Planet of Exile / Mankind Under the Leash

by Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas M. Disch

Planet of Exile
by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Earth colony of Landin has been stranded on Werel for ten years — and ten of Werel's years are over 600 terrestrial years, and the lonely and dwindling human settlement is beginning to feel the strain. Every winter — a season that lasts for 15 years — the Earthmen have neighbors: the humanoid hilfs, a nomadic people who only settle down for the cruel cold spell. The hilfs fear the Earthmen, whom they think of as witches and call the farborns. But hilfs and farborns have common enemies: the hordes of ravaging barbarians called gaals and ee

Mankind Under the Leash
by Thomas M. Disch
Ever since the alien Masters had taken control, domesticating mankind with their energy-technology and the all-powerful mental Leash, the human condition had changed from toil and trouble to Total Wish Fulfillment. Only the Dingoes, the obstinate ones who resisted the Masters' Leash, weren't invited to the cosmic party. Poor Dingoes!

Genres: Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Collections, Fiction

253 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Ursula K. Le Guin published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry and four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, etc. Her recent publications include the novel Lavinia, an essay collection, Cheek by Jowl, and The Wild Girls. She lived in Portland, Oregon.

She was known for her treatment of gender (The Left Hand of Darkness, The Matter of Seggri), political systems (The Telling, The Dispossessed) and difference/otherness in any other form. Her interest in non-Western philosophies was reflected in works such as "Solitude" and The Telling but even more interesting are her imagined societies, often mixing traits extracted from her profound knowledge of anthropology acquired from growing up with her father, the famous anthropologist, Alfred Kroeber. The Hainish Cycle reflects the anthropologist's experience of immersing themselves in new strange cultures since most of their main characters and narrators (Le Guin favoured the first-person narration) are envoys from a humanitarian organization, the Ekumen, sent to investigate or ally themselves with the people of a different world and learn their ways.

Reviews

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 for Planet of Exile.
Excellent world, as always from Le Guin.

Shelving without reading the other story. Maybe I'll get to it one day...

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le Guin writes a gritty siege novel. Disch gives us a grimly funny parable on free will and beauty that concludes with an aesthete getting Clockwork-Oranged to atom-bomb alien gods with his amplified brain waves curdled into horror in response to electrified American hillbilly music. It must have been fun as hell to write sci-fi in the 60s.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

***** Planet of Exile (1966) • Ursula K. Le Guin
*** Mankind Under the Leash (1966) • Thomas M. Disch

[Cibele Andrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story that wouldn't have interested me by itself told in the great discovery narrative by Ursula Le Guin. This book questions the reader on matters of race and society, ecology and adaptation. But the less you know about it the better it will be to read it.