Ok, if you don't like short stories or SF I don't suppose I can convince you to read this. And I admit, the very first story has some pretty ridiculous purple prose. And there aren't nearly enough strong females. But most of the stories are gracefully written. Some are heartbreaking, some are scary, some are humorous, but alldraw from the same set of themes. What happens when cultures intersect? What do 'primitive' and 'civilized' people have in common, and what divides them? What does it mean to be primitive, or to be civilized? What effect do urbanization and technology have on people? Are people inherently aggressive?

There's no elaborate world-building here, because each world is different - each encounter between peoples is different. Sometimes there's a happy ending with mutual growth, sometimes not.

Consider, though, this sample of the tendency of his thoughts:

He turned off the main road and jolted over a gravel trail; paved roads and good fishing were mutually exclusive, like cities and sanity."" ( )