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TheHainish Cycle consists of a number ofscience fiction novels and stories byUrsula K. Le Guin. It is set in afuture history in which civilizations of human beings on planets orbiting a number of nearby stars, includingTerra ("Earth"), are contacting each other for the first time and establishing diplomatic relations, and setting up a confederacy under the guidance of the oldest of the human worlds, peaceful Hain. In this history, human beings did not evolve on Earth but were the result of interstellar colonies planted by Hain long ago, which was followed by a long period when interstellar travel ceased. Some of the races have new genetic traits, a result of ancient Hainish experiments in genetic engineering, including people who can dream while awake, and a world ofhermaphroditic people who only come into active sexuality once a month, not knowing whichsex will manifest in them. In keeping with Le Guin's style, she uses varied social and environmental settings to explore theanthropological andsociological outcomes of human evolution in those diverse environments.
The Hainish novelsThe Left Hand of Darkness (1969) andThe Dispossessed (1974) have won literary awards, as have the novellaThe Word for World Is Forest (1972) and the short stories "The Day Before the Revolution" (1974) and "The Matter of Seggri" (1994).
Le Guin herself often discounted the characterization of a "Hainish Cycle", writing on her website that "The thing is, they aren't a cycle or a saga. They do not form a coherent history. There are some clear connections among them, yes, but also some extremely murky ones."[1][2]
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In the first three novels—Rocannon's World (1966),Planet of Exile (1966), andCity of Illusions (1967)—there is a League of All Worlds; byCity of Illusions, the League seems[weasel words] to have been conquered or fragmented by an alien race, the Shing, from beyond the League.[according to whom?] In the fourth,The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), it seems[weasel words] that the planets of the former League have reunited as theEkumen, which was founded by the Hainish people.[according to whom?] The fifth,The Word for World Is Forest (1972), part of the anthologyAgain, Dangerous Visions (and only published as a separate book in 1976) is set before any of the first four books, and in it the League of All Worlds and theansible are new, and the term "Ekumen" is not used.[according to whom?] The sixth,The Dispossessed (1974), is the earliest Hainish novel, chronologically;[according to whom?] in it, the Cetians have been visited by people from other planets, including Terra (Earth) and Hain, and while the various planets are separate, there is some talk of a union (and the ansible concept is known, but none yet exist).[citation needed] The seventh and final novel,The Telling (2000), and the later short stories[clarification needed] only speak of the Ekumen—which now includes the Gethenians, who were the subject ofThe Left Hand of Darkness—and not of the League.[citation needed]
Le Guin offers the following thoughts on the order in which readers should approach the series:[3]
Rocannon's World,Planet of Exile,City of Illusions: where they fit in the "Hainish cycle" is anybody’s guess, but I’d read them first because they were written first. In them there is a "League of Worlds," but the Ekumen does not yet exist. / Then you could readThe Word for World is Forest,The Left Hand of Darkness, [and]The Dispossessed, in any order. InDispossessed, the ansible gets invented; but they’re using it inLeft Hand, which was written fifteen years earlier. Please do not try to explain this to me. I will not understand. / Then in the collection of storiesA Fisherman of the Inland Sea, the three last stories are Ekumenical, and we even finally find out a little about Hain, where it all began. The story suiteFour Ways to Forgiveness is part of that universe, and so is the novelThe Telling. But I have to warn you that the planet Werel inFour Ways is not the planet Werel inPlanet of Exile. In between novels, I forget planets. Sorry. /The Eye of the Heron may or may not be set in the Hainish universe; it really doesn’t matter. As forThe Lathe of Heaven andAlways Coming Home, my Terran science fiction novels, they definitely don’t exist in the same universe as the Hainish or Ekumenical books.[3]
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Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the people of Hain colonized a large number of worlds, includingEarth, known as Terra. Most of these were similar enough that humans from one world can pass as natives of another, but on some the old Hainish 'colonisers' usedgenetic engineering. At least one of the various species ofRocannon's World are the product of genetic engineering, as are the "hilfs" ("highly intelligent life forms")[4] of Planet S[5](whose story has not been told), and probably the androgynous humans of Gethen inThe Left Hand of Darkness. The Ekumen do not know whether the colonisers sought to adapt humans to varied worlds, were conducting various experiments, or had other reasons.
Hainish civilization subsequently collapsed, and the colony planets (including Earth) forgot that other human worlds existed. The Ekumen stories tell of the efforts to re-establish a civilization on a galactic scale through NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light)interstellar travel taking years to travel between stars (although only weeks or months from the viewpoint of the traveler because oftime dilation), and through instantaneous interstellar communication using theansible.
This seems to have happened in two phases: First, the League of All Worlds was formed, as an alliance of planets, mostly descended from colonization efforts from the planet Hain, uniting the "nine known worlds"[6] — presumably along with new colonies. By the time ofRocannon's World it has grown but is also under threat from a distant enemy. InCity of Illusions it is recalled as having been a league of some 80 worlds at the time it was destroyed by aliens called the Shing, who are uniquely able to lie in mindspeech. After the apparent overthrow of the Shing by the descendants of marooned Terrans and the inhabitants of Alterra / Werel who have succeeded in interbreeding (as related inPlanet of Exile) and are capable of detecting Shing lies, the alliance is eventually reconstructed.
A second phase begins withThe Left Hand of Darkness. The 80 plus planets seem to have reunited as theEkumen – a name derived from theGreek "oikoumene", meaning "the inhabited world", although characters occasionally refer to it as "the Household",[7] which is in turn a reference to the Greek "oikos", a word which developed from the same root as "oikoumene". Unexplained references are made by the protagonist from Terra inThe Left Hand of Darkness to a long-past "Age of the Enemy", which presumably refers to the time that the Shing controlled Terra, portrayed inCity of Illusions.
The Ekumen (or the League of All Worlds, though that is also believed to be the previous planetary coalition, before some sort of galactic crisis) contains a very large number of planets and is continually exploring new ones. Genly Ai inThe Left Hand of Darkness explains that there are 83 planets in the Ekumen, with Gethen a candidate for becoming the 84th. The process of reaching out to potential civilizations is a tedious and sometimes dangerous one.
Societies tend to use sophisticated but unobtrusive technologies. Most notable is theansible, an instant-communication device that keeps worlds in touch with each other.
Physical communication is by NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light) ships. The physics is never explained; the ship vanishes from where it was and reappears somewhere else many years later.[8] The trip takes slightly longer than it would to cross the same distance at the speed of light, but ship-time is just a few hours for those on board. It cannot be used for trips within a solar system.[7] Trips can begin or end close to a planet, but if used without a "retemporalizer", there are drastic physical effects at the end of long trips, at least according to the Shing, whose information may be suspect.[9] It is also lethal if the traveler is pregnant.[10]
City of Illusions mentions automatic death-machines that work on the same principle as the ansible and can strike instantly at distant worlds. Such a device is clearly used in the events ofRocannon's World. The weapons are not mentioned again in later books.
Churten theory, as developed by the physicists of Anarres, should allow people to go instantly from solar system to solar system. It is a development of the work of Shevek, whose tale is told inThe Dispossessed. Shevek's work made the ansible possible—it is mentioned in his tale that engineers decided they could build it once the correct theory was found. Churten theory offers a way to move people and spacecraft instantaneously, but there are side effects. These are described in three short stories, "The Shobies' Story," "Dancing to Ganam", and "Another Story, or, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," all collected inA Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994).
The ansible has been adopted by other science fiction and fantasy authors, such asOrson Scott Card,[11]Elizabeth Moon,[12] andVernor Vinge.[13]
The ideas ofpost-technological societies and social andecological collapse are in several of the stories. These are portrayed as the end result of the wrong kind of civilizations, i.e.,competitive,capitalist,patriarchal, "dynamic, aggressive, ecology-breaking cultures," while successful societies are close to the land, peaceful, non-authoritarian, non-competitive, static,communitarian, with theholistic outlook ofEastern religions. The Earth, called "Terra" in the Cycle, is mentioned as one of the failed civilizations.
Most of the people in the tales have a common descent from the planet Hain, whose people settled many worlds. Some of them are genetically similar enough to produce children together. The unusual hairiness of the Cetians is mentioned inThe Word for World Is Forest andThe Dispossessed.The Telling includes the detail that the people of Chiffewar are all bald.
There are some cases of ancient biological manipulation:
| Title | Date | Publisher | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rocannon's World | 1966 | Ace Books | |
| Planet of Exile | 1966 | Ace Books | |
| City of Illusions | 1967 | Ace Books | |
| The Left Hand of Darkness | 1969 | Ace Books | Nebula Award winner, 1969;[15] Hugo Award winner, 1970[16] |
| The Word for World is Forest | 1972 (anthology); 1976 (book) | Doubleday;Berkley/Putnam | Hugo Award winner for Best Novella, 1973;[17] Nebula Award nominee for Best Novella, 1973;[17] Locus Award nominee for Best Novella, 1973[17] |
| The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia | 1974 | Harper & Row | Hugo Award winner, 1975;[18] Nebula Award winner, 1974;[19] Locus Award winner for Best SF Novel, 1975[18] |
| Three Hainish Novels | 1978 | Nelson Doubleday | Omnibus ofRocannon's World,Planet of Exile andCity of Illusions; republished in 1996 asWorlds of Exile and Illusion |
| Five Complete Novels | 1985 | Avenel Books | Omnibus ofRocannon's World,Planet of Exile,City of Illusions,The Left Hand of Darkness andThe Word for World is Forest |
| Four Ways to Forgiveness | 1995 | HarperCollins | Prometheus award nominated, 1996[20] |
| The Telling | 2000 | Harcourt Brace & Company | Locus SF Award winner, 2001;[21]Endeavour Award winner[22] |
| The Hainish Novels & Stories | 2017 | Library of America | Collection of all Hainish novels and stories in two volumes. |
| Five Ways to Forgiveness | 2017 | Library of America | Collection of the four stories inFour Ways to Forgiveness with the addition of the story "Old Music and the Slave Women" |
| Title | Date | Original Publication | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| "The Dowry of Angyar" | 1964 | Amazing Stories September 1964 | appears as "Semley's Necklace" inThe Wind's Twelve Quarters; also used as the first chapter ofRocannon's World, where it is titled "Prologue: The Necklace". |
| "Winter's King" | 1969 | Orbit 5[23] | collected inThe Wind's Twelve Quarters |
| "Vaster than Empires and More Slow" | 1971 | New Dimensions 1: Fourteen Original Science Fiction Stories | collected inThe Wind's Twelve Quarters, andThe Found and the Lost |
| "The Day Before the Revolution" | 1974 | Galaxy Science Fiction August 1974 | collected inThe Wind's Twelve Quarters; winner of theNebula Award[24] andLocus Award[25] |
| "The Shobies' Story" | 1990 | Universe 1[26] | collected inA Fisherman of the Inland Sea |
| "Dancing to Ganam" | 1993 | Amazing StoriesSeptember 1993 | collected inA Fisherman of the Inland Sea |
| "Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea" | 1994 | Harper Prism | collected inA Fisherman of the Inland Sea, andThe Found and the Lost |
| "The Matter of Seggri" | 1994 | Crank! #3, Spring 1994[27] | collected inThe Birthday of the World, andThe Found and the Lost; winner of theJames Tiptree Jr. Award, 1995[17] |
| "Unchosen Love" | 1994 | Amazing Stories Fall 1994 | collected inThe Birthday of the World |
| "Solitude" | 1994 | The Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionDecember 1994 | collected inThe Birthday of the World; winner of the Nebula Award, 1996 |
| "Coming of Age in Karhide" | 1995 | New Legends[28] | collected inThe Birthday of the World |
| "Mountain Ways" | 1996 | Asimov's Science Fiction August 1996 | collected inThe Birthday of the World; winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award |
| "Old Music and the Slave Women" | 1999 | Far Horizons 1999 | collected inThe Birthday of the World, The Found and the Lost, andFive Ways to Forgiveness |
What matters is we built the ansible. The official name isPhilotic Parallax Instantaneous Communicator, but somebody dredged the name ansible out of an old book somewhere and it caught on.
...when I was commissioned, we didn't have FTL communications except from planetary platforms. I was onBoarhound when they mounted the first shipboard ansible, and at first it was only one-way, from the planet to us.
'It's an ansible.' 'Surely they don't call it that!' 'No. But that's what it is.'