The Birthday of the World

Name: The Birthday of the World
ISBN: 9780060085360

And Other Stories

by Ursula K. Le Guin · first published 2002

8mentions

5recommended by

5HN commenters

2018–2024first – last mentioned

100% recommend

Why HN recommends it

A collection of Le Guin short stories offering an easy entry point to her work. Speculative fiction centred on people and society rather than gadgets, with standout pieces including Solitude and Paradises Lost.

Summarised by Claude from recommending comments

Fiction & Literature Science Fiction

Eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity. Here are stories that explore complex social interactions and troublesome issues of gender and sex; that define and defy notions of personal relationships and of society itself; that examine loyalty, survival, and introversion; that bring to light the vicissitudes of slavery and the meaning of transformation, religion, and history.

BuyBookshop.org Amazon

Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

View on Open Library ISBN 9780060085360

Mentions per year

What Hacker News says

nkoren · Jan 24, 2018 · Recommends

…get into the Wizard of Earthsea for some reason, but this was probably a problem with my teenage brain; I need to go back and give it another chance. I'm also very partial to her short stories, with The Birthday of the World containing several of my favourites.
on “Ursula Le Guin has died” ↗
franek · Sep 27, 2021 · Recommends

Ursula K. Le Guin, "Solitude", from the collection "The Birthday of the World". Speculative story about a society whose adults spent the majority of their lives alone. Told from a female perspective. One of my favourites, to say the least.
on “On Solitude” ↗
nestorD · Dec 24, 2021 · Recommends

I came to say that my favorite book read this year is her "The Birthday of the World and Other Stories". Very nice to read science fiction that is about people rather than things.
on “Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021?” ↗
nkoren · Jan 24, 2018 · Recommends

Try "The Birthday of the World". Bite-sized short stories that are utterly indelible. Will make you hungry for her longer works.
on “Ursula Le Guin has died” ↗
thedaniel · Feb 5, 2019 · Recommends

Such a legend - for an easy intro definitely the short stories in Birthday of the World are worth a read
on “Ursula K. Le Guin Was a Creator of Worlds” ↗
robbiep · May 8, 2021 · Recommends

My first book by her was The birthday of the world and other stories - Paradises lost really moved me. How good good literature can be
on “Ursula Le Guin Books” ↗
franek · Apr 4, 2024 · Recommends

…the recommendation of Le Guin's short stories! Too bad they are easily forgotten over her novels. (I guess a novel, as a product, is easier to review and to advertise?) My favourite collection is "The Birthday of the World", especially the stories "Solitude" and "Paradises Lost". (Maybe skip "Old Music and the Slave Women". It builds on other books and is incomprehensible without them; or at least it was to me.)
on “Reading more Ursula Le Guin (2019)” ↗
nkoren · Jan 24, 2018 · Mentions

…to conjure a new mind's eye. She understood that the world exists at the point of perception, so she built her worlds out of perception itself. In her 1994 short story, "Solitude" (collected in "The Birthday of the World"), she tells the story of a culture whose world-view is virtually as opposite to my own as it is possible to be. And she made me believe it. To this day, I can feel the pull of that world-view. It's like…
on “Ursula Le Guin has died” ↗