Speculative fiction being speculative is SO weird. Also, this is the first book I've seen in a while has a sense of what catastrophe looks like at scale. Most current books either leave our catastrophes in the past or focus on one part of them. This book has everything.
While meditating on the nature of change and reality and "making things better" and, like so much of Le Guin's shorter work, just sits on top of you. 
And I wonder how this book would read if you didn't see the author behind it, her fury, her drive to find a future that must be better than the worst of our selves, her commitment to the humanity of others.
That last shines through in this book and her books are always grappling with the ways in which we do ourselves and our planet a disservice when we stop seeing others and begin to see only our dreams and potentials and what we might build. Le Guin always asks a lot. And then looks at what happens when we don't give it.