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The Hainish Cycle
The Hainish Novels and Stories
For the first time, all of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish novels and stories are brought together in a single edition, complete and with new introductions by the author. Beginning in the 1960s and 70s, these remarkable works redrew the map of modern science fiction. In such visionary masterworks as the Nebula and Hugo Award winners The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Le Guin imagined a galactic confederation of human colonies founded by the planet Hain—an array of worlds whose divergent societies were the result of both evolution and genetic engineering.
Le Guin first conceived her League of All Worlds in three early novels of daring inventiveness. In Rocannon’s World (1966), Hainish scientist Gaverel Rocannon ventures to an unnamed planet to conduct a peaceful ethnological survey only to discover a secret outpost of the League’s deadly enemy. In Planet of Exile (1966), the fate of colonists from Earth stranded on distant Werel depends on working together with the planet’s indigenous peoples if they are to survive the oncoming fifteen-year winter. City of Illusions (1967), set far in the future on a sparsely populated Earth that has lost contact with all other planets and is ruled by the mysterious, mind-lying Shing, turns on the appearance of an amnesiac with yellow eyes who may hold the key to humanity’s freedom.
In The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) Earth-born Genly Ai travels to wintery Gethen to convince its nations to join the Ekumen, the confederation of known worlds. To do so he must navigate the subtleties of politics and culture on a planet populated by an ambisexual people who have never known war. The Dispossessed (1974), a philosophical adventure story in which a physicist strives to complete a theory of simultaneity that will for the first time allow instantaneous communication between all the planets of humanity, is set against the backdrop of Le Guin’s richly textured vision of what an anarchist society might look like in practice.
The Word for World Is Forest (1972), is set on the colony planet of Athshe, where Terrans have arrived to strip its rich natural forests for a depleted Earth. To do so, they enslave the peaceable indigenous population, until the Athsheans rise up in a desperate act of defiance that will leave them and their planet forever changed.
Five Ways to Forgiveness presents for the first time the complete story suite previously published as Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995). These five linked stories tell the history of the planet Werel and its slave planet Yeowe as their peoples, long known as “owners” and “assets,” together face an uncertain revolutionary future.
In The Telling (2000), Sutty, an observer of the interplanetary confederation known as the Ekumen, has been sent to Aka to investigate why the planet has almost entirely lost its vital oral traditions and spiritual beliefs in the span of a single generation. Sutty’s quest for traces of Aka’s original religion causes her to reexamine her own childhood growing up amidst a repressive religious regime on Earth.
Also included are eleven short stories, eight essays (including the provocative “On Not Reading Science Fiction”), and the surprising original 1969 version of the story “Winter’s King.” The endpapers have a map of Gethen colorized from a drawing by Le Guin herself and a planetary chart of the known worlds of the Hainish descent.
Brian Attebery, editor, is professor of English at Idaho State University and the editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He edited The Norton Book of Science Fiction (1997) with Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler and is the author of Stories About Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth (2014) and Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (2002), among other books.
Le Guin first conceived her League of All Worlds in three early novels of daring inventiveness. In Rocannon’s World (1966), Hainish scientist Gaverel Rocannon ventures to an unnamed planet to conduct a peaceful ethnological survey only to discover a secret outpost of the League’s deadly enemy. In Planet of Exile (1966), the fate of colonists from Earth stranded on distant Werel depends on working together with the planet’s indigenous peoples if they are to survive the oncoming fifteen-year winter. City of Illusions (1967), set far in the future on a sparsely populated Earth that has lost contact with all other planets and is ruled by the mysterious, mind-lying Shing, turns on the appearance of an amnesiac with yellow eyes who may hold the key to humanity’s freedom.
In The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) Earth-born Genly Ai travels to wintery Gethen to convince its nations to join the Ekumen, the confederation of known worlds. To do so he must navigate the subtleties of politics and culture on a planet populated by an ambisexual people who have never known war. The Dispossessed (1974), a philosophical adventure story in which a physicist strives to complete a theory of simultaneity that will for the first time allow instantaneous communication between all the planets of humanity, is set against the backdrop of Le Guin’s richly textured vision of what an anarchist society might look like in practice.
The Word for World Is Forest (1972), is set on the colony planet of Athshe, where Terrans have arrived to strip its rich natural forests for a depleted Earth. To do so, they enslave the peaceable indigenous population, until the Athsheans rise up in a desperate act of defiance that will leave them and their planet forever changed.
Five Ways to Forgiveness presents for the first time the complete story suite previously published as Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995). These five linked stories tell the history of the planet Werel and its slave planet Yeowe as their peoples, long known as “owners” and “assets,” together face an uncertain revolutionary future.
In The Telling (2000), Sutty, an observer of the interplanetary confederation known as the Ekumen, has been sent to Aka to investigate why the planet has almost entirely lost its vital oral traditions and spiritual beliefs in the span of a single generation. Sutty’s quest for traces of Aka’s original religion causes her to reexamine her own childhood growing up amidst a repressive religious regime on Earth.
Also included are eleven short stories, eight essays (including the provocative “On Not Reading Science Fiction”), and the surprising original 1969 version of the story “Winter’s King.” The endpapers have a map of Gethen colorized from a drawing by Le Guin herself and a planetary chart of the known worlds of the Hainish descent.
Brian Attebery, editor, is professor of English at Idaho State University and the editor of Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. He edited The Norton Book of Science Fiction (1997) with Ursula K. Le Guin and Karen Joy Fowler and is the author of Stories About Stories: Fantasy and the Remaking of Myth (2014) and Decoding Gender in Science Fiction (2002), among other books.
1931 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
37 people are currently reading
753 people want to read
About the author
Ursula K. Le Guin
1,045 books30.4k followersUrsula 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
on-hiatus
August 28, 2017This is a two-volume set of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish stories that I was lucky enough to be sent by a publicist (in hardback, yet!). It looks amazing! Publication date is Sept. 5, 2017.
I've only read a couple of Le Guin's novels before (The Word for World is Forest and the classic The Left Hand of Darkness), and both were longer ago than I care to tell. So I'm slowly working my way through this collection, which is going to take a while, because 2000! pages! Le Guin is a intelligent, thoughtful writer of SF with a dash of the mythic and fantastical. It's on the retro SF side of things, at least so far, which is understandable, since these first novels were published in the 1960's.
Off we go! I've read the first novel so far, Rocannon's World.
I've only read a couple of Le Guin's novels before (The Word for World is Forest and the classic The Left Hand of Darkness), and both were longer ago than I care to tell. So I'm slowly working my way through this collection, which is going to take a while, because 2000! pages! Le Guin is a intelligent, thoughtful writer of SF with a dash of the mythic and fantastical. It's on the retro SF side of things, at least so far, which is understandable, since these first novels were published in the 1960's.
Off we go! I've read the first novel so far, Rocannon's World.
October 9, 2020
Almost done with the last book, The Telling. 2,000 some pages of some of the best science fiction I've ever read. I had read The Dispossessed a couple of times before, and the Left Hand of Darkness, Rocannon's World but the other ones were new to me and re-reading this stuff is a pleasure. I love how the different planets have totally different social structures, nonbinary biology - one planet the people on it aren't male or female all the time, their gender changes from month to month. Another world the marriages are between 8 different people. It was interesting to read the author's notes, especially how in earlier books have humans learning psychic abilities but later books don't mention it. The shorter stories go into more detail on the various worlds and their ways. I'm going to be a little sad when I'm all done probably tonight but these two volumes are gorgeous hardcover, cloth bindings with a nice ribbon bookmark that will sit in an honored spot on my bookshelf for years to come.
April 30, 2019
It took a little over a year, but I did it. I read all of the Hanish Novels and stories. I am convinced Ursula Le Guin cannot write a bad story. They weren't all on the same level, but every single one gave me something to think about, or presented an idea in a way I had never seen before. Amazing.
Want to read
August 9, 2017think i've read most of these already but a rereading binge over winter break would not go amiss
July 26, 2017
I can't add anything more to praise for Ursula K. Le Guin that zillions of other folks have not already said.
OK, fine. Here goes. The Library Collection's Brian Attebery has collected all of her Hainish novels and stories into a huge mega-collection. You need to get it.
If you've never owned any Ursula Le Guin, with this collection you can own TONS of Ursula Le Guin.
This is both for the Le Guin completist, and it's also for the fan who's heard of Le Guin but never given her a shot. Or given her one shot. In my case that was "Lathe of Heaven," and now I need more of her stuff.
This collection has that. Lots of that.
It contains her Hainish series, a future history with a confederacy of worlds, where humanity was founded on the planet Hain. The first three novels of the cycle are included, as is "Left Hand of Darkness," "The Dispossessed," "The Word for World Is Forest," "Five Ways to Forgiveness," and more. Lots more.
This could replace a bunch of dusty paperbacks. Or it could look pretty on a shelf next to them. Your choice.
(Review from an advance copy of the collection.)
OK, fine. Here goes. The Library Collection's Brian Attebery has collected all of her Hainish novels and stories into a huge mega-collection. You need to get it.
If you've never owned any Ursula Le Guin, with this collection you can own TONS of Ursula Le Guin.
This is both for the Le Guin completist, and it's also for the fan who's heard of Le Guin but never given her a shot. Or given her one shot. In my case that was "Lathe of Heaven," and now I need more of her stuff.
This collection has that. Lots of that.
It contains her Hainish series, a future history with a confederacy of worlds, where humanity was founded on the planet Hain. The first three novels of the cycle are included, as is "Left Hand of Darkness," "The Dispossessed," "The Word for World Is Forest," "Five Ways to Forgiveness," and more. Lots more.
This could replace a bunch of dusty paperbacks. Or it could look pretty on a shelf next to them. Your choice.
(Review from an advance copy of the collection.)
Want to read
September 7, 2017Author's new introduction (sample), https://www.tor.com/2017/08/30/introd...
"In many of my science fiction stories, the peoples on the various worlds all descend from long-ago colonists from a world called Hain. So these fictions came to be called “Hainish.” But I flinch when they’re called “The Hainish Cycle” or any such term that implies they are set in a coherent fictional universe with a well-planned history, because they aren’t, it isn’t, it hasn’t. I’d rather admit its inconsistencies than pretend it’s a respectable Future History.
Methodical cosmos-makers make plans and charts and maps and timelines early in the whole process. I failed to do this. Any timeline for the books of the Hainish descent would resemble the web of a spider on LSD. ...
.
.
.
The first three novels in this volume were published by Donald A. Wollheim, the tough, reliable editor of Ace Books, in the Late Pulpalignean Era, 1966 and ’67. The first two, Rocannon’s World and Planet of Exile, came out as Ace Doubles: two short novels by two different authors in one paperback cover, like two trains running towards each other on one track. ..."
I had a copy of that double! I think it fell apart, dammit. See my reviews, at an earlier omnibus?
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Very entertaining intro. Read the whole thing. Gosh, TWO Le Guin LOA omnibuses! On the library list, once their copies arrive...
"In many of my science fiction stories, the peoples on the various worlds all descend from long-ago colonists from a world called Hain. So these fictions came to be called “Hainish.” But I flinch when they’re called “The Hainish Cycle” or any such term that implies they are set in a coherent fictional universe with a well-planned history, because they aren’t, it isn’t, it hasn’t. I’d rather admit its inconsistencies than pretend it’s a respectable Future History.
Methodical cosmos-makers make plans and charts and maps and timelines early in the whole process. I failed to do this. Any timeline for the books of the Hainish descent would resemble the web of a spider on LSD. ...
.
.
.
The first three novels in this volume were published by Donald A. Wollheim, the tough, reliable editor of Ace Books, in the Late Pulpalignean Era, 1966 and ’67. The first two, Rocannon’s World and Planet of Exile, came out as Ace Doubles: two short novels by two different authors in one paperback cover, like two trains running towards each other on one track. ..."
I had a copy of that double! I think it fell apart, dammit. See my reviews, at an earlier omnibus?
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Very entertaining intro. Read the whole thing. Gosh, TWO Le Guin LOA omnibuses! On the library list, once their copies arrive...
December 18, 2023
Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish novels and stories were written over a period of more than thirty years, in two main chunks. Their presentation in these beautiful Library of America editions does not quite split them into these eras, and so the contrast between them is muddled somewhat. That muddling works, though. If one takes the planet Gethen, also known as Winter, as an example, it is possible to see how Le Guin's priorities and values changed over the years and decades as the world around her changed. Here, we can read the original version of "Winter's King", the first story set on Gethen, as well as the iconic The Left Hand of Darkness, how "Winter's king" was edited in light of that story, and Le Guin's return to Gethen after twenty-five years in "Coming of Age in Karhide". The first two stories concern politics and adventure as well as gender and science fictional ideas, while the latter is about exploring social customs and the bodily experience of being Gethenian.
Le Guin was an author who considered her work with seriousness, assessing its shortcomings sometimes more harshly than she should. Including her own introductions to her works, as well as other essays about them, and new introductions for this volume, places the work in context and allows us to see her reflective side. If there's an omission that I know of, it's the fortieth anniversary edition introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, but the material provided here is extensive and excellent. (Part of me would have also liked to see "Semley's Necklace" separate to Rocannon's World, but that would be repetitive).
It's true that the earliest works are less good than the later ones, but there is value to everything Le Guin wrote. From The Left Hand of Darkness onward, I'm not sure there's anything that isn't wonderful here, even if I have my favourites. This time around, "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" struck me as particularly excellent for personal reasons, while "The Matter of Seggri" is a fantastic work of fictional history that I particularly liked. I strongly recommend a trip through the Ekumen as a whole.
Le Guin was an author who considered her work with seriousness, assessing its shortcomings sometimes more harshly than she should. Including her own introductions to her works, as well as other essays about them, and new introductions for this volume, places the work in context and allows us to see her reflective side. If there's an omission that I know of, it's the fortieth anniversary edition introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness, but the material provided here is extensive and excellent. (Part of me would have also liked to see "Semley's Necklace" separate to Rocannon's World, but that would be repetitive).
It's true that the earliest works are less good than the later ones, but there is value to everything Le Guin wrote. From The Left Hand of Darkness onward, I'm not sure there's anything that isn't wonderful here, even if I have my favourites. This time around, "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" struck me as particularly excellent for personal reasons, while "The Matter of Seggri" is a fantastic work of fictional history that I particularly liked. I strongly recommend a trip through the Ekumen as a whole.
December 2, 2020
A one stop introduction to this series of books. I have more to say about them than I have time to do so right now.
August 14, 2021
Fantastic. A collector's dream. I particularly like the chronology of Le Guin's life.
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July 30, 2022Ursula Le Guin making jokes about tentacle sex? What an icon
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews