I read many of Le Guin’s more classic entries in her Hainish Cycle back in college and since then have been fascinated with the world she built for novels like The Disposessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. A Fisherman of the Inland Sea is a series of short stories of which only the last three have anything to do with the universe of the Hainish Cycle. These three all revolve around the development of instantaneous, faster than light travel that Le Guin calls “churten theory” — notably not capitalized most of the time. Le Guin doesn’t focus on the effects of FTL travel on the society of the Ekumen. Instead, the imprecision of the new technology opens the door to stories about love, community, and how the narratives we tell ourselves affect the way we move through the world.

These short stories weren’t as fully baked as Le Guin’s full-length novels, but in some ways that helped the core insights behind them shine through even clearer.