Do You Need to Read Hanish Cycle in Order

March 10, 2022 Post a Comment

Ursula K. Le Guin left us with a wealth of stories and universes, but my favorite might exist her Hainish bike. I recently read, or re-read, every single novel and brusque story in the Hainish universe from showtime to end, and the whole of this story-wheel turned out to be much more meaningful than its separate parts.

Some vague and/or small spoilers ahead…

The Hainish Cycle spans decades of Le Guin'south career, starting with Rocannon's World (1966) and ending with The Telling (2000). In betwixt are laurels-winning masterworks similar The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Discussion for World is Forest, and Four Ways to Forgiveness. And the Library of America has put out a gorgeous two-volume set collecting every single piece of narrative Le Guin published involving Hain and the Ekumen. As with her other famous setting, Earthsea, this is a earth to which Le Guin returned in the 1990s after a long hiatus, and it'southward a much richer and more complex globe in the later tales.

(And it's also very clear, that as Le Guin herself has admitted, there is zero continuity between these books and stories. Anyone who tried to assemble a coherent timeline of the Ekumen or Hain might equally well give up and become effort to explain how all the Ten-Men movies have place in the same universe, instead.)

In the three early on novels (Rocannon'south World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions), Le Guin's star-spanning advanced society isn't fifty-fifty called the Ekumen—instead, information technology's the League of All Worlds, and it's at war with some mysterious enemy that's every bit avant-garde. (Nosotros only really glimpse this enemy when nosotros see the nefarious Shing in City of Illusions, who have taken over a post-apocalyptic Earth and are somehow involved in the war confronting the League.

At first, the League or Ekumen simply appears as a backdrop, barely glimpsed off in the altitude, which sends an advanced observer to a more than archaic planet. In one of the subsequently stories, Le Guin has someone remark that Ekumen observers "oft get native" on primitive worlds, and this is a huge business in the early on Hainish novels.

Rocannon, the hero of Rocannon's World, is alone on a planet of barbarians and flight cats, and he wears a total-trunk protective garment called an Impermasuit that literally protects him from touching anyone or existence as well affected by his surroundings. Meanwhile, Jakob Agat, the hero of Planet of Exile, hooks upwardly with a immature native girl, Rolery, whom his comrades view as a primitive native, and the question of whether they can really interbreed becomes crucial to the novel's story. In Urban center of Illusions, Falk actually has gone native, until something besides spoilery to reveal happens.

When you read those 3 novels correct before The Left Hand of Darkness, the story of Genly Ai alone amongst the mostly genderless Gethenians (whom he fails spectacularly to understand) takes on a different experience. Where previously I ever saw Genly as the ultimate outsider, visiting a world where his gender and sexuality are alien to anybody else, I now saw him as but another in a long line of advanced visitors who are struggling against the temptation of assimilation with less-advanced people.

Another recurring concern becomes very apparent when you read all of the Hainish stories together: modernity, and its discontents. The barbarians in Planet of Exile are nether threat by a northern group called the Gaal, which had previously wandered south for the winter in disorganized, relatively harmless groups. But now a new leader has organized the Gaal into one nation—much like the King-Beyond-the-Wall Mance Rayder in George R.R. Martin'southward A Song of Ice and Fire—and they're marching south as an organized army. This is a world that has never known armies, or nation-states, and nobody except the scattering of alien visitors knows what to exercise most information technology. (And it's hinted the Gaal may accept gotten the thought, in office, from watching the alien exiles from the League of Worlds.)

Similarly, in The Left Hand of Darkness, the planet Gethen has never had a war, and though it has nations, the modern nation-state is a relatively new innovation. Orgoreyn is marching into a future of patriotism and becoming a land with territorial ambitions, and in their neighboring country, Karhide, merely Estraven is astute plenty to come across where this is going to lead. So, in The Telling, the planet of Aka has become a modern nation-land almost overnight, under the rule of a blandly sinister Corporation, and this is explicitly the mistake of some Terrans who came and meddled.

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The worldbuilding in these books also becomes much more complex and layered starting with Left Hand of Darkness. Where we get hints and glimpses of strange community and odd worldviews in the first three books, like the natives in Planet of Exile having a taboo on making heart contact, we all of a sudden get a much fuller understanding of the fabrics of the societies Le Guin creates. And I establish my reading slowing down, considering virtually every paragraph contained some nugget of wisdom or some beautifully observed emotional moment that I had to intermission and appreciate more than fully. The beginning few books are cracking adventures, just everything later that is a mind-expanding journey.

Another interesting thing: the famously intense winter crossing that Genly and Estraven take in The Left Manus of Darkness as well shows upwards in Rocannon'due south World and Planet of Exile, though in neither volume is it as well-drawn or epic. (And of class, Rocannon has his Impermasuit to keep him from getting too chilly.) There'south also another long slog through a frozen landscape in The Telling, but information technology's much gentler and more well-planned, as if Le Guin finally decided to let her characters to enjoy a winter trek instead of suffering through one.

And notably, there are few women in the earlier stories, and the ones that do testify up are hard done by. (This time around, I found myself wishing more than ever that nosotros'd gotten to see more than of Takver and her journey in The Dispossessed.)

Le Guin inverse her listen about some aspects of the Hainish universe as she went. For example, in the early on novels, including Left Manus, some people accept a telepathic ability known as Mindspeech, just following Left Manus, she decided to get rid of it, and it's never mentioned again. (Mindspeech would have come in very handy in Five Means to Forgiveness and The Telling.) Also, it's a major plot betoken in the early on novels that uncrewed ships can travel at faster-than-light speeds, but crewed ones cannot…so people are able to burn missiles from across the milky way and have them hit their targets almost instantly. This stops beingness true sometime in the mid-1970s.

But more importantly, the Ekumen stops beingness quite so hands-off. In the early on Hainish novels, Le Guin makes much of the Law of Cultural Embargo, which is basically the same equally Star Trek's Prime Directive. (Except she got there start.) The travelers who visit archaic worlds are very careful to avoid sharing as well much technology, or even much noesis of the rest of the universe. But by the fourth dimension The Telling rolls around, we're told that the Ekumen has an explicit rule, or ethos, that its people will share information with anyone who wants information technology.

It'south no coincidence that the Ekumen becomes much more explicitly a strength for good, and an interventionist one at that. Nosotros first see the Ekumen making a real difference in The Give-and-take for Earth is Forest, where its representatives show up and basically make the Terrans stop exploiting the native "Creechers" on the planet Athshe as slave labor. (And the Ansible, which we run into Shevek invent in The Dispossessed, makes a huge difference. The Terran colonizers oasis't been able to communicate in real time with habitation, until they're given an Ansible.)

And then, in Five Ways and The Telling, the Ekumen's representatives are suddenly willing to brand all kinds of trouble. In V Ways, the ambassador known equally Erstwhile Music helps slaves escape from the oppressive planet Werel to the neighboring Yeowe, where slaves have led a successful uprising. And in ane story included in Forgiveness, "A Human being of the People," Havzhiva uses his influence in various subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways to push the ex-slaves on Yeowe to abandon their patriarchal mindset and grant women equal rights. In The Telling, Sutty and her boss, Tong Ov, conspire quietly to preserve the native culture of Aka, which is in danger of being destroyed altogether by the Terran-influenced ruling Corporation.

I mentioned that humans can't travel faster than lite in these stories…except that in a cluster of stories that were mostly collected in the book A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, in that location'due south an experimental technology called Churtening. Information technology's more than or less the same as "tessering" in A Wrinkle in Fourth dimension, except that there'south a spiritual dimension to information technology, and you can't really Churten unless your entire group is in harmony with each other. And when you go far instantaneously at your far-off destination, reality is liable to exist a bit wobbly and unmoored, and unlike people may experience the visit very differently.

The Left Hand of Darkness is Le Guin'south most famous experiment with destabilizing gender: a whole world of people who are gender-neutral most of the fourth dimension, except when they go into "kemmer," a kind of estrus in which they become either male or female for a while. Only in these after stories, in that location are more than gender experiments, which are merely as provocative and mayhap more than subtle. In "The Affair of Seggri," in that location'due south a globe where women massively outnumber men, who are kept locked up in castles and forced to compete for the honor of serving in brothels where the women pay them for sexual activity.

As well, at that place'southward "Solitude," which takes place on a planet where women live alone simply together, in communities chosen Auntrings, and the men live outside the community, though some "settled men" also alive together—and as on Seggri, the women initiate sex. And "In a Fisherman of the Inland Sea," there's the iv-way marital institution of Sedoteru, in which a couple of Morning people marries a couple of Evening people, and homosexuality is strongly encouraged—but honey among two Morning people or two Evening people is a huge taboo.

Some other interesting motif in these books is unresolved sexual tension; plus sexual agency, and who has it, and why it matters. In the early books, Le Guin matter-of-factly has teenage girls shacking upwardly with much older men, and nobody seems to find this unusual. But then in Left Mitt of Darkness, there are multiple situations where choosing non to give in to sexual temptation is clearly the right (but difficult) choice. Estraven is tempted while in kemmer, kickoff past a sleazy authorities operative in Orgoreyn, and and so past Genly Ai. And Genly, meanwhile, gets trapped with another person in kemmer. (And when you read the short story "Coming of Age in Karhide," the intensity of desire in kemmer, and the danger of giving in to the wrong person, is underscored.)

And then in the later stories, we find out that people from Hain can control their fertility, and this gives them a whole other layer of sexual agency that nobody possessed in the earlier books. In "Seggri" and "Confinement," every bit mentioned before, women take all the sexual power. In "A Fisherman of the Inland Bounding main," Le Guin finds the one way to write a forbidden sexual attraction in her order. It takes until Five Ways to Forgiveness that Le Guin actually starts writing straight-up romances, which follow the normal trajectory of virtually romance novels, in which people learn to understand each other and grade romantic and sexual partnerships based on respect—and it's delightful, even against this horrendous backdrop of slavery and exploitation.

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Later Le Guin is too much dirtier and queerer than earlier Le Guin—and more frank when discussing sexuality compared with all those offhand references to "coupling" in The Dispossessed. Also, her older women characters are of a sudden immune to accept a healthy sexuality (and fifty-fifty to hook up with much younger partners, though not bodily teenagers this time.)

Two of my favorite moments in these stories come up when someone holds a babe. In The Dispossessed, Bedap holds Shevek and Takver'southward newborn child and suddenly has an epiphany well-nigh why people can exist cruel to vulnerable people—but also, conversely, near the nature of parental feelings (like protectiveness). And then in "Old Music and the Slave Women," Old Music holds a child born to slaves, who is slowly dying of a totally curable disease, and in that location'south so much tenderness and rage and wonder and sadness in that moment.

The Word for World is Forest is the commencement fourth dimension we kickoff to go a glimpse of the Ekumen as a functioning order, rather than but someplace that people come up from. But starting in the 1990s, Le Guin really starts to develop the Ekumen as a mixing of cultures: a humming, noisy, vibrant social club. We really get to visit Hain, the place where all of humanity, all over the galaxy, came from originally. And all of a sudden, the Gethenians from Left Paw of Darkness and the Annaresti from The Dispossessed are just hanging out with everyone else (though I'm not sure if it'southward explained how the Gethenians bargain with going into kemmer, then far from home.)

The Ekumen has its own political divisions and debates, as it tries to figure out how to engage with the slave-owning culture of Werel, an Earth overrun by religious fundamentalists, and the corporate dystopia of Aka. And even though the Ekumen always seems wiser and more patient than other societies, its representatives are allowed to have differences of opinion, and to argue amongst themselves and make things up as they go along.

The Telling feels like a plumbing equipment climax to the Hainish bike, in many ways. The running themes of spirituality and community get their fullest caption in this book, where a Terran named Sutty strives to explore a quasi-monastic storytelling culture that is in danger of extinction. In City of Exile, but reading the opening lines of the Dao De Jing has miraculous mind-rescuing powers, and Genly and Estraven discuss the yin/yang symbol, but the Eastern-influenced spirituality feels both subtler and richer in The Telling. Moreover, Le Guin's interstellar guild feels fully to have come into its ain, both as a polity and as a force for good.

I haven't said as much nearly The Dispossessed, partly because it feels very different than all the other Hainish stories, with its story of a physicist from a world of anarchists visiting a backer planet. The Ekumen feels less similar a crucial presence in The Dispossessed than in all the other stories—but The Dispossessed remains my favorite Le Guin novel, and I keep to go more out of it every time I re-read information technology.

When read and considered as a whole, Le Guin'due south Hainish Bicycle feels like an even more impressive accomplishment than its stellar individual works. Not because of any internal consistency, or an over-arching storyline—you'll have to look elsewhere for those things—but considering of how far she takes the notion of an alliance of worlds interacting with baffling, layered, deeply complex cultures and trying to forge further connections with them. I'm barely scratching the surface here when information technology comes to all the wealth that'south contained in these books, gathered together.

These individual journeys will leave you dissimilar than you lot were before you lot embarked on them, and fully immersing yourself in the overarching journey might just leave you feeling similar the Ekumen is a real entity—ane to which we would all badly similar to use for membership correct about now.

Charlie Jane Anders' latest novel isThe City in the Middle of the Dark. She's likewise the author ofAll the Birds in the Sky, which won the Nebula, Crawford and Locus awards, andChoir Boy, which won a Lambda Literary Award. Plus a novella calledRock Manning Goes For Broke and a short story collection called Southix Months, Iii Days, Five Others. Her short fiction has appeared in Tor.com,Boston Review,Can Business firm,Conjunctions,The Magazine of Fantasy and Scientific discipline Fiction,Wired mag,Slate,Asimov's Science Fiction,Lightspeed,ZYZZYVA,Catamaran Literary Review,McSweeney'south Internet Tendency and tons of anthologies. Her story "Six Months, Three Days" won a Hugo Award, and her story "Don't Press Charges And I Won't Sue" won a Theodore Sturgeon Honour. Charlie Jane also organizes the monthly Writers With Drinks reading series, and co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correctwith Annalee Newitz.