Vaster Than Empires and More Slow

Le Guin included a story of this title, taken from "To His Coy Mistres," in The Wind's Twelve Quarters. It follows a crew of explorers who are exploring space to find new life and sentience. One among them has incredible powers of empathy that borders on ESP that allows (or rather forces) him to feel whatever emotions those around him feel. His crew responds to him with distrust and hostility, which he mirrors back on them. The planet they discover has sentience of its own. It is a single organic being which reacts in fear to crew. The empath decides to commune with the planet to alleviate the planet's fear. His communication becomes Communion. The planet's single sentience becomes a peace for his mind.

I have not done justice to the depth of this story. Suffice that Ursula K. Le Guin wrote it so it is a great story.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has an episode entitled Tin Man with a similar plot. Tam is a betazoid, like commander Deanna Troy, was born with full telepathic abilities. His powers cause him to suffer as he is constantly bombarded with the thoughts and emotions of all around him, including the entire Enterprise. He is assigned to make first contact with an unusual vessel which seems to be both an artificial spaceship and also an organic being. Tam is able to establish some contact with the ship, which is millenia old and the last of its kind. The ship was engineered or born purposefully as a sentient ship which nurtures its crew. Unfortunately, the crew died thousands of years previously and the ship has come to a star, that is about to go nova, to die. Tam goes aboard the ship and bonds to it, relieving his own loneliness and the ship's.

I am a little surprised that there is little reference to Le Guin's short story. There are some differences. Tam is able to find some respite with Data since he is sentient but not organic. And Data brings back a message from Tam that he has found joy at last. It is a more satisfying ending. Le Guin is not terribly big on ending's. I think that is why I like her works.

City of Illusion

City of Illusion is the last in Three Hainish Novels. The species from Weral in Planet of Exile now journey/return to Earth, the nearest planet in the possibly defunct League of All Worlds. It is also a mystery story.

The main character, Falk or Agad Ramarren, has his memory wiped clean. He is released into the wild, a child in a man's body. He chances upon a Forest House, a small kin group, who shelter and teach him despite his unmistakably alien eyes. He remains with them for five years, wooing the woman who saved and taught him. He is happy among them but troubled by his own lost identity. He determines that he must travel to Es Toch, the city of the Shing, to regain his memory.

The Shing are an invading alien group who control the Earth by denying its inhabitants access to technology. They are said to tbe the only species capable of mind lying, or lying while communicating telepathically. According to legend, this talen for deception is what enabled the Shing to destroy the League of All Worlds.

Much of history has been forgotten. No one is sure whether the League was ever real or just a legend. As Falk travels, he hears many conflicting histories and descriptions of the Shing and struggles to determine what is true. Falk is himself hopelessly scrupulous and honest, a trait that both endangers him and saves him on his quest.

Eventually, Falk reaches Es Toch. He is possibly betrayed by his travelling companion, Estrel. The Shing claim to be true Earth humans who accepted the onus of hatred in order to maintain peace. Falk also hears details of his own (possible) past. Of the 20 members of his exbition to nearest inhabited planet, only two survive, Falk and a young boy named Orry, who has accepted all the explanations the Shing give him. Falk is less willing to believe them.

To regain his memory, Falk permits his current identity to be erased to regain his previous identity. Despite what he had been told, he is able to keep his memories as Falk alongside but distinct from his Weral personality. Falk/Ramarren realizes that the Shing are real, are the enemy, and restored his memory only to learn where his planet is so that they may destroy or enslave its inhabitants. Falk manages to steal a shing starship in order to return to his home planet to warn and prepare them for the Shing.

The biggest element in this novel is doubt. We see the world through Falk. Like us, he has not knowledge of the world he is in. Each community he comes across has its own culture, its own history, its own myths and legends. Falk has a difficult time determining who to trust and often has his knowledge and memory violated against his will. While readers of Le Guin's other Hainish novels grants us insights into the history of the League, we are still dependant on Falk's perception and experiences to learn about the world.

Planet of Exile

Werel is a planet with a very long orbit around it's sun. In comparison with Earth, one year on Werel is approximately the same number of days as 60 Earth years. The seasons are likewise elongated and a person may live his or her entire life without seeing the same season twice. Similarly, its moon takes 400 days to complete its cycle of phases. As a result, age is kept by moonphases rather than solar years.

A small colony of aliens, sent from the Hainish League of All Worlds to establish contact with the indigenous species. However, this group loses contact with the rest of the league, becoming exiled on Werel. Initially, there are wars and conflicts with the natives. The aliens, called Alterrans, establish small cities. The novel focuses on one city, perhaps the only surviving city of Alterrans. Despite past conflicts, the Alterrans live in relative isolation from the indigenous inhabitants.

The other grouped, because there are always at least two factions if the Hainish are involved, are natives who struggle through their lives in a primitive, semi-nomadic society. These people form family units and larger clans. The head of the family is the head of each household, having several wives and numerous offspring. A separate group of "barbarians" are completely nomadic, travelling far north in the summer and south again in the winter. Though this migration often includes some marauding and pillaging, there is a greater threat this year as the barbarians have all banded together with the intent of invading all of the winter cities of the semi-nomads.

The semi-nomads and the Alterrans agree to band together to fight off the coming invasion but a love affair between its members causes humiliation to one side and physical assault on the other. The remnants of the semi-nomads seek sanctuary in the Alterran city after their own homes are destroyed. The Alterran city comes under attack. It is during this attack that an important discovery is made.

For several generations, the Alterrans had decreasing offspring due to miscarriages and early deaths. The cause was unknown but many suspected that the planet was rejecting them as a species as happens occasionally with organ receivers. However, the injured during the many battles quickly become infected. Initially the alterran doctors are baffled by the symptoms. The original group, over 10 Weral years ago, suffered no illnesses or infections because the planet had not evolved any that would affect their alien bodies. During the ten years, the alterrans had adapted to Weral and Weral's life to the alterrans. The bacterial infections on the alterrans suggested that perhaps now they could interbreed with the indigenous population, which had not previously been the case.

The ability to interbreed is one of the more confounding definitions of "species". You might think you know what a species is but it is difficult to truly define one species from another because evolution just does not work along clear cut lines, on one side you are a giraffe and the other you are a race horse. The alterrans and werals came from the same species but were separated for thousands of years by thousands of light years. Neither group was certain of the humanity of the other, but they were forced to come together by circumstances and biology.

Rocannon's World

Le Guin's first novel found its place among the Hainish Cycle, the second book according to plot chronology. As with all Le Guin's novels in this cycle, the catalyst is an alien travelling to another world as part of a fact-finding mission.

The planet, later named after Rocannon, has three sentient species. One group which is very short and has split into two groups. Think Tolkein's dwarves and hobbits essentially. One group lives underground, is darker and hairier, where they pursue technology and wealth. They are weapon smiths. The other are light and happy folk who live in meadows and laugh a great deal. Both groups maintain an ability to speak through telepathy. There are also men, superficially divided by race into lords and servants, at least on the northern continent. There are fewer distinctions in the southern continents. Finally, there are also winged people, tall, slim and pale. They are more or less vampires with black wings who survive by sucking the blood out of other mammals. There may be one more species who live solitary lives in caves. Little is known about them.

The prologue follows a young woman, indigenous to the planet, who seeks to reclaim her family's heirloom, a golden necklace with a saphire gem, in order to bring honor and wealth to her husband. To do so, she travels to her childhood home, eventually travelling through the underground caves of the darker little people and their pre-industrial society. To retrieve her necklace, she must travel on the longest night of her life, not realizing that she will travel so quickly that time will pass much slower for her than for the people on her planet. When she returns with the heirloom, she finds her husband dead and her daughter now a grown woman.

Obviously, this reeks of Rip Van Wrinkle. I think this is to set you in the mindset of older stories, myths and legends. The plot proper follows the story of Rocannon, who becomes the stuff of legends. His story is much like Dune, in that he repeatedly finds himself fulfilling a legend, of which he was ignorant. After his ship is destroyed, he journeys accross the known world from the north to the south continent, facing danger and mythical beasts only hinted at by myths. Through his journey and his travails, he gains insight into the culture and history of the planet which had so long alluded him. He also feels his identity change to match the legend.

His goal is a small fleet of enemy ships. Aboard these, he anticipates finding an ansible, a device that will allow him to communicate anywhere in the universe instantly. With the proper coordinates, of course. To infiltrate their base, he must gain a gift from the Ancient Ones, the fourth species of unknown heritage. However, the Ancient One demands a sacrifice from Rocannon, the most important thing to him. He confesses that he does not know what the thing is but he will give it. His sacrifice ends up his friend Mogien, one of the Lords who had befriended Rocannon and aided his journey. In return, Rocannon gains the ability to hear the thoughts of his enemies. Though useful, listening to their thoughts is a great risk because their minds will sense his presence.

This gift is spread to members of the Hainish League, though without the same terrible price.

The Dispossed: An Ambiguous Utopia

I am going to try this again. I want to talk about revolution. The word itself hints at the problems of a revolution. To revolve is to turn and return. The idea of return plays an important role in Shevek's life and his theories of physics.

My family is from Cuba. My mother was born just days after Castro came down from the hills and declared victory. It was what my grandmother prayed for and she reminds me from time to time to be careful what we pray for because we just might get it. A couple of years later, my grandmother move to Florida with my mother while my grandfather was in jail. If you knew my grandparents, you would be struck by the absurdity. Like me, my grandmother stubbornly says what she thinks out loud, dangerous in any dictatorship. My grandfather is the opposite, he makes do and tries to see the best. Revolution is a dirty word and many of my cousins, I am quite certain, did not vote for Obama because his promises sounded disturbingly familiar. My grandmother also likes to say, "If you aren't a communist when you are 20 then you have no heart; if you are still a communist at 50 then you have no brain."

We look at Cuba with fear and hope, with impotent anxiety, with thin-wearing patience. I have only known Havana's streets in photographs, black and white and yellowing with age but it is the place where my grandparents and older cousins came into the world, were they grew up, were they became. There is a lingering but strong homesickness, an undeniable bond, and a painful recognition of the familiar. So I keep looking at pictures, cooking Cuban food, and, lately, I have been reading a blog by a woman, Yoani Sánchez, trapped on that island.

She has recently written a post about the maintenance of the revolution. To be 'revolutionary' "it is enough to exhibit more conformity than criticism, to choose obedience over rebellion, to support the old before the new." This is the harsh reality Shevek finds on his home planet.

He lives roughly 200 years after the Odonian revolution in a communist paradise. I find my heart sympathetic and smitten with the communal and free spirit of his world, not to mention the equality of sexes and the utter frankness of bodily functions. It offers a type of freedom I will never know and could not survive: freedom from possession. And, while I envy the health care systems of other western, first world countries, I have no intention of going whole hog - not because I am disgusted by the ideal of communism but because I am terrified of the realities.

Shevek discovers that in his academic field, there is corruption where there should be none, barriers against the novel, and that the ideals upon which his society is based can be manipulated into the power structure they oppose. One of his friends is punished by continual assignment to physical labor until he breaks down, forced into an assylum. Shevek's work is stymied by his supposed mentor who denies publication of his work unless credit is shared and blocks Shevek's entry into teaching.

I know that corruption is not a new theme in the utopian genre of science-fiction. What surprised me was the description of how stability can promote corruption, how status quo can purchase power. There are many kinds of freedom: freedom to live, freedom to work, freedom from physical harm, freedom of thought, freedom of mind, freedom to speak and freedom to be heard. Shevek has a very tangible sense of the freedom he desires and is denied. It is freedom to be heard that he seeks, risking all other freedoms for the ability to communicate.

At the risk of sounding prosaic, I offer these quotes, frequently misattributed to Thomas Jefferson:
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. (This is Benjamin Franklin, by the way. You've probably heard a popular paraphrase)

The Dispossed: An Ambiguous Utopia

I have not yet finished this book but it is living up what I have come to expect from Le Guin-a complete world governed by different social structures, deep characters, and the painful feeling that I am missing out on something whenever I am forced to put the book down.

The book is structured both sequentially and simultanouesly according to concepts in phsyics explored by Shevek, the protagonist. This concept is not so difficult to me because it is at the heart of the Jewish calendar, or more correctly the heart of the conflict between the Jewish and the secular calendars. On the face of things, the calendars are only different in that the former is a lunar calendar while the latter is a solar calendar. The both have seven day week cycles, they are marked by (semi)lunar events called months, each annual orbit of the sun begins a new calendar year, and the months are sprinkled with secular and/or religious holidays. However, if you live with both, they begin to take on different meanings. The Jewish calendar becomes one of tradition, of repeating cycles. The Sabbath grounds the week and returns one constantly to peace, to the celebration of life, and to God. The secular calendar marks the forward movement of time through life, the daily grind. The cycle and the progression are part of each other.

Oh travel through the heavens! This is not what I meant to write about but I have wandered into time and physics. I will give it a go.

Shevek tries to explain time like a book. Everything is in the book already but we must move through it from one end to the other. We are only readers of a small portion and we are only able to understand our portion if we move from beinning to end. If you have read Slaughterhouse Five, you will be familiar with this understanding of time as this is how Tralfalmadorians view time, except that they can see the end as easily as the beginning and move fluidly through it. This naturally becomes determinist, lackign free will. Shevek tries (maybe he eventually succeeds) in reconciling his theories of physics and time with free will. I would struggle to put the two together, too, but I am not worried about free will. It doesn't seem worth worrying about since, unless you are Kilgore Trout, you don't get to change whatever the status quo is.

The two worlds, Anarres and Urras, revolve around each other, referring to one another as moons of their earth/world. So, too, do their civilizations and governments pull and repel each other while travelling through their orbits. I haven't developed this thought enough to comment on its relationship to the theories of physics and time that are central to the novel.

Left Hand of Darkness

This is one of the first feminist science fiction works and my first sci-fi book to consider the nature of gender relations.

The protagonist, a member of the "bisexual" branch of humanity (in that he is male), is an alien among a race who are neuter most of the time, and thus unable to procreate during that time, and for approximately two days can turn either male or female. He is considered to be a perversion of nature since he is constantly sexually available. The period of fertility among the natives is called kemmering. Either member of a pair may assume either sex and all are capable of pregnancy. The protagonist begins by treating them all as males until. However, on a long and dangerous journey, he is confined in close quarters with a karhide undergoing kemmering. It is then that Genly Ai realizes that the karhides are not man or woman, or neither, but always both. The society has no sex/gender roles.

There is a beautiful myth of the first beings. The first born attempts to kill of its siblings but loses one when chasing after another. The youngest waits until the eldest is in kimmering. Then it returned. Each needed the either, could not survive.

The title refers to the inherent duality of karhide life. Light is the left hand of darkness. Each half does not merely oppose the other but requires it and completes it.