"Ursula K. Le Guin has been at the top of her form for so long that it's easy to forget just how 'top' that form is... Ursula Le Guin has long delighted in sending her characters into cultures whose unexpected conventions challenge everything the newcomers holds to be self-evident. In the delicate, occasionally disastrous interplay that follows first contact, both host and visitor are irrevocably changed, and likewise the reader, who experiences events from both perspectives. Despite the brevity of each interplanetary visit in Changing Planes, the armchair traveler will return home with imag...