Changing Planes by Ursula LeGuin (2003)

Strangely enough, while I was reading Tepper's book about an alternative reality, I was listening to LeGuin's short stories on numerous alternative realities. They are tied together by the concept that waiting in airports to change planes, people have started entering another altered state of consciousness and actually are changing worlds or planets. This allows LeGuin to play with numerous alternate cultures. In one, the people don't speak after early childhood, except in very rare occasions. In another everyone is so angry, that they get violent and tend to not live long lives. One world has a bird analogy, people migrate north and south (except one year = 24 years) with spring and summer in the mountains and fall and winter in the city, they have beaks, perform a mating dance. In another all were royalty except for one common family. (I keep forgetting that short stories are better read than listened to, as it is hard for the mind to jump in and out of these various realities aurally.)