Birthday loot 2024, Part 4.

-Part 1.

-Part 2.

-Part 3.

-Part 3.5.

There!! Finally finished these Sunday the 6th!

-Warning-

Mild to moderate spoilers. Since the basic plot of each sequel inevitably spoils the previous one a little.

Don't read the review at all if you want to go in clean.

The Dispossessed (1974)

Yep, it's my new favorite book ever.

Might even be my favorite media content ever.

It never had a dull moment. It was all good parts.

Love, love, love, love!!!

Basic plot: an anarchist moon orbits a Nixon-y/Reagan-y Cold War shithole planet.

The protagonist, a moon man who's also the future inventor of the ansible, wants to re-unite his people.

Moon = Annares

Planet = Urras

Protagonist = Shevek.

Yeah, this book scratched all my itches.

Even ones I didn't know I had anymore.

Shevek's mental dialogues on the Urras society had me cheering like teenage me over a George Carlin concert.

This was better. This was better than Carlin. 

Carlin's funnier, but this slammed the points home harder.

Social climbers in school, the corporate ladder chasers, the sexually repressed, economics being like an ugly dumb old religion, conspicuous consumption, war-mongering, bigotry, Shevek hits it all.

War-wankers in particular haven't changed at all in 50 goddamned years.

Same exact fucking moronic spew still coming out of the miserable pricks.

And it's all shored up by toxic masculinity.

Which is set up by artificially rigid gender roles.

This was all known about 50 fucking years ago.

We're still doing this stupid shit.

This one actually has more LGBT stuff than LHOD. How the fuck did Orson Scott Card read this, and not toss his cookies all over his dining room? Taking the ansible for his stuff wasn't an homage, it was revenge.

What a sick petty little man-child. Figures Grima Wormtongue likes him. 

Card belongs in that same food-group of assholes as Scott Adams.

What an insult to the dignity of our very species that creatures like this prosper.

Favorite phrase of the book: "The means are the end. Only peace brings peace. Only just acts bring justice".

I want a stack of t-shirts with that quote on there.

Wait, what am I saying?

That'd get you burnt as a witch in this sick fucking country.

Not that Annares society is perfect, far from it, but damn, I'd take it over Urras.

I at least wish I could vacation at Annares.

Closest I can get is Canada or Sweden.

Anyway!

Just like I said Sandman is the graduation level of DC, Le Guin's Hainish-verse is the graduation level of Trek. 

It's my new favorite space universe. Easily.

Better than a lot of Trek; better than all of Star Wars; and...while I respect the Hell out of Dune, the universe is depressing. Hainish-verse has the same gigantic scope as Dune, but there's more heart and hope piercing the storm clouds.

The Word For World Is Forest (1972)

Okay, first, I have to go into why this series is "The Hainish Cycle".

In this universe, the Hain are the original humans.

The Hain colonized a shitload of worlds, including Earth. 

Then their empire collapsed, then they forgot they even had an empire, then they re-invent space travel, find Earth, and the Hain and the Terrans make The League Of All Worlds.

Earth is devastated; humans fucking failed miserably, but luckily, the Hain don't have a prime directive like Trek, and bail us out.

But even with Hain help, it'll take centuries to restore Earth.

And, the Terrans did covet what Urras had at the end of "The Dispossessed".

Even though they destroyed themselves making all of Urras's mistakes.

So, the Terran part of the League is grasping and clutching for resources.

That's where we enter this story.

And yeah, "Avatar" ripped this off.

Note for note. Molecule for molecule.

You don't have to go picking for it with tweezers.

It doesn't "resemble", it's a total fucking rip.

A movie of this would have been a trillion times better than fucking "Avatar".

Fuck America for racking that piece of shit up to 2 billion.

What an insult. 

Avatar always gave me bad icky vibes. Not scary, just "blah"; and now I 100% know why.

TWFWIF is better in morals, in logic, in historical parallels, and in ability to move the audience.

But of course it is. I knew it would be.

Le Guin on the Avatar resemblance.

"A high-budget, highly successful film" which "completely reverses the book's moral premise, presenting the central and unsolved problem of the book, mass violence, as a solution" and states "I'm glad I have nothing at all to do with it".

Anyway, in this, Terrans are harvesting Athse for wood.

Earth "needs" wood like we "need" ivory. Or blood diamonds.

It's a luxury item in demand, so they're here to clear this planet for it.

It being wood that we don't need makes more sense than "unobtanium".

We'll kill natives over fucking rubber and bananas as much as we will for oil.

Earth devastated, and they still want their goddamned luxuries, and elevated wealthy class.

Sounds about right.

Anyhoo, Selvar, an Athshean, is our hero protagonist.

Naturally, in these kind of stories, the baddie pushes someone too far, and they go all Ceasar (Apes films) or Paul Atreides. 

Selvar is that for this story.

No white savior horseshit like Avatar.

The Athsheans are about the size of 6 year olds to Terrans, but with green fur.

So the reverse of Avatar with the Na'vi being giants.

Yeah, Cameron just took TWFWIF and twisted things upside down and backwards.

The baddies are your typical toxic males.

We don't see the war that's brewing and being mongered for in "The Dispossessed" but we get imperialist occupation in all its ugly glory in this one.

Le Guin ain't pulling it out of her ass. America did this routine in 'Nam.

Hell, they re-ran it for "The War On Terror".

Abu Ghraib. Camp X-ray. And those are the ones we know about.

I dunno, the nitpicker critics say this one doesn't have rich characters like her best ones, but it feels pretty rich to me.

It won the fucking Hugo. 

Anyway, back to the larger Hainish saga.

If you read these in chronological order, it's a depressing but realistic saga of how Earth/Terra takes its sweet slowpoke time (millennia!!!!) catching up to the anti-war/anti-violence/anti-greed ideals of Shevek.

Read in release order, it's a straight shot to anti-war anarchist pacifism.

TWFWIF is the intersection point for both directions.

Enjoy either way!

😉

Rocannon's World (1966)

The original first book of the Hainish Cycle, and the first book by Ursula K. Le Guin period.

This is very much like a D&D campaign.

A weird "astronaut lands on fantasy planet" D&D campaign.

It also reminded me of He-Man. Or Den. Or Blackstar. Or whatever SF/fantasy mashup analogy you wanna go with.

One thing we find out about the Hainish-verse here, not only doesn't The League have a Prime Directive, they're Opposite-Prime-Directive.

They're full tilt super-meddlers.

They'll give friggin' cavemen tech if it helps them with their war effort.

They didn't quite learn the whole lesson of TWFWIF. Nope.

Takes them awhile to learn.

We also see that by this time in League history, FTL exists, but lifeforms can't survive it.

Only robot ships, and attack drones.

FTL was built off ansible physics; so, Shevek is retroactively the Zephrame Cochrane of the Hainish-verse.

Nothing too philosophically deep here; it's mostly an adventure story.

Except Le Guin plays around with the consequences of time dilation, so we get our nerd on with that.

Plus, the events ripple into all the other ones that come after.

This basically just sets up her universe.

It's her "A New Hope".

This one would be the easiest to adapt into a crowd pleasing Hollywood flick.

I can easily imagine this as an animated movie with action figures, and an action figure commercial.

"Burn, Rocannon, burn!!".

"You can't hurt me! I've got my impermasuit on!!".

"Curse you, Rocannon!".

"I'll save you!!".

"Thanks, Yahan!!".

"To the windsteeds!".

"Rarrr!!".

Narrator: "From Mattel!! Playsets sold separately!"

All in all, it was definitely more fun and nostalgia inducing than TWFWIF.

Not a masterpiece like the first two. But not fluff either.

It's a good start. Le guin came in hot.

Planet of Exile (1966)

The (original) second book of the Hainish Cycle.

This one felt like another D&D campaign, but more adult. 

More Game Of Thrones-ish. Right down to fending off a siege of baddies during an ominously approaching winter. It has as its lead co-protagonists, an interracial romantic couple. 

Two years before Trek had racists in hysterics over the Kirk/Uhura kiss. 

Le guin was way out ahead. 

Where Le Guin played with time dilation in Rocannon, here, she plays with planets with different time cycles.

On the titular Planet Of Exile, a moon cycle is an Earth year; a year is 60 years.

The male half of the couple, Jakob, is from Earth, dark skinned, his people learned telepathy (they call it mindspeaking) from Rocannon, and the solar radiation of the planet is slowly making his people sterile, so they're dying off.

The female half of the couple, Rolery, is a native, light skinned, and with yellow eyes.

They either adapted to, or were engineered by the Hain to resist the radiation.

Le Guin could have had it be blue eyed whites, and yellow eyed whites, and have it be an allegory.

Nope, Jakob and his people are not just black, but blik-blak-blikkety-black.

Le Guin never pussyfooted.

Again, this is my new favorite space universe.

Look how jumpy and tippy-toe Star Wars is about inclusion now. 

In the allegedly enlightened 2020's.

Rey existing made that man-baby fanbase shit their pants. 

Can you imagine if they had her fuck Finn? 

I think think she was supposed to fuck Finn in some lost draft.

I really do. Force Awakens was totally planting the seeds of a bickering "Moonlighting" thing between them.

Totally.

But I digresss....

But yeah, Rolery's people don't like their relationship.

Romeo and Juliet in space. With bigotry sauce.

Sigh. Now backwards bigotry calls itself MAGA, and we're going through it all over again.

Well! I mean, this is all set in the far, far future, and Le Guin didn't see an end to it. At least not soon.

The Alterrans (Jakob's people) are following new League rules not to rise above the tech of the locals.

A proto version of the rules Genly from LHOD follows.

So, yeah, no impermasuits, no laser guns, no ansibles.

And their ship took off to fight in a war, and never came back.

The whole thing all builds to the big siege battle at the end.

This one had LOTR/Thrones vibes for sure.

My imagination flickered between the animated and live-action LOTRs.

Yeah, this isn't on the level of "The Dispossessed" or "Left Hand Of Darkness", but the interracial romance, and the resemblance to Thrones before Thrones nudge this out ahead of Rocannon just enough.

In the next one, we find out race mixing saves humanity.

So not only is segregation stupid, it's antithetical to evolution, and existence itself.

It's backward in every way, and Le Guin just blurted it right the fuck out.

In the 60's.

Did I mention this is my new favorite space universe?

Yeah.

City of Illusions (1967)

The (original) third book of the Hainish Cycle.

Yeah, this one felt like "Total Recall" what with the swapping identities, and rugs being pulled out from under reality, and Cerebro tech, etc, etc.

Naturally, the Le Guin version is better.

It's always better.

Okay, "Total Recall" with another D&D quest in the middle.

And the baddies (the Shing) are the pigs from "Animal Farm" but beatable.

Le Guin doesn't go full "Animal Farm" with "there's no fucking hope. Fuck everything". 

No, humanity goes through some shit, but we make it.

It's 1200 years after "Rocannon's World" and 600 years after "Planet Of Exile".

A naked dude stumbles into a town on Earth.

Naked-guy has yellow cat eyes. He has total amnesia. Under mind-scan, he's totally harddrive wiped down to the level of a baby.

The people of the town name him Falk.

Jump ahead 5 and a half years, and Falk can walk and talk again.

He remembers a snow capped mountain without seeing it anywhere in a book, or in a telepathic mind, so it's his memory.

So, Falk goes out on a quest to find his identity, and his destiny.

What follows reveals what happened after "Planet Of Exile", and who Falk's ancestors are.

Spoiler; it's Jakob and Rolery. 

Falk is the culmination of "race mixing saves the universe" thing, so you've got that.

That arc isn't complete without COI. 

Back to the baddies, they're totally supposed to be Soviets.

Nowadays, the Shing would be Trump, Fox, Tucker Carlson, and Putin.

Same shit, different decade, yet again.

I wonder how much was planned out with having the League be militarist, and having the Hain-verse evolve to pacifist socialism, and how much was UKL's own views evolving.

Like, did she deliberately bait & switch her audience with a conventional adventure story, and then evolve it? Or did it flow out organically as she went?

My guess is it's a little of both. I think on the inside, she was always Shevek level, but she knew the dance you had to do to publish too. 

Like the dance Rodenberry had to do to get into the business, and then get Trek on the air.

And not for the first time, I wish there had been faithfully adapted uncensored animated movies, and action figures, so I could play with Falk and the slider (sort of hover-canoe) as a kid.

Falk, Rocannon, Jakob, Rolery, Genly, Estroven, Shevek, Selver, Lyobov, all of them.

Hainish-verse instead of He-Man.

No Ronald Reagan. No ratty little redneck kids to dumb-pressure me into nerd-shame.

I would have been SO fucking happy.

Well, I get to enjoy it all now.

😁

And, the circle is closed back to LHOD.

There's no more Hainish-verse unless I get trilogy three.

And those are hard to get for some reason.

Final ranking!!

1. The Dispossessed.

2. The Left Hand Of Darkness.

3. City Of Illusions.

4. Planet Of Exile.

5. Rocannon's World.

6. The Word For World Is Forest.

Yep, original trilogy in reverse order, and TWFWIF last; not because it was bad, I just liked something in all the others a little better.

Next up!! The Lathe Of Heaven!!!!!!!!!!!

Grabbed it Tuesday the 8th.

Stay tuned!!