- Mass Market Paperback: 271 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins,Australia; Reprint edition (31 Dec 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0061056073
- ISBN-13: 978-0061056079
- Product Dimensions: 17 x 10.7 x 3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,437,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
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. Twenty astonishing stories from acclaimed author Ursula K. Le Guin that carry us to worlds of wonder and horror, desire and destiny, enchantment and doom.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This collection, a successor to "The Wind's Twelve Quarters", starts with "The Author of the Acacia Seeds" and "The New Atlantis" and maintains something close to that level. If you like Le Guin and don't have this, it's worth buying for either of the first two stories alone.
However, you should be aware that the original publication date was 1982 and the individual stories were first published between 1974 and 1981. Several have appeared in other anthologies, but there are twenty so it's unlikely that you'll have many duplicates (and anyway having two copies of 'Atlantis' isn't a bad thing).
However, you should be aware that the original publication date was 1982 and the individual stories were first published between 1974 and 1981. Several have appeared in other anthologies, but there are twenty so it's unlikely that you'll have many duplicates (and anyway having two copies of 'Atlantis' isn't a bad thing).
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
A good mix of 20 sci-fi and conventional stories
20 Feb 2000
Format:Mass Market Paperback
A good mix of 20 Ursula K. Le Guin short stories, composed of some great sci-fi, good modern fiction, humor, and quite a few UKL-style sureals (Buffalo Gals-style). The stories are all reprints from magazines and anthologies.
Some of the best are "Two Delays on the Northern Line" and "Malheur County", two haunting timeless pieces that talk of life and loneliness. "The Eye Altering" and "The Pathways of Desire" are excellent sci-fi shorts that question the nature of reality and perception. This compilation includes no stories from the Ekumen Cycle.
Although primarily a sci-fi reader, I believe that UKL's fiction including the shorts in The Compass Rose are some of the best pieces of contemporary fiction I know. The sci-fi in this book is a bit limited, but still excellent. All in all, a great way to get introduced to UKL's mainstream fiction, and satisfy your craving for quality sci-fi.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Le Guin and Bear It
6 Jun 2001
Format:Mass Market Paperback
Over the years I have always thought of Ursula Le Guin as a very brave and non-conforming sort of person. I have kept her photograph on my wall for the last 15 years. The reason for my admiration was that I felt (and feel) that she is a writer of major talent who decided to enter the field of science fiction and get labelled as a "sci-fi writer" when she could have won many honors and perhaps a more lasting place in history in mainstream literature. Her works do not cater to the broad popular tastes in fiction, but such novels as "The Left Hand of Darkness", "The Lathe of Heaven", "The Dispossessed" and "Always Coming Home" plus her works of juvenile fiction and collections of short stories add up to a body of spectacularly well-written material that is denied its place in the annals of American literature by the peculiar prejudice that segregates certain kinds of fiction into closed cells. I read most of Le Guin's books as soon as they hit the shelves, long ago, before science fiction became reality with the Internet and Amazon.com. For some reason, though I bought THE COMPASS ROSE fifteen years ago, I never got around to reading it till now. I must say that it was largely disappointing. There are some good stories in this collection, stories such as "The New Atlantis" and "The Diary of the Rose", also "The Pathways of Desire" which links exploration of space with dreams, but other stories seem hasty, `cute' or aimed at the readers of airport fiction. In general, Le Guin is at her best when she creates new worlds or postulates possible futures. Her blend of anthropology and fiction has always thrilled me. As she moves away from that, into more general fiction on the contemporary world, unless she crafts the story carefully, as with "Two Delays on the Northern Line"--a real gem--she loses her edge. Her stories become filled with sunshine, conversing rocks, and whispering leaves, but without much punch. There are twenty stories in THE COMPASS ROSE. Half a dozen are up to her fine standard, others-perhaps the humorous pieces-may please many readers, but a few probably should have been kept in the drawer. (Though if I had written them, I would have been quite proud, no doubt. We are talking quality control here.) If you are wondering where to begin Le Guin, this is not the place. Put it last on your list. But begin, of course.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
The Compass Rose Points Every Which Way
4 May 2009
Format:Paperback
THREE-AND-A-HALF STARS
"The problem with possessing prodigious talent," Dr. Jacobs said, "is that it means you can do just about anything." It was sleepy spring afternoon in Modern British lit class, one made all the more drowsy because we were discussing the notoriously difficult poetry of W.H. Auden. But despite my lethargy, I wondered at the incongruity of the statement. How could an excess of skill prove anything but a blessing? I didn't have to wait long for an answer. "Auden's dilemma," Dr. Jacobs continued, "was one of selection: How could he settle on a single style when he performed well in all of them?" This must have been the predicament Ursula K. Le Guin found herself in when collecting the short stories that compose The Compass Rose.
In the book's preface, Le Guin admits that "the stories it contains tend to go off each in its own direction." Indeed, the collection is written in a veritable riot of styles. A number point toward science fiction, and some of these would have made George Orwell proud. One describes how a tyrannical bureaucracy gets undone by mysteriously rising sea levels ("The New Atlantis") and another delves into the secret diary of a lab technician whose job of probing mental patients' minds secretly aids a despotic government ("The Diary of the Rose"). Others are more lighthearted. "Intracom" gives Star Trek the slapstick treatment, with a spaceship's incompetent crew trying deal with a stowaway alien and still deliver their cargo of breadfruit trees to a distant galaxy. "The Eye Altering" uses the travails of a sickly colonist on a hostile planet to show how beauty comes as much from the beholder as the thing beheld.
But no sooner do you acquaint yourself with the futuristic tack than Le Guin swings you in fantastic and speculative directions. "The White Donkey" interacts with Indian mythology, while "Gwilan's Harp" turns the tragic destruction of a beautifully made instrument into a meditation on the ravages of aging. Some find Le Guin giving her internal academic full rein, pondering the nature of language ("The Author of the Acacia Seeds"), locale ("The First Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb") and the clock's ruthless advance ("Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time").
And finally, lest we become too comfortable with genre, The Compass Rose leads to literary pieces, too. Two men ponder relatives' deaths with radically different results ("Two Delays on the Northern Line"). A theoretical physicist loses his mind trying to quantify the number of the earth's dead ("The Water Is Wide"). And an exploratory group composed entirely of South American women becomes the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1909 ("Sur"). More impressive than Le Guin's range of vision is the skill with which she executes almost every story. That very range becomes both the collection's bane and blessing. The wildness of subject matter almost guarantees that many won't be to your liking -- and that a few may find your heart's true North.
"The problem with possessing prodigious talent," Dr. Jacobs said, "is that it means you can do just about anything." It was sleepy spring afternoon in Modern British lit class, one made all the more drowsy because we were discussing the notoriously difficult poetry of W.H. Auden. But despite my lethargy, I wondered at the incongruity of the statement. How could an excess of skill prove anything but a blessing? I didn't have to wait long for an answer. "Auden's dilemma," Dr. Jacobs continued, "was one of selection: How could he settle on a single style when he performed well in all of them?" This must have been the predicament Ursula K. Le Guin found herself in when collecting the short stories that compose The Compass Rose.
In the book's preface, Le Guin admits that "the stories it contains tend to go off each in its own direction." Indeed, the collection is written in a veritable riot of styles. A number point toward science fiction, and some of these would have made George Orwell proud. One describes how a tyrannical bureaucracy gets undone by mysteriously rising sea levels ("The New Atlantis") and another delves into the secret diary of a lab technician whose job of probing mental patients' minds secretly aids a despotic government ("The Diary of the Rose"). Others are more lighthearted. "Intracom" gives Star Trek the slapstick treatment, with a spaceship's incompetent crew trying deal with a stowaway alien and still deliver their cargo of breadfruit trees to a distant galaxy. "The Eye Altering" uses the travails of a sickly colonist on a hostile planet to show how beauty comes as much from the beholder as the thing beheld.
But no sooner do you acquaint yourself with the futuristic tack than Le Guin swings you in fantastic and speculative directions. "The White Donkey" interacts with Indian mythology, while "Gwilan's Harp" turns the tragic destruction of a beautifully made instrument into a meditation on the ravages of aging. Some find Le Guin giving her internal academic full rein, pondering the nature of language ("The Author of the Acacia Seeds"), locale ("The First Report of the Shipwrecked Foreigner to the Kadanh of Derb") and the clock's ruthless advance ("Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time").
And finally, lest we become too comfortable with genre, The Compass Rose leads to literary pieces, too. Two men ponder relatives' deaths with radically different results ("Two Delays on the Northern Line"). A theoretical physicist loses his mind trying to quantify the number of the earth's dead ("The Water Is Wide"). And an exploratory group composed entirely of South American women becomes the first expedition to reach the South Pole in 1909 ("Sur"). More impressive than Le Guin's range of vision is the skill with which she executes almost every story. That very range becomes both the collection's bane and blessing. The wildness of subject matter almost guarantees that many won't be to your liking -- and that a few may find your heart's true North.
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
