Seventeen short stories by a major sf luminary of generously ranging interests and likable convictions. A banished astronomer seeks the stars in a silver mine; a planetary survey team receives ambiguous telepathic signals on a world without animal life; the sole survivor of a clone-group weathers the loss of his other "selves." There are also forays into worlds explored in Le Guin's novels. For the most part, she leans toward abiding moral dilemmas, pursued with intelligent sympathy but an occasionally overdemonstrative piety.
