James Nicoll Reviews

Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness is a stand-alone science fiction novel. It takes place in her larger Hainish setting.

The Ekumen spans eighty-three worlds and thousands of cultures. If First Mobile Genly Ai¹ does his job correctly and has a little luck, Gethen will be the eighty-fourth world to join the Ekumen. If Genly Ai is inept or unlucky, then the task of recruiting Gethen will fall to later envoys. The Ekumen thinks nothing of investing decades or centuries in a project.

The main problem facing Genly Ai is that while the people on Gethen are human, they differ in one significant aspect from the humans on other worlds. It’s hard for the envoy to understand them.

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Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed is a science fiction novel set in her Hainish setting.

Shevek is his generation’s most brilliant physicist. For reasons that will become clear, Shevek makes the momentous decision to pursue his research not on his native moon Anarres. Rather, he takes what he hopes is just a sabbatical in A‑Io on Urras, the world about which Anarres orbits.

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1990’s Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea is the fourth of at least six volumes in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea secondary-universe fantasy series.

As a young woman, Tenar was a priestess to the Nameless Ones. She chose to flee. Tenar was offered a place in cosmopolitan¹ Havnor. She chose backwater island Gont instead. Adopted by the old mage Ogion, Tenar was offered a chance to learn magic. She chose to marry a farmer named Flint instead².

Tenar did not choose to become a widow living alone. Time chose that for her.

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1972’s The Farthest Shore is the third novel in Ursula K. le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle.

Having survived sundry adventures as a young man, the elderly Ged is now the wizened archmage on Roke, the island of the mages. Despite being old beyond all imagining, the forty- or fifty-year-old has one final quest waiting.

A prince arrives at Roke with dire news.

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Ursula Le Guin’s 1971 The Lathe of Heaven is a standalone science fiction novel.

Despite the distractions of a polluted, overpopulated world forever on the brink of final war, Dr. William Haber does his best to diligently perform his duties. The task at hand: to assist seemingly unremarkable drug abuser George Orr deal with his crippling fear of dreams, Haber plans to use hypnotherapy and his own invention, the marvellous dream-inducing Augmenter. 

Haber soon learns that Orr is anything but unremarkable. Orr is a living wish machine, a genie in a bottle that Haber is uniquely qualified to open.

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1966’s Rocannon’s World was Ursula K. Le Guin’s debut science fiction novel. 

Semley’s world has been impoverished by taxes imposed by recent visitors from a far-off land. She is not reconciled to the loss of a family treasure, a necklace worth a kingdom. Her quest to reclaim the necklace takes her first to the dwarfish Clayfolk in their underground halls and then to the overlords who received it from the Clayfolk. The overlords kindly return her necklace. 

Had this been a fantasy novel, all might have been well. But she is a native of Fomalhaut II and she is a character in a science fiction novel. Her quest has tragic consequences.

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Ursula Le Guin’s 1972 The Word for World Is Forest takes place in her Hainish setting, during the League of Worlds period.

Three million years before the current era¹, the Hain scattered humans across a swath of near space. Now after a long hiatus, various worlds have rediscovered nearly-as-fast-as-light star travel. Earth promptly applies its new NAFAL technology to colonialist exploitation.

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1970’s The Tombs of Atuan is the second volume in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle. 

The influence of the Nameless Ones has dwindled over the long ages, but they still have power in the Tombs of Atuan. There they still are worshipped. There they are served by their immortal Priestess. 

The little girl once named Tenar is the latest incarnation of the Priestess. The bodies of the One Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan die, but the Priestess lives on, reborn in a newborn body at the time of the Priestess’ death. Stripped of her birth family and her name, the girl who was Tenar becomes Arha, ​“the eaten one,” paramount human servant of the ancient and fearsome Nameless Ones. 

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Tell me if you’ve heard this before: a young man with a talent for magic leaves his home village (where he was always something of a misfit) to attend a school for wizards, where he finds himself confronting a disembodied evil. Anyone? Anyone?

This is, of course, Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1968 award-winning classic A Wizard of Earthsea, first volume in the Earthsea Cycle.

Sparrowhawk knows just enough magic to save his village from Kargish invaders. He knows so little that his ignorance has nearly killed him. He is saved by Ogion the Silent, who then takes him as an apprentice. Ogion tries to teach him patience, humility, and mystical Balance; spells will come later. 

That’s not enough for the ambitious young magician.

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Ursula Le Guin’s 1994 novelette The Matter of Seggri won the 1994 Tiptree, an honour it shared with Nancy Springer’s Larque on the Wing. It was an interesting year for Le Guin and the Tiptree: her A Fisherman of the Inland Sea and ​“Forgiveness Day” both made the 1994 short list. For some reason ISFDB classifies inclusion in the short list as a nomination, probably because they don’t understand how the Tiptree process works. 

The Matter of Seggri takes place in Le Guin’s Hainish setting. Perhaps some background would help. As you know, about a million years ago 

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