne kao ove koje sam naveo.
January 8, 2023
Here's the ones I liked best :)
The Author of the Acacia Seeds - this should have been only revolutionary ants, none of the other stuff, but i did like those ants
Intracom - unexpectedly hilarious space ship satire
Gwilan's Harp - Ursula's storytelling is strong enough that this made me weep just a few pages in/ the structure and world building is a bit smaller in scope than the other stories which I think helps
The Wife's Story - absolutely bonkers perspective shift, the description of the titular character's husband at the end will live with me for a long time
i'm glad Ursula published these short stories, it was fun to see her play with the medium and have room to explore different themes, tones and styles within it. that being said (!) her novels are ... better so if you've only got so much time on your hands for Le Guin, i would read those instead.
The Author of the Acacia Seeds - this should have been only revolutionary ants, none of the other stuff, but i did like those ants
Intracom - unexpectedly hilarious space ship satire
Gwilan's Harp - Ursula's storytelling is strong enough that this made me weep just a few pages in/ the structure and world building is a bit smaller in scope than the other stories which I think helps
The Wife's Story - absolutely bonkers perspective shift, the description of the titular character's husband at the end will live with me for a long time
i'm glad Ursula published these short stories, it was fun to see her play with the medium and have room to explore different themes, tones and styles within it. that being said (!) her novels are ... better so if you've only got so much time on your hands for Le Guin, i would read those instead.
February 6, 2020
Kendimden kaynaklı nedenlerle bitirmem çok uzun sürdü ama sevdim. Zaten birçok farklı hikayeden oluştuğu için araya zaman girmesi sorun olmadı. Gerçekten çok farklı konularda ve türlerde hikayeler vardı. Le Guin'in tarzını seviyorum ve hayalgücü, kurgu yeteneği beni her zaman hayran bırakıyor. Bazılarını anlamadım ya da anlamakta zorlandım. Yine de genel olarak iyiydi.
January 14, 2021
3.5 sevgili ursula keske yasasaydin ya hikayeleri bosver roman yaz diyebileydim
March 11, 2024
3.5
Some of the stories were superb, but oddly, this collection didn't grip me as much as I expected it to. Usually, I love Le Guin's short fiction.
Some of the stories were superb, but oddly, this collection didn't grip me as much as I expected it to. Usually, I love Le Guin's short fiction.
March 1, 2018
Fav stories: author of the acacia seeds, the eye altered, the one about maze dancing, the one about werewolves
February 22, 2025
3.5
ისეთი კარგი არაა როგორც სხვა კრებულები. მოთხრობების ნაწილი სხვაგან მქონდა წაკითხული. რამდენიმე ძალიან კარგი მოთხრობა კი შედის
ისეთი კარგი არაა როგორც სხვა კრებულები. მოთხრობების ნაწილი სხვაგან მქონდა წაკითხული. რამდენიმე ძალიან კარგი მოთხრობა კი შედის
February 4, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing (and rereading on occasion) all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review, back when I read them’
In this anthology, Le Guin moves effortlessly across modes -- science fiction, speculative anthropology, political parable, metafiction, and reflective essay, but what binds the collection is not genre but orientation, a sustained concern with direction rather than destination. These stories are not interested in climax or resolution so much as in recalibrating perception, asking the reader to reconsider assumptions about gender, power, progress, civilisation, and the stories we tell ourselves to make these structures feel natural.
What makes the reading experience so distinctive is Le Guin’s tonal confidence; she does not argue aggressively, nor does she announce her themes with ideological signposting, trusting instead that implication and narrative patience will do deeper work. Gender, for instance, appears not as a polemic but as an everyday fact of difference and fluidity, unsettling precisely because it is treated as unremarkable.
Power is rarely embodied in cartoonish villains; it manifests instead as habit, bureaucracy, custom, and the slow violence of systems that feel reasonable from the inside. Rereading this now, what struck me most was how contemporary the book feels in its suspicion of certainty. Long before the current exhaustion with grand narratives, Le Guin was already dismantling the fantasy that history, technology, or revolution naturally bend towards improvement.
Progress here is provisional, reversible, and morally compromised, and the future is never allowed to masquerade as redemption. Several stories feel less like inventions than like thought experiments conducted with humane precision, where cultures are sketched just fully enough to expose the ethical costs of their internal logics.
Le Guin’s anthropological training is everywhere evident, not in academic display but in her deep respect for cultural coherence, even when that coherence produces injustice. She understands that societies rarely see themselves as cruel; they see themselves as orderly, rational, and necessary, and this insight gives the stories their unsettling edge. Stylistically, the prose is spare, lucid, and deceptively calm, a surface tranquillity that makes the underlying disturbances more effective. There is no ornamental excess here, no rhetorical grandstanding, only sentences that do exactly what they need to do and then stop. This restraint allows silence to carry meaning, allowing readers to sit with ambiguity rather than rush towards interpretation.
What also becomes apparent on rereading is how self reflexive the collection is; several pieces quietly question the role of storytelling itself, the ethics of representation, and the authority of the narrator, making the book feel unexpectedly postmodern without ever lapsing into cleverness for its own sake. Le Guin is deeply aware that stories shape worlds, and she treats that power with humility rather than triumph.
The title itself feels programmatic: a compass does not dictate a route, it only offers orientation, and that is precisely what these stories provide. They help you notice where power flows, where language deceives, where empathy falters, and where alternatives might tentatively emerge. In an age saturated with urgency, outrage, and declarative politics, 'The Compass Rose' feels almost radical in its calm insistence that attention is a moral act. It does not tell you what to think, but it sharpens your ability to think otherwise, which is a far rarer gift.
There is no final synthesis offered, no comforting sense that the future will sort itself out if we simply adopt the right system or ideology. Instead, the book leaves you with a heightened awareness of contingency, responsibility, and the fragile work of imagining just arrangements without demanding their perfection. Long after finishing the collection, what lingers is not a single story or image, but a changed posture towards the world, a sense that complexity need not be paralysing, and that refusing easy answers is not a failure of imagination but one of its most ethical uses.
Most recommended.
In this anthology, Le Guin moves effortlessly across modes -- science fiction, speculative anthropology, political parable, metafiction, and reflective essay, but what binds the collection is not genre but orientation, a sustained concern with direction rather than destination. These stories are not interested in climax or resolution so much as in recalibrating perception, asking the reader to reconsider assumptions about gender, power, progress, civilisation, and the stories we tell ourselves to make these structures feel natural.
What makes the reading experience so distinctive is Le Guin’s tonal confidence; she does not argue aggressively, nor does she announce her themes with ideological signposting, trusting instead that implication and narrative patience will do deeper work. Gender, for instance, appears not as a polemic but as an everyday fact of difference and fluidity, unsettling precisely because it is treated as unremarkable.
Power is rarely embodied in cartoonish villains; it manifests instead as habit, bureaucracy, custom, and the slow violence of systems that feel reasonable from the inside. Rereading this now, what struck me most was how contemporary the book feels in its suspicion of certainty. Long before the current exhaustion with grand narratives, Le Guin was already dismantling the fantasy that history, technology, or revolution naturally bend towards improvement.
Progress here is provisional, reversible, and morally compromised, and the future is never allowed to masquerade as redemption. Several stories feel less like inventions than like thought experiments conducted with humane precision, where cultures are sketched just fully enough to expose the ethical costs of their internal logics.
Le Guin’s anthropological training is everywhere evident, not in academic display but in her deep respect for cultural coherence, even when that coherence produces injustice. She understands that societies rarely see themselves as cruel; they see themselves as orderly, rational, and necessary, and this insight gives the stories their unsettling edge. Stylistically, the prose is spare, lucid, and deceptively calm, a surface tranquillity that makes the underlying disturbances more effective. There is no ornamental excess here, no rhetorical grandstanding, only sentences that do exactly what they need to do and then stop. This restraint allows silence to carry meaning, allowing readers to sit with ambiguity rather than rush towards interpretation.
What also becomes apparent on rereading is how self reflexive the collection is; several pieces quietly question the role of storytelling itself, the ethics of representation, and the authority of the narrator, making the book feel unexpectedly postmodern without ever lapsing into cleverness for its own sake. Le Guin is deeply aware that stories shape worlds, and she treats that power with humility rather than triumph.
The title itself feels programmatic: a compass does not dictate a route, it only offers orientation, and that is precisely what these stories provide. They help you notice where power flows, where language deceives, where empathy falters, and where alternatives might tentatively emerge. In an age saturated with urgency, outrage, and declarative politics, 'The Compass Rose' feels almost radical in its calm insistence that attention is a moral act. It does not tell you what to think, but it sharpens your ability to think otherwise, which is a far rarer gift.
There is no final synthesis offered, no comforting sense that the future will sort itself out if we simply adopt the right system or ideology. Instead, the book leaves you with a heightened awareness of contingency, responsibility, and the fragile work of imagining just arrangements without demanding their perfection. Long after finishing the collection, what lingers is not a single story or image, but a changed posture towards the world, a sense that complexity need not be paralysing, and that refusing easy answers is not a failure of imagination but one of its most ethical uses.
Most recommended.
March 6, 2025
Laadukas ja monipuolinen scifinovellikokoelma. Kompassiruusussa on Le Guinin novelleja 1970-1980-luvuilta ja ne ovat kattava katselmus taitavaan kirjailijuuteen: huumoria ja absurdismia, vaihtoehtohistoriaa, kauhukuvia, muun muassa.
December 1, 2024
“Ja eikös heidän myötänsä - tai heidän jälkeensä - mahda tullakin vielä rohkeampi seikkailija: ensimmäinen geolingvisti, joka ohittaa jäkälän hennon, hetkellisen lyriikan ja lukee sen alta vielä ei-kommunikatiivisempaa runoutta, vieläkin passiivisempaa, täysin ajatonta, kylmää, vulkaanista kivirunoutta: siinä jokainen kivi on oma sanansa, jonka itse maapallo on ikuisuuksia sitten lausunut avaruuden äärettömässä yksinäisyydessä ja sitäkin äärettömämmässä yhteisyydessä.”
Kompassiruusu alkaa yhdellä parhaista novelleista, joita olen koskaan lukenut. Se kertoo kielen, kommunikaation ja taiteen muodoista, joita nk. therolingvistit ovat alkaneet tutkia. Tähän mennessä on jo opittu ymmärtämään lukuisten kalojen ja nisäkkäiden kirjallisuutta. Yksi kiehtovimpia löytöjä on ollut ammoin kuolleen kapinallisen muurahaisen kosketusrauhasillaan akaasiansiemeniin kirjoittama raivokas muurahaiskielinen runo. Katkelma jääpingviinien ryhmäkineettistä esitystä on onnistuttu kääntämään baletiksi nimeltä “Jäävuoren alla”, ja nyt haasteita kaihtamaton tutkija kerää ryhmää mennäkseen talviselle etelänavalle tutkimaan keisaripingviinien runouden ylimaallista kauneutta. Samalla unelmoidaan ajasta, jolloin ymmärtäisimme kasvikunnan ei-kommunikatiivistä taidetta, ehkä jopa vulkaanista kivirunoutta!
Odotin niin, että novellit jatkaisivat tällä loistavien tieteen läpimurtojen tiellä, mutta lopulta vain yksi novelleista palasi aiheeseen: eläinkokeisiin pyydystetty pieni eläin yritti turhaan kommunikoida tutkijalle lajilleen tyypillisellä labyrinttitanssilla.. Eläinkunnan kielten sijaan moni novelleista käsittelee kyseenalaisia läpimurtoja mielenterveyden hoidossa, jotka kääntyvät sortovallaksi tai sen välineeksi. Myös läheisen kuolema ja sen tuoma elämänmuutos ovat toistuva teema. Osa novelleista muistutti Hainilaistarinoita, joissa antropologit tutkivat vieraan planeetan kulttuuria ja yhteiskunnan rakentumista.
Vaikka mikään novelleista ei vetänyt vertoja ensimmäiselle (harmillisen lyhyelle) novellille, kokoelman pariin oli silti aina yhtä mukava palata. Jokainen novelli tarjosi leguinimaiseen tapaan yllätyksellisen matkan muihin maailmoihin. Kaiken lisäksi kirja oli upea katsella, niin päältä kuin sisältäkin! Kunpa kaikki suomennetut Le Guinit olisivat yhtä kauniita.
Kompassiruusu alkaa yhdellä parhaista novelleista, joita olen koskaan lukenut. Se kertoo kielen, kommunikaation ja taiteen muodoista, joita nk. therolingvistit ovat alkaneet tutkia. Tähän mennessä on jo opittu ymmärtämään lukuisten kalojen ja nisäkkäiden kirjallisuutta. Yksi kiehtovimpia löytöjä on ollut ammoin kuolleen kapinallisen muurahaisen kosketusrauhasillaan akaasiansiemeniin kirjoittama raivokas muurahaiskielinen runo. Katkelma jääpingviinien ryhmäkineettistä esitystä on onnistuttu kääntämään baletiksi nimeltä “Jäävuoren alla”, ja nyt haasteita kaihtamaton tutkija kerää ryhmää mennäkseen talviselle etelänavalle tutkimaan keisaripingviinien runouden ylimaallista kauneutta. Samalla unelmoidaan ajasta, jolloin ymmärtäisimme kasvikunnan ei-kommunikatiivistä taidetta, ehkä jopa vulkaanista kivirunoutta!
Odotin niin, että novellit jatkaisivat tällä loistavien tieteen läpimurtojen tiellä, mutta lopulta vain yksi novelleista palasi aiheeseen: eläinkokeisiin pyydystetty pieni eläin yritti turhaan kommunikoida tutkijalle lajilleen tyypillisellä labyrinttitanssilla.. Eläinkunnan kielten sijaan moni novelleista käsittelee kyseenalaisia läpimurtoja mielenterveyden hoidossa, jotka kääntyvät sortovallaksi tai sen välineeksi. Myös läheisen kuolema ja sen tuoma elämänmuutos ovat toistuva teema. Osa novelleista muistutti Hainilaistarinoita, joissa antropologit tutkivat vieraan planeetan kulttuuria ja yhteiskunnan rakentumista.
Vaikka mikään novelleista ei vetänyt vertoja ensimmäiselle (harmillisen lyhyelle) novellille, kokoelman pariin oli silti aina yhtä mukava palata. Jokainen novelli tarjosi leguinimaiseen tapaan yllätyksellisen matkan muihin maailmoihin. Kaiken lisäksi kirja oli upea katsella, niin päältä kuin sisältäkin! Kunpa kaikki suomennetut Le Guinit olisivat yhtä kauniita.
January 18, 2015
This collection of short stories was assembled a few years after the author's "The Wind's Twelve Quarters", which I remember as being uniformly wonderful, although it's been many years since I've read it. Here there was some unevenness, I won't say of quality, but at least in how much I enjoyed each piece.
Nearly every story has a definite Science Fiction or Fantasy bent, which isn't really surprising. What did surprise me was that two of my three favorites ("Gwilan's Harp", and "Two Delays on the Northern Line") aren't SF at all, although their settings contain definite SF elements. My other favorite was the title story, which I found beautiful, sad, and unexpected.
Several themes occur multiple times throughout the collection. Several stories are built on the notion of animals having a good deal of intelligence, perhaps equal to (although different from) that of humans. This is tied up with an exploration of the difficulty of inter-species communication. Other stories examine transformations, by turns macabre and moving. Still more consider the relativity of perception, adaptation to environment, and evolution.
I suppose my biggest criticism of the stories as a group is that some of the "science" on which some stories are based is so wildly implausible as to be distracting (examples would probably constitute spoilers, so I'll refrain). I found it necessary to really embrace my suspension of disbelief in order to find enjoyment in those pieces. Still, Le Guin is a wonderful writer, and I'd certainly recommend the collection overall to anyone who's enjoyed her other works.
Nearly every story has a definite Science Fiction or Fantasy bent, which isn't really surprising. What did surprise me was that two of my three favorites ("Gwilan's Harp", and "Two Delays on the Northern Line") aren't SF at all, although their settings contain definite SF elements. My other favorite was the title story, which I found beautiful, sad, and unexpected.
Several themes occur multiple times throughout the collection. Several stories are built on the notion of animals having a good deal of intelligence, perhaps equal to (although different from) that of humans. This is tied up with an exploration of the difficulty of inter-species communication. Other stories examine transformations, by turns macabre and moving. Still more consider the relativity of perception, adaptation to environment, and evolution.
I suppose my biggest criticism of the stories as a group is that some of the "science" on which some stories are based is so wildly implausible as to be distracting (examples would probably constitute spoilers, so I'll refrain). I found it necessary to really embrace my suspension of disbelief in order to find enjoyment in those pieces. Still, Le Guin is a wonderful writer, and I'd certainly recommend the collection overall to anyone who's enjoyed her other works.
January 23, 2023
I found about 50% of these stories to be exceptional and deserving of 4.5/5 stars as stand alone pieces, with the other half being very decent.The best in my opinion is The Diary of the Rose.
This is definitely the most "far out" collection I have read of LeGuin's work, there's some really strange stuff in here.
These stories feel deeply human, and curiously alien at the same time.
I really resonated with her description in the preface of "various circling motions" between stories being present.
She describes the collection as a map, perhaps of a mind. She then writes
"One's mind is never simply one's own, even at birth, and ever less as one lives, learns, loses, etc"
I just never want to stop reading her.
Le Guin 5 eva xo
This is definitely the most "far out" collection I have read of LeGuin's work, there's some really strange stuff in here.
These stories feel deeply human, and curiously alien at the same time.
I really resonated with her description in the preface of "various circling motions" between stories being present.
She describes the collection as a map, perhaps of a mind. She then writes
"One's mind is never simply one's own, even at birth, and ever less as one lives, learns, loses, etc"
I just never want to stop reading her.
Le Guin 5 eva xo
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