Four Ways to Forgiveness, Ursula K Le Guin

Four Ways to Forgiveness, Ursula K Le Guin (1995)
Review by Aliette de Bodard

Four Ways to Forgiveness is a series of linked novellas set on the worlds of Werel and Yeowe: Werel, the older world, featured a slave-owner society, and set out to colonise Yeowe by sending colons and slaves – but the society that develops on Yeowe is deeply inequalitarian, leaving slave-women at the bottom of the heap even though they engineered the revolution that set Yeowean slaves free from their owners…
This is a fascinating look at revolution – at the inherent mess of it, at what it overturns, and at what it doesn’t. The plight of the women on both Werel and Yeowe is quite vividly rendered (and Le Guin doesn’t shy away from the sexual abuse such a rigidly gender-separated society would feature). There’s much much to like her, from her usual deft touch with characters, to her portrayal of oppression and how societies change both rapidly and slowly (and the afterword is fascinating because it reveals the depth of worldbuilding that went into the stories).

That said… I remain troubled by the cumulative portrayal of the Hain: they’re more technologically advanced, their embassies are the ultimate place of safety, and the Hain themselves either bring salvation by bypassing the rules of a rigid society (like Old Music) or by totally and whole-heartedly integrating into the society they’re sent to observe… It’s hard to read all this without seeing the analogue of Western countries in the Hain, just as the struggle of both Werel and Yeowe for a better régime is an analogue of decolonisation or other broadly similar processes countries in the developing world have gone through or are going through (see: Egypt and the Arab Spring, notably). And given all this, I’m a little bothered by this aspect of the novellas, which mostly fail to get to grips with the inherent neo-colonialism that motivates most of the Western intervention in developing countries – where is the greed, the agenda of spreading their own products/culture or of getting the resources they want? It feels a little… naive I guess, to imagine the Hain going to other planets and establishing embassies out of the goodness of their hearts, a little like a beautiful picture that doesn’t really hold up to either scrutiny or real-world comparisons? It’s not a deal-breaker, and I do recommend this book, but still… it’s a bit of a blot on it.

Also arguable, of course, is that the system presented here seems derived from a uniquely American model of slavery (the parallels to the plight of African-Americans are pretty clear), rather than tackling other forms of decolonisation with more complex models of oppression (it’s a very specific subset of American history, and that the First Nations oppression, for instance, isn’t broached either…). I don’t have a problem with this specific instance, per se, just that it’s struck me this is very often the only model used for colonisation. Indeed, it strikes me that Le Guin took a similar approach in The Word for World is Forest: the portrayal of colonisation as indentured slavery for the natives is one of the (many many) reasons I never felt that book’s stated parallels with Vietnam and the Vietnamese/American War to be really convincing.

This review originally appeared on Aliette de Bodard’s blog.

A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K Le Guin

A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K Le Guin (1994)
Review by Ian Sales

In a career stretching, so far, over five decades, Ursula K Le Guin has written several science fiction novels that are considered to be classics of the genre. She has also written a huge number of short stories – nine collections’ worth to date, in fact. A Fisherman of the Island Sea is her fifth collection, and contains eight stories originally published between 1990 and 1994, with one outlier from 1983, in a variety of genre magazines. Le Guin also provides a long introduction, in which she discusses science fiction, ‘On not reading science fiction’, and the stories contained in the collection, ‘On the stories in this book’. Of the eight stories in A Fisherman of the Island Sea, five are not linked. The final three, however, are set in the same universe and are predicated on the use of the same device, the “churten”.

Much of Le Guin’s science fiction is set in the Ekumen, a loose polity of planets colonised by humans. Earth, however, is not humanity’s home world, a world called Hain is. And travel between the planets is only possible at sub-light speeds, or NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light). Le Guin explains how, in a couple of early stories, she had inadvertently, and counter to the universe she had built, implied that some robotic ships could travel faster than light. She chose to explore this further:

“Which is it that keeps the manned ship from going faster than light – is it life, is it intelligence, is it intention? what if I invent a new technology that allows human beings to go faster than light? Then what?”
“As the new fake technology was as implausible as the ansible, and counter-intuitional as well, I didn’t spend a whole lot of time fake-explaining it. i just named it: churten theory.” (p 9)

The three churten novelettes are ‘The Shobies’ Story’, Dancing to Ganam’ and ‘Another Story’ (AKA ‘A Fisherman of the Inland Sea’). Le Guin’s decision to refuse to explain her churten theory unfortunately results in sentences like, “‘Because the field is to be conceived as the virtual field, in which the unreal interval becomes virtually effective through the mediary coherence – don’t you see?’” (p 85). Er, no, I don’t see. Sentences such as this don’t so much gloss over the unexplainable as they make understanding of it inaccessible. In truth, churten travel, as described in ‘The Shobies’ Story’ reminds me a great deal of FTL in Gwyneth Jones Spirit and Buonarotti stories. Which fits with its intended role – as outlined by Le Guin in her introduction – as a metaphor for narration. Each of the crew of the Shoby experiences something different on the first ever churten flight, and afterwards no two of them can agree on what actually happened. The ship’s instruments prove equally unreliable. In ‘Dancing to Ganam’, a second flight, organised to mitigate the effects encountered during the flight of the Shoby, arrives at an inhabited world, and each member of the crew finds themselves part of a different story in that same setting during their weeks-long stay there. I’m not entirely convinced that the churten metaphor is truly necessary, however, given that it’s a first contact whose plot is built on a profound misunderstanding of the culture being contacted. Linguistic confusion alone is sufficient to lead to the story’s unfortunate ending. ‘Another Story’, however, does not even mention the churten until halfway through. It begins, knowingly, with a line Le Guin has used before, “I shall make my report as if I told a story”, but ‘Another Story’ opens on the world of O, not Gethen. A young man travels NAFAL to Hain to study to be a Mobile for the Ekumen, but stays there to research churten theory. He visits O ten years after he departed home, but time dilation means his family are eighteen years older. So for his next visit home he travels by churten, but something goes wrong and he arrives on the day he first left for Hain…

Of the unconnected stories in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea… ‘The First Contact with the Gorgonids’ is a mildly amusing Americans-abroad-meeting-aliens story. ‘Newton’s Sleep’ is set aboard a large space station orbiting an Earth slowly destroying itself. Despite being originally published in 1991, it reads like something from several decades prior to that. ‘The Ascent of the North Face’ is presented as the journal of a climber, but the locations mentioned in it are all parts of a house. Both ‘The Rock That Changed Things’ and ‘The Kerastion’ are the sort of anthropological sf for which Le Guin has become best known. In the first, a rock of a particular colour causes a “nur” to question her world; the title of the second refers to an instrument played only at funerals, and the story tells whose funeral it is and why. Though short, both pack a considerable punch.

I opened this review by mentioning the introduction to A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, but I’ve chosen to save the argument it outlines until last. Le Guin suggests that people who do not read science fiction imagine that, as its name implies, it is dominated by science. Giving examples from her own fiction, she demonstrates that such an attitude is mistaken. There is some truth, I think, in what Le Guin writes – especially:

“People who don’t read science fiction, but who have at least given it a fair shot, often say they’ve found it inhuman, elitist, and escapist. Since its characters, they say, are both conventionalized and and extraordinary, all geniuses, space heroes, superhackers, androgynous aliens, it evades what ordinary people really have to deal with in life, and so fails an essential function of fiction.” (p 3)

While I think it still holds true twenty years later that most sf often “fails an essential function of fiction”, I would have blamed that on its prioritising of escapism. Le Guin points out the days of clunky prose, cardboard-cutout characters and blithe authorial hand-waving as a substitute for research are long gone, and argues that science fiction, “with its tremendous freedom of metaphor”, has made of the genre something more essentially functional than non-sf. I don’t completely buy her argument – for a start, she’s using her own oeuvre as typical of the genre, when it is far from that. Much sf is still escapist and populated by extraordinary people performing extraordinary deeds rather than, as it really ought to be, ordinary people in extraordinary situations (extraordinary, that is, to the reader). The bulk of the genre has yet to transcend its pulp origins.

“As for elitism, the problem may be scientism: technological edge mistaken for moral superiority. The imperialism of high technocracy equals the old racist imperialism in its arrogance; to the technophile, people who aren’t in the know/in the net, who don’t have the right artifacts, don’t count. They’re proles, masses, faceless entities.” (p 4)

Her argument here also seems a little shaky. Do people still believe all that “fans are slans” nonsense? I was under the impression it had died out fifty years ago. And science fiction has become noticeably less technophilic over the past four decades, never mind the last two. Le Guin may skate over the meaningless babble she uses to “explain” her churten (see earlier), but it’s a technique as old as the genre and one that has been used so often sf texts are now building on the technobabble of earlier genre works. There are, for example, sf novels by diverse hands which have made use of Le Guin’s own invention, the ansible. But in many sf stories, the technology is used as either an enabler or an equaliser, and it’s only in some less-frequented corners of the genre where technology-for-technology’s sake is a focus of the narrative. In fact, in recent years it seems disguising the technology in a story’s invented world has become a preferred technique.

Science fiction is a genre in which readers demand worlds to be navigated just as much as, if not more than, they want narratives to be followed. Le Guin’s fiction has always been notable for the clarity of her prose, but she is also a meticulous documenter of her worlds – the opening pages of ‘Another Story’ describes in depth the social arrangements on the world of O, for example. ‘The Kerastion’ too is for much of its length a description of the society, which explains why the situation alluded to in its opening paragraph has come about. At that node where exploration and narrative intersect – the churten stories notwithstanding – some of the best science fiction has been written. And it is a node Le Guin has managed throughout her career to hit with impressive frequency.

Fans of science fiction should not need to be told to read stories written by Ursula K Le Guin, they should know they ought to do it. And there is nothing in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea to suggest otherwise.

The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K Le Guin

The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K Le Guin (1976)
Review by Admiral Ironbombs

To go under a river: there’s a strange thing to do, a really weird idea.

To cross a river, ford it, wade it, swim it, use boat, ferry, bridge, airplane, to go upriver, to go downriver in the ceaseless renewal and beginning of current: all that makes sense. But in going under a river, something is involved which is, in the central meaning of the word, perverse.

File under “authors I should have more of by now, but haven’t.” Ursula K Le Guin is often touted as one of SF’s true geniuses; she rode in with the New Wave of science fiction in the mid-1960s, and was one of the primary voices expanding SF’s scope. Her earlier novels combine fantasy and science fiction to create a framework for Le Guin’s examinations within the social sciences. The daughter of a writer and anthropologist, the social sciences are a recurring focus in Le Guin’s works. Her best known (and later) works are The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, two powerful philosophical treatises that snagged Hugo and Nebula awards. The Lathe of Heaven was an Amazing Stories serial that was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, but pulled in just the 1972 Locus award; I got it in a box of paperbacks gifted from my parents, and it sounded interesting enough to read first.

George Orr is a man with a very unique problem: what happens in his dreams will change reality when he wakes, retroactively altering the past, leaving him the sole person aware of the changes. After he has a near-fatal overdose on drugs trying to prevent himself from sleeping, he’s assigned a behavioral psychologist specializing in sleep and dreams—the jovial and enthusiastic Dr William Haber. Of course, Haber is skeptical at first. But after discovering the fantastic truth to Orr’s claims, he uses this power to change the world for the better—something Orr doesn’t want to attempt, given that his dream-altering is wild and unpredictable, and each minor change is a butterfly-effect storm moving farther and farther from the way things should be. But Haber is dead set on righting the world’s wrongs, and if that involves using Orr to play God, so be it.

Le Guin’s world is a fantastic construct, one with a lot of depth and texture, and plenty of verisimilitude. Compared to most of the other SF novels I read this year, this is the first one to have its backdrop come alive. Le Guin comments on pollution and environmentalism, overpopulation and the cyclical rise and fall of urban centers, ongoing war in the Near East, race issues, even changing social mores—issues of the 1970s, surprisingly still relevant in the 2010s—without interfering with the gradual progression of the plot. Orr’s reality-shaping dreams are the focus, but the setting is how we see the alterations; we see the backdrop changing as Orr’s dreams affect it, without needing details spelled out or reiterated. The string of changes Orr’s forced to make are gradual at first, allowing the reader to see the setting change in small steps, before see-sawing back and forth between a grim overpopulated dystopia, Haber’s breed of hopeful utopia, and apocalyptic visions: volcano eruptions, cancerous plague, alien invasion.

Ursula Le Guin has an esteemed reputation as a science-fiction writer, and The Lathe of Heaven – one of her lesser works, if she can have such a thing – is a delight to read; her writing is strong and smooth. The prose is both poetic and gripping; the concepts big, the characters sympathetic and humane, the pacing splendid. Le Guin managed to grab my attention and hold it, in the same way a good thriller dominates the reader’s focus and emotions, keeping the plot’s progression interesting enough that I didn’t want to let go. Reading the novel is a treat, as each shocking, surprising, or emotional moment is worth arriving at. Masterful writing, with strong, deep characters, wonderful atmosphere and an amazing setting.

I found a few things to complain about, problems ranging from annoying to glaring. The first chapter dives straight into the narrative without explanation, and starting with drugged-up Orr in-media-res is unclear. And between chapter breaks the plot jumps forward days or weeks at a time, which caught me off guard. George is a hard protagonist to empathize with because of how passive and… well, wimpy he is. (Granted, that passivity was the point of his character.) I’m more impressed by the book’s ability to hook me and demand my full attention, since Haber leans on the psycho-/techno-babble crutch to sway opinion. No, it’s not a perfect book, with flaws that detracted from the reading experience, but didn’t tarnish a masterful book with beautiful prose.

Above all else, The Lathe of Heaven is complex. Accessible, and readable, but complex. A deep look will reveal bitter condemnations of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, behaviorism, eugenics, a battle between Orr’s subdued and passive Taoist composure and Haber’s outward confidence in working for the greater good. The inherent perils of playing God, against the belief in letting fate run its course. Its questioning of reality can be read as a sort of homage to Philip K Dick, as the book’s concepts are entrenched in the surreal. This thought-provoking treatise is richly layered, and the interested, astute reader can no doubt find plenty to analyze within its pages.

At its best, science fiction has something important to say, and does so in a unique and exciting way. This is a genre of limitless potential, after all, but works that are both thought-provoking and gripping are less common than you’d think. That definition fits The Lathe of Heaven well: it’s one of those few SF books that’s intellectually stimulating and emotionally compelling at the same time. I could feel my mind exploding from the concepts presented, making me want to step aside and process the sheer cerebral brilliance I’d just experienced, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t, and didn’t want to put down because then I’d delay seeing what happened next: it’s an intense ride where the destruction of the protagonists – and Earth – rears its head more than once.

I’ve had a streak of great SF reads this year. And The Lathe of Heaven is close to the top of the list. No matter what part of science fiction you’re interested in, this book has something for you. If this is indicative of Le Guin’s less-famous works, I’m going to buy a lot more Le Guin. I give it the highest accolades and a vigorous recommendation.

This review originally appeared on Battered, Tattered, Yellowed & Creased.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin (1969)
Review by Grace Troxel

Ursula K Le Guin is phenomenal. A few months ago, I read her novel The Telling and loved the anthropological manner in which she describes the culture of her sci-fi worlds. I had heard good things about The Left Hand of Darkness, and was not disappointed. It is now one of my favourite books of all time.

In a futuristic world, Earth has joined other planets in a collaboration known as the Ekumen, an intergalactic group facilitating diplomacy and trade between worlds. The Ekumen contacts new planets by sending a lone representative to try to convince them of the merits of joining, on the principle that one person is somewhat innocuous, whereas two people could be interpreted as an invasion.

The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of Genly Ai, a man from Earth who is sent to the planet Winter as the first representative of the Ekumen. The people on Winter don’t have the same gender divisions that we do, but rather are completely androgynous. They are only capable of sex during a short period each month known as kemmer, at which point they assume either masculine or feminine genitalia. On Winter, normal humans such as ourselves are considered to be perverts, because their sexual instincts are never able to be turned off, and they are confined to one gender. Because of these differences, the social climate of Winter is vastly different than that of Earth. Rather than viewing the world as a dichotomy, denizens of Winter choose to live in the moment and focus on the greater whole. Le Guin makes us question the role of gender in shaping society and culture, while at the same time questioning how much of Winter’s culture is instead shaped by the planet’s harsh climate.

Genly Ai must navigate the subtleties and politics of the countries of Winter in order to convince its leaders to join the Ekumen. While doing so, he must to put aside his own preconceived notions of society and learn to adapt to a new planet, which is easier said than done, as Winter is still in the middle of an ice age.

Le Guin does a masterful job of worldbuilding, creating an entire mythology and history for the planet. Her descriptions of the icy world are vivid and breathtaking.

I’d highly recommend this book. Le Guin is the kind of author who can tell a beautiful story while at the same time constantly make you think about your own perceptions of reality. If you get the Ace edition published in 2000, I’d also suggest reading the author’s introduction to the novel, as it’s quite good. It describes her own views on science fiction, and is interesting to keep in mind while reading.

This review originally appeared on Books Without Any Pictures.

The Eye of the Heron, Ursula K Le Guin

The Eye of the Heron, Ursula K Le Guin (1978)
Review by Shannon Turlington

The Eye of the Heron is a short novel that was originally published in the collection Millennial Women, edited by Virginia Kidd. A straightforward story that reads like a fable, The Eye of the Heron is set on the alien planet of Victoria, where there are two groups of settlers: the farmers of the village of Shantih and the wealthier City inhabitants. The rest of the planet is uninhabited except by strange animals, including the long-legged, elegant, gray creatures called “herons” because of their resemblance to the bird, who gaze on the humans’ activities impassively; and the small, funny shape shifters called “wotsits,” who die in captivity but will sometimes alight on a person’s hand.

The book opens and closes with a person watching a wotsit change shape and color in his palm before flying away. These two framing incidents are both hopeful, representing a brief communion between the human and his new world. In fact, The Eye of the Heron could be classified as fantasy, if we did not know that both groups of settlers came to the planet on spaceships, exiles from a future Earth. The City dwellers were descended from prisoners, while the people of Shantih were leaders of a movement called the People of the Peace, a nonviolence movement that had gained too many adherents back on Earth. The brief glimpses of Earth’s future history, as related in the tales of the exiles’ descendants, add some layers of complexity to this otherwise straightforward tale.

Lev, the young leader of the Villagers, is returning home with a scouting party when the story opens. The Villagers have found a location for a new settlement, but the City Council won’t let them go, not wanting to lose their supply of low-paid workers and farmers. The People of the Peace respond with nonviolent civil disobedience, and several of them are arrested. One of the older leaders, Vera, is imprisoned in a Councilor’s house, where she begins to influence the Councilor’s daughter, Luz.

Luz, learning that her father has recruited an army of brutish young men to enslave the Villagers, flees her home to warn Lev and the others. Once there, she chooses to stay, a decision that drives her father and her suitor back in the City to irrational action. Luz tries to talk Lev into simply leaving Shantih, but he insists on following his people’s nonviolent ideals, which leads to tragedy. After things return to normal, though, Luz’s arguments eventually win over some of the Villagers, and she takes a group on an expedition to found a new home as the story ends.

Though unambiguous and very short, The Eye of the Heron explores many interesting ideas. The People of the Peace believe strongly that each individual makes his or her own choices, and the choices that the settlers make after being stranded on an alien planet — after being given a clean slate, in effect — are of interest to Le Guin. Do they wall themselves off in the City and attempt to control the uncontrollable? Do they hold on to the ways of Earth and refuse to adapt, even when it might mean their deaths? Or do they embrace their circumstances and make this planet their new home, adapting to it? Le Guin explores all of these choices, but clearly, it is the last one that holds the most promise at the end. I wouldn’t say that this is Le Guin’s best work, but it is certainly enjoyable and thought-provoking.

Le Guin herself credits this short novel with causing a breakthrough in her development as a feminist writer. In a 1995 interview, Le Guin said this about the novel and the character of Luz:

“I gradually realized that my own fiction was telling me that I could no longer ignore the feminine. While I was writing The Eye of the Heron in 1977, the hero insisted on destroying himself before the middle of the book. “Hey,” I said, “you can’t do that, you’re the hero. Where’s my book?” I stopped writing. The book had a woman in it, but I didn’t know how to write about women. I blundered around a while and then found some guidance in feminist theory. I got excited when I discovered feminist literary criticism was something I could read and actually enjoy. I read The Norton Book of Literature by Women from cover to cover. It was a bible for me. It taught me that I didn’t have to write like an honorary man anymore, that I could write like a woman and feel liberated in doing so.”

The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K Le Guin

The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K Le Guin (1972)
Review by Cara Murphy

When the inhabitants of a peaceful world are conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens, their existence is irrevocably altered. Forced into servitude, the Athsheans find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters.

Desperation causes the Athsheans, led by Selver, to retaliate against their captors, abandoning their strictures against violence. But in defending their lives, they have endangered the very foundations of their society. For every blow against the invaders is a blow to the humanity of the Athsheans. And once the killing starts there is no turning back.

Set several centuries in the future, and part of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle, The Word for World is Forest has been seen a response to the role of the United States in the Vietnam War. Maybe it was at the time of writing, but I consider this book to be particularly relevant to our own actions today regarding the environment, the destruction of our planet’s natural resources and ‘assimilation’ of indigenous peoples. Certainly that was the theme that struck a chord with me and left a lasting impression.

Men from Earth have arrived on the planet Athshe, renamed it New Tahiti, and are in the process of logging the abundant forest, sending the valuable timber back to a homeworld which has suffered environmental destruction. The indigenous population are referred to by many as “creechies” and used as forced labour. The arrogance of the humans is personified in the pivotal character, Captain Davidson, whose point of view opens the book and sets the scene for the explosive events that follow.

“For this world, New Tahiti, was literally made for men. Cleaned up and cleaned out, the dark forests cut down for open fields of grain, the primeval murk and savagery and ignorance wiped out, it would be a paradise, a real Eden.” [p.12]

The native Athsheans – while sharing similar origins as humans, being ‘seeded’ millions of years previously by the Hain – are small, green-furred and live in natural harmony with their world. They have a matriarchal society, a culture of lucid dreaming and, prior to the arrival of humans, have no history of violence. Although the behaviour of the colonists, or ‘yumens’ as they call them, is of concern to the Athsheans, the idea of fighting back against the destruction and oppression is an alien concept to them. They don’t understand the yumens and consider them to be backward and insane.

“But they only dream in sleep, you said; if they want to dream waking they take poisons [hallucinogenic drugs] so that dreams go out of control, you said! How can people be any madder?” [p55]

Their world, where the word for ‘world’ is the same as that for ‘forest’ is described in rich detail and shows Le Guin’s talent for worldbuilding. When contrasted with the society the colonisers have created, Athshe is indeed a utopia.

Although I think that The Word for World is Forest is not one of Ursula Le Guin’s best books, it is well worth the few hours it will take to read. It lacks some of the depth seen in other novels such as The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed in my view; however, I found the character of Davidson compelling. While he was the archetypal colonist; self-righteous, overtly oppressive and dismissive of anyone not like himself, his inner dialogue revealed an almost sociopathic personality. He reminded me of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, slowly going mad in an unfamiliar environment. On the other hand, Selver, his Athshean adversary and nemesis, was a more thoughtful and introspective character who took no pleasure in becoming the first of his kind to kill and murder. He led a bloody and ruthless revolt but lost a vital part of himself in the process. Both men are irrevocably changed by the events in which they played central roles.

What has stayed with me is the environmental thrust of The Word for World is Forest. Men (and the human colonisers are all male) arrive on Athshe to plunder its forests with no consideration for the native inhabitants or the consequences of removing the trees from the land. It sounds very familiar to us today, with the Amazonian and Indonesian rainforests being cut down and replaced with soya and palm oil plantations. But we do not have a New Tahiti to exploit. Ursula Le Guin has described a lush and fertile world, one where the trees are the lifeforce of the land and the inhabitants recognise this. The Athshean society lives in harmony with its environment, respecting the land and the creatures that live around them. Le Guin makes a very interesting point… that the word for world in the Athshean language is forest, whereas the word for world in ours is earth.

Planet of Exile, Ursula K Le Guin

Planet of Exile, Ursula K Le Guin (1966)
Review by Joachim Boaz

Planet of Exile is a masterful piece of fantasy/science fiction world building for Ursula Le Guin spins her story, worlds, cultures, and each race’s animosities in flawless fashion. This novel is part of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle.

The planet of Werel has 15 year winters and a 60 earth year year. The planet’s inhabitants are called Hilfs (Highly intelligent life forms) by the humans stranded on the planet (their ship had left in a struggle with mysterious invaders). Before every 15-year winter the Hilfs collect food and build Winter Cities on the ruins of their previous cities and prepare to defend themselves from the nomadic raiders who migrate en-mass south to avoid the winter and rape and pillage.

The human population, who have been on the planet for 600 years, is declining and can no longer defend themselves from these nomads. They attempt to enter into an alliance with the Hilfs against the nomads from the north who have–without precedent–banded together to capture the region. Rolery, a Hilf women, falls in love with the leader of the humans, Agat, and this brings tension to the alliance between the drastically different cultures.

What I have always found so amazing about all of Le Guin’s work is her superb world building skills. The culture of both sides can be inferred from gestures, simple word phrases, actions, and vivid description. She also employs delicately the racial animosities between the groups, again to illustrates the concepts and ideals of each culture, who have remained different despite living in close proximity for 600 years.

Without giving away important aspects of the story many ideas of the League (the organization humans that accidentally left the men stranded on the planet) in contacting less technologically progressed races is similar to the rules of first contact in Star Trek.

This is primarily a fantasy novel with a science fiction backdrop. The reader is immediately drawn into both societies struggles and deep melancholy befalls you when tragedy strikes. Le Guin’s human characters are artfully created and feel and act as humans and her created cultures fill her created worlds perfectly. I can think of no higher praise in the writing of social science fiction.

This review originally appeared on Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations.

The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin

The Dispossessed, Ursula K Le Guin (1974)
Review by Paul Graham Raven

Ursula le Guin is lauded not only as an author who has been unashamed to admit to being a genre writer, but also as one who has pushed the limits of the genre as literature by dealing with serious themes in sfnal settings. The Dispossessed is a prime example of this, exploring as it does the ideological conflict between two opposing cultural and political hegemonies.

Shevek is a theoretical physicist from the arid planet of Anarres, which is a satellite of the more verdant Urras. Anarres is home to an anarcho-syndicalist culture, created by a revolutionary splinter of Urras’ population a century and a half in the past. When their demands for freedom became untenable to the ‘propertarian’ governments, they were permitted to secede and colonise Anarres, whose only natural resources of any worth or note are deposits of metal ores that are in short supply on Urras.

Thus Anarres became a sealed enclave; the only contact between the two planets are the spaceships that bring certain essentials in return for taking metals back to Urras. Shevek, an idealist, and a revolutionary among revolutionaries, has come to believe that some sort of mutual exchange between the cultures is not only possible but necessary. He sees his scientific discoveries as something that should be shared for the benefit all people, not just his own.

On his homeworld, Shevek’s ideas are considered deeply inappropriate. Despite the lip-service paid by the Anarresti to the notion of freedom from constraint, their anarchism has become a rote tradition, stagnated and stultified by the powers of convention and consensus – by kowtowing to their nominal freedoms, they have locked themselves into a way of life that frowns upon any change or challenge to the status quo. Their revolutionary ideas have become dogmatic and unquestionable. Over the years, Shevek and his close friends work against this attitude, suffering from the contempt and anger of their fellow Anarresti.

Eventually, having formed their own syndicate to lobby for the need for change and progress, Shevek volunteers to go to Urras, to exchange his scientific ideas and to act as a hand extended in good faith. Despite serious resistance to his actions, the lack of active enforcement on Anarres means he can go, leaving the world he was raised on for one that has always been in clear sight, yet also utterly out of reach.

Urras is a world of nation-states, each operating a different flavour of government. Shevek is hosted by a university in A-Io, whose dominant mode is closest to the ostensibly democratic capitalism that is so familiar to Europe and North America. Shevek is, unsurprisingly, ill prepared to deal with the duplicity and power-plays that make up the day to day interactions between people on Urras; for all the flaws of syndicalist Anarres, it has nothing analogous to the iniquities that the private ownership of objects and ideas has produced on the richer planet. Idealistically striving to be an exemplar of his homeworld’s way of life, and at first blissfully ignorant of the extent to which he is being exploited through his own good will, Shevek ends up as a political playing piece, spied upon, mocked behind his back and shielded from seeing the dark underside of A-Io’s culture.

Examining politics through storytelling is a risky business, and many books that do so end up stamped with a partisan patina of the author’s own attitudes. The triumph of The Dispossessed is its utter lack of bias to either side of the equation. Far from idealising and glorifying the syndicalism of Anarres, le Guin is careful to show its flaws as well as its benefits – while arguably more free than the people of Urras, they live a hand-to-mouth existence that allows few luxuries and little development of technology or science that has no immediate practical value. While free of rigid hierarchies and class conflicts, their social system is poorly equipped to cope with natural disasters such as drought and famine, which turns their lives into a Benthamist struggle for survival.

Likewise, Urras is depicted using this ‘warts and all’ approach. The institutional iniquities and inequalities of capitalism are present, but le Guin also shows the many benefits of such a system – art, science, variety, plenty and choice. Shevek himself is somewhat seduced by these cultural aspects during his early days on the planet, as well as by the beauty of a world with a plentiful biosphere, but due to his previous life in a world where the notion of property is anathema, circumscribed and stigmatised by doctrine, he cannot help but see the terrible consequences from an outsider’s perspective. Shevek is in many respects a perpetual exile – his ideals and intellectually aloof character mean that he is as out of place on the planet of his birth as he is on Urras, and as such he makes the perfect lens through which the reader can observe the two cultures.

The differences between the two societies are carefully mirrored and enhanced by the relative differences between the planetary environments that host them. Urras is a verdant world, covered with agriculture that provides a variety of foodstuffs, whereas Anarres is an arid place with an attenuated biosphere. This means that a huge amount of manual labour is a necessity for Anarres to be able to feed itself – this subsistence economy ensures that the syndicalist culture isn’t portrayed as some simple utopia.

Similarly, Urras is not painted as a world ravaged by rampant capitalism – indeed, with the exception of the working class slums it is described as a beautiful place, home to rich historical architecture and vast tracts of land where nature rules. There is further emphasis in the form of the interwoven narrative – alternate chapters, one following Shevek’s adventures on Urras, then one describing his former life on Anarres, juxtaposing the wildly different experiences of life under the two systems.

Far more than just a simple story of ‘anarchy versus The System’, the outer framework of the ideological binary allows a great number of interrelated themes to be examined: this is a book about people living under ideologies, people as pawns of power; about the clash of idealism and realism; about the dichotomy between the word of the law and the spirit of the law; about hypocrisy and two-facedness; sacrifice and concession; defiance and repentance and the making of amends.

Running right through the book from the first page to the last is a symbol that binds the whole tale together – the symbol of the wall, used to represent and evoke division at every level. The wall is not just the schism between Urras and Anarres and their respective political systems. It is also the division of convention, resistance to change; the division of property and ownership, and the barriers built between individuals; and the division of personal assumptions and comprehension, the walls we all build inside our own minds.

To write a story examining this clash of ideologies would have been almost impossible without the sfnal conceit of the binary pair of planets; geographical separation alone could not have provided the isolation necessary to allow Anarres to exist as it is described. But although the central theme of the book is deeply political, it is far more than just a set of ideological comparisons, which would have made for a dull read even at the hands of an author of le Guin’s stature.

Instead, The Dispossessed is a deep and passionate examination of human nature, both at the macro- and microcosmic scales. The characterisation is excellent; Shevek and his unconventional comrades are vividly portrayed, their foibles and flaws and the dramas that occur in their lives are described in intimate and touching language. The passages dealing with interpersonal relationships are some of the most moving prose a reader could hope to find in the entire canon of the English language.

The Dispossessed is astonishingly rewarding, a powerful and moving novel whose themes will linger in the memory for a long time. Detailed but uncluttered, vast in scope but centred around a believable and sympathetic character’s efforts to change himself and the world around him, this book is everything that science fiction is frequently criticised for not being. The sfnal tropes and conceits, rather than being thrust into the foreground, are merely frames within which the story can be painted properly. The compassion and lack of vitriol make it a rarity among all books; the honesty of the storytelling and the avoidance of advocacy mean that The Dispossessed is still deeply relevant in today’s political climate, and will remain so for years to come – a crucial read for devotees of serious science fiction, and an excellent exemplar to give to science fiction’s most vocal critics.

This review originally appeared on Velcro City Tourist Board.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin (1969)
Review by Ian Sales

Le Guin is an author who grows as you grow. You can read and admire her at thirteen, and you can read and admire her at forty-three. As I have done. Because I think it must be around thirty years since I last read The Left Hand of Darkness. I’d never really felt the need to reread it because I knew the story. It’s one of those novels whose plot and characters have entered science fiction common knowledge – we all know about it even if we’ve not read it.

Which is a shame. Because it’s definitely worth reading, and it certainly stands up to rereading.

The book is set in Le Guin’s Ekumen, a loose mystical/economic interstellar polity of eighty-odd human planets with the world of Hain at its centre. Earth was seeded by the Hainish. The Left Hand of Darkness is set on Gethen, also known as Winter, which has just been invited to join.

The Gethenians have no space travel and, strangely – and uniquely among the humans of the Ekumen – they are hermaphrodites. For three weeks of every month they are effectively neuter, but for a week they are in heat, or “kemmer”. And the gender they take during kemmer depends entirely on those around them.

The Left Hand of Darkness is essentially a character study of a Gethenian called Estraven. He is the royal contact of Genly Ai, the Ekumen’s lone Envoy to the world. And it is through Ai’s, er, eyes that we come to know Estraven and, by extension, the people of Gethen. The novel is essentially world-building, and it’s a fascinating society Le Guin has created – a result of both the Gethenians’ sexuality and the planet’s harsh near-Arctic climate.

The plot of The Left Hand of Darkness is considerably less complex than the world itself. Estraven falls from favour and is banished from Karhide. The king’s new adviser is not interested in joining the Ekumen, only in provoking a war with the neighbouring police state of Orgoreyn. Ai visits Orgoreyn, hoping to have more luck with its “commensals”. He meets the exiled Estraven, who warns him that no one is interested in the Ekumen, only in using the Envoy to improve their own political fortunes. When those machinations fail, Ai is arrested and shipped off to a “Voluntary Farm”, where he is continually drugged and interrogated. There is an ongoing discussion amongst the Gethenians regarding Ai’s true nature – is he what he claims to be, or just the perpetrator of an elaborate hoax? This is purely Gethenian speculation; for the reader, Ai’s nature is never in doubt.

Estraven rescues Ai from the farm, and the two trek across the northern ice shield to return to Karhide. Since the commensals had claimed Ai had died of a virulent fever, his miraculous return should be enough to provoke the king of Karhide into inviting the Ekumen ambassadors to Gethen.

The story is told by Ai, who begins the novel with the line:

“I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.”

Ai’s narrative is interspersed with excerpts from the journal of Estraven. And between the two they cover the entire period between Estraven’s exile from Karhide and the landing of the ship containing the Ekumen ambassadors. The focus remains firmly on the two narrators.

Since the Gethenians are neuter for 75% of the time, and can be either gender when in kemmer, their society is essentially single-gendered. So The Left Hand of Darkness is as much a book about gender-roles as it is an exploration of an alien Other. And, while it was first published in 1969, perhaps in order to better contrast Gethenian society with the reader’s, Le Guin seems every now and again to drop into gender stereotypes – especially for women, since Ai is male and Estraven is neither. But that’s a minor quibble.

The Left Hand of Darkness is Gethen. And Gethen is one of the best-realised worlds in science fiction. I’d last read this book years ago, but had since then reread The Dispossessed… and decided the latter was the better of the two. But having now read The Left Hand of Darkness once again, I find I’m not sure. There’s no doubt they’re the best two of Le Guin’s Hainish novels – which makes them amongst the best the genre has produced – but I suspect I’ll never decide which is best and which is second-best.

The Left Hand of Darkness does not disappoint. In fact, it does the opposite – I like it even more than I thought I did. I will definitely be reading it again one day. I might even add it to the bottom of my favourite novels list…

This review originally appeared on It Doesn’t Have To Be Right…