The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) - Plot & Excerpts
This MAY be the edition I have: at any rate the cover picture is the same.Each story in this volume is introduced by a short squib from the author. If you haven't read the stories before, you might want to leave this bit until afterward.Contents:(1) Semley's Necklace: This is also the lead-in to Rocannon's World. It's complete in itself, and offers an interesting explanation for why going into Tir Na Nog is so time-consuming: time dilation. But it's not clear whether Semley had any clue of the price she would pay.(2) April in Paris: This harks back to the original meaning of the term 'symposium' ('drinking together'). The April the people foregather in is during the reign of Louis X. I have to say that I find the women ill-developed. They don't seem to have much part in the conversation. And I doubt very much that latter-day humans would be 'perfected' in any way. Not even most of them. But the spell which draws like-minded people together might be useful, for all that.(3) The Masters: I'll have to finish this one to be sure what it's about. I have an idea, but I'm not far enough in to confirm it yet. The problem is, it's one of two. In a world where science and mathematics are outlawed, a secret society of scientists recruits from severely constrained technologists to try to reconstruct the sciences, apparently from scratch. There's little chance that they would be able to do so, even if they could work openly. Are there NO troves of old manuscripts? Possibly not, if people had gone to paperless records entirely. There's one slip, by the way. The people would almost certainly not have called anything 'algebra', which is an Arabic term. What they would have called it is not clear, but it wouldn't be that.One thing I don't understand is why there would be few blue-eyed people left. Or pale people. This might be considered 'atavistic', but in the circumstances (where there are few of what are called 'sunbreaks' in the Pacific NW), it would actually be a fairly valuable atavism. The blue eyes are generally more light-sensitive. Bad for sunny weather, not so bad otherwise. And the pale skin is more capable of producing vitamin D with less sunlight. Not very important in a technically sophisticated society, with ready substitutes. But more useful in a retrograde society which eschews such dietary supplements and artificial lighting.(4) Darkness Box: Sort of a Groundhog Day, except that there's not only no tomorrow, but no afternoon. Candles don't even flicker. Restoration of Darkness is a strange solution, but even stranger is that the people who are caught up in an endlessly repeated moment constantly spend this moment in eternal, unresolveable warfare. On the whole, I'd rather be in Punxsatawny, singing along with "The Pennsylvania Polka", and spending my afternoons in the library.(5) The Word of Unbinding: These two Earthsea stories (this and the one that follows) are good examples of why I couldn't ever talk myself into reading the Earthsea books.(6) The Rule of Names: Case in point. Why should the revelation of 'Mr Underhill's' 'truename' force him to abandon his perfectly amiable role of a not-very competent wizard? It's a role he could sustain, as far as I can tell, indefinitely. And really, what harm is he doing?(7) Winter's King: This, though written before The Left Hand of Darkness, is more a sequel than a prequel, since it's set centuries later. The knot in time caused by the retreat of the abdicated King to study in an Ekumenical school is not really that odd. To be both the predecessor and successor of one's child is not even that unusual in our less-knotted society. The oddity is caused by the lack of aging in the parent.(8) The Good Trip: I doubt whether LSD would help a man catch up with his mad wife. But in this case, it's really not put to the test. He finds another path.(9) Nine Lives: Or nine deaths? I find the shared deaths of the nine nonsurvivors not particularly plausible if they're not telepathic. But my main problem is that the clones are not believable. I'm not able to comment on the 'artificial placentae'. Nor can I quite grasp how the sex changes are achieved. I doubt that it would be that easy to eliminate the Y chromosome. The resulting adults would not only not be fertile: they would be somewhat incomplete people. There may be few nonsexual traits carried on the Y chromosome: but there are some.But more troubling to me is the uncritical acceptance of 'studies' that have been proven fraudulent.Stephen Jay Gould commented on several occasions that if he had desired a life of indolent ease, he would like to discover that he was an identical twin, separated from his brother at birth, and raised separately. There are so few of these marvels that their value is above rubies. They could name their own price, and scientists would be vying for a chance to examine them.Clones are not technically identical twins, at least the way it's usually done. Identical twins are MORE alike genetically than clones. Are they alike in terms of things like personality? Not noticeably. Identical twins aren't even the closest possible examples of this sort of thing. Gould pointed out that Chang and Eng Bunker, the prototypical 'Siamese Twins' (actually Chinese, though they were born in what was then called Siam) were almost maximally different in terms of temperament, though they remained conjoined all their lives.Identical twins are often not even the same in terms of things that are highly heritable, such as stature. What sense does it make to argue that in things that are of low heritability (musical talent, for example), twins will share these traits equally?But this is only part of the problem. The argument is that the human species has lost most of its gene pool. The survivors are physically stunted and disabled by starvation (though I don't believe that there are NO Irish left, for example) and very bad living conditions. But what kind of solution is it to further truncate the gene pool? The clone sets of 'superior' people are too little varied. One disease would wipe all out, barring very great luck. The goal should be to ensure that the most varied people (with rare genes) spread their genes into the severely impoverished survivor pool. Creating sibs of people who are minimally variable, and making them work together, is not a particularly good plan.(10) Things: This is essentially a fragment. It's not clear why the residents of one small community think the world is ending. And why and how would they have lost skills like bridgebuilding and boatbuilding?(11) A Trip to The Head: No matter how many times I read this, I never remember what it's about. But rereading it, I associate it with the story from Alice Through the Looking Glass in which Alice and a fawn forget their names, and forget any enmity that might exist between them in the world outside the forest. I think I prefer the original, though.(12) Vaster than Empires, And More Slow: So what's wrong with this as a title? I have to say that I do NOT agree with the argument that the vegetable gestalt life form could not be conscious, or that it's not a 'creature'. Nor are non-photosynthesizing bacteria now considered 'animals', any more than photosynthesizing ones are considered 'plants'. In the Five Kingdoms. the main distinction between the microscopic 'kingdoms' is whether or not they're eukaryotic. It's not clear whether they all are. As for the notion that empaths are forced to be perfect mirrors of their surroundings, I would tend to refer back to James White's Dr Prilicla. Though Dr Prilicla does try to ameliorate the emotional extremes (particularly unpleasant emotions, but even pleasant emotions can be too strong) of those around it, it's generally liked, because it seeks to make others happy. And they mend their errant ways in order not to upset it. A freak empath among Earth-humans is likely to have had a harder time...but THAT much harder? I doubt it.One thing that strikes me is the too-common idea in LeGuin's works that only humans (of whatever subspecies) and their works matter. I find this a puzzling, and even disturbing, precept.(13) The Stars Below: An astronomer, 'purged' by a sort of anti-technological Inquisition, is befriended by miners in a mine, and discovers 'stars' below the ground. I never have understood the kind of thinking that rejects technology while NOT rejecting destructive premises like soldiery: or like stratified societies.(14) The Field of Vision: Astronauts encounter a brainwashing device that overwhelms any other belief system, and by a kind of sensory-deprivation torture, missionizes anybody exposed to it. Though the characters in the story never seem to question whether the brainwashing represents 'truth' of any color or tone (rather than what the programmers BELIEVED to have been truth), they don't all accept the coerced recruitment as missionaries. Nor does anybody in MY field of vision question the very concept of unitary 'truth'. Blind men and the elephant, anybody?(15) Direction of The Road: A tree describes how passages appear to it: and objects to what it regards as a perversion caused by an accident.(16) The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas (Variations on A Theme by William James): This is an exception to the rule about reading the author's comments last. Very few of us, probably, have never read this story before. It's widely anthologized. So LeGuin's explanation of why she doesn't credit Dostoyevsky, or where she got the name Omelas, are useful guides. I won't go into detail about why I don't find the lives of the people of Omelas particularly Elysian. I've not concealed how I differ from the procrustean 'norm'. And while I agree that good lives are not more simple that evil ones, I do NOT agree that active lives are better than contemplative ones. Not for everybody, anyway. And even the most dedicated nudists could be forgiven for flinching at the idea of nude bareback horse races. For contrast, I might refer to a discussion between Cathy Linton and Linton Heathcliff as to the most idyllic day. He describes a day lying on the heath, she up in a tree. He says that her heaven would be 'half-drunk' and terrifying, and she says his would be stultifying.More important is the question asked in Zenna Henderson's Pilgrimage: "Who sold YOU into slavery?" With WHOM was Omelas' deal made? Why was there no opportunity to renegotiate their social contract? Why would such wise people be unable to, as Nicole Hollander once put it, 'refinance (their) soul(s)? Walking away is one escape, to be sure. But what about changing the original deal?(17) The Day Before The Revolution: Odo confronts endings of more than one sort. Here's hoping her heaven includes finding out what those flowers are called.I agree with the offhand dismissal of the concept of 'libertarianism' as opposed to true anarchism. But I still have to say that the refusal to accept the place of hermits and other nonsocial individuals is going to cause trouble. We can't all be sociable. In one of the Brother Cadfael books, a character has trouble fitting into a monastery. He's confined to a 'punishment' cell in solitary confinement, and he thrives alone, freer than he was in the dormitory. Brother Cadfael believes he would have thriven as a hermit, but that he will never make it in a monastery. Ironic, really, since originally monasteries were designed as places where one COULD be alone, while having the benefits of things like a common kitchen, a library, etc. What becomes of people like that...or like me? Not just in Odonian society: but in any society?
Le Guin convinced me with the first two volumes of her Earthsea Cycle that she was worth classifying with Tolkien and Lewis as a writer whose fiction stabbed at the deep, bright heart of things. But while Tolkien and Lewis were not known for their short fiction, Le Guin's first publications were short stories. The Wind's Twelve Quarters is what Le Guin calls a retrospective sampling of the first decade of her short fiction, spanning 1964 to 1974. I don't know Le Guin's complete bibliography, but it's clear this collection contains the seeds of many of the novels for which she would ultimately gain such recognition.The collection shows a growing author playing in the wide fields of science fiction and fantasy. Some of the tropes, especially in the early stories, are almost painfully worn now, the plots predictable, but it's hard to tell whether this was because Le Guin was young or because the field itself was young and what seems prosaic now was ground-breaking then. The language is always layered, lovely, and descriptive, but stories like "Semley's Necklace," with its relativistic twist, or "The Masters," with its theme of forbidden science, have not aged well. There were others stories-- "The Good Trip" and "A Trip to the Head"-- that were largely inscrutable. And "The Word of Unbinding" and "The Rule of Names" set out some of the groundwork for the later Earthsea work but without the depth or beauty held by the full-fledged novels.Yet the collection got better and better the further I read. "Winter's King" finally convinced me of something I had suspected for a long time-- that I needed to read The Left Hand of Darkness. "Vaster than Empires and More Slow" was a truly excellent story about forests and a planetary intelligence that I've been trying to write for a long time. "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" shows Le Guin at her best as the poser of riddles based on magic and morality, and "The Stars Below" was my favorite story by far: the haunting tale of an astronomer in a skyless world, looking for the light below that he once saw above.The thing I keep coming back to in Le Guin is this sense of light in the universe, never far from the surface in her work. "Beyond all imagination," the astronomer says in "The Stars Below," "in the outer darkness, there is light: a great glory of sunlight. . . . There is no place bereft of light, the comfort and radiance of the creator spirit. There is no place that is downcast, outlawed, forsaken. There is no place left dark. . . . There is light if we will see it." My suspicion is that this belief informs much of Le Guin's work. There is a huge strata of speculative fiction, far too much to wade through in a single lifetime, but there are certain authors in whose work veins of gold and brightness run thick, and I think Le Guin is one of these.
What do You think about The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975)?
Excellent collection of stories spread out over a substantial range of Le Guin's career. Le Guin's stories are very much focused on the psychological and emotional consequences of distance, travel, and alien-ness. She shares this interest with Samuel R. Delany, another science fiction writer with whom i am more familiar, but i would say her characters are more humble, more likeable, maybe even more human.The early stories showed their age, being simple of plot and touched with sci-fi cliches. Le Guin acknowledges as much in her notes (very insightful comments precede most of the stories collected here) and has much more to say about the later stories. My personal favorite was probably 'The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas', both for its structure and for the fundamental moral rigor it calls for. I was also very glad to discover Mr. Underhill from 'The Rule of Names', a story i read and loved more than 20 years back without recalling or maybe ever noting the author.Owe thanks to a friend for recommending this one, was quite a special collection.
—Mark
There were one or two drug references that maybe haven't aged so well, and one story where I even had a feeling she was trying for something in a PKD direction. I could have done without the story from the point of view of an oak tree. Generally though, these are all great stories that had been published previously and have been in other collections as well, including the Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas which is on quite a few syllabi in wizard schools. Because this is such a mix of her various themes and settings, it is probably the best introduction to this writer.
—Benjamin
The Wind's Twelve Quarters is a collection of Ursula K. Le Guin's short stories - an early collection, so they're some of her first stories. There were some clunkers ("A Trip to the Head," for one, and "The Stars Below," for another), but they were nicely counteracted by some really great works like "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," "Nine Lives," and "Darkness Box." Plus, it includes the two stories that were the first venture into Earthsea (and she notes in the prologue several inconsistencies one might notice), and the story that led her to write The Left Hand of Darkness. All in all, it's pretty much like any short story collection by a single author - some great ones, some mild ones, and some mediocre ones. I don't think I've ever found a single-author anthology in which I love everything in it. I think the best part of this was seeing her older work and the ideas and stories that led her to write later novels. There's also a story in there that led to her Hainish series, which I still need to read; I've heard that one is pretty fabulous. Another interesting "of note" is that almost all of these stories are sci fi - I think that the Earthsea ones are the only fantasy in the lot. Well, actually, "Things" and "Darkness Box" might be fantasy, but only vaguely.
—Kristy Buzbee
