The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

I prefer books where the author appears to have written the story for itself and had the themes emerge as they go. Obviously I agree with her that colonialism and slavery are bad, but it seems like she’s taken that as the moral aim of her book and written a story around it. I love both story and film, and it was fun to realise that the Athsheans probably inspired the alien species in that story to some extent).įundamentally, despite admiring Le Guin’s skill I had a similar issue here as I did with The Left Hand of Darkness – I think her primary goal is an ideological one, not a narrative one. (This actually reminded me in some ways of Ted Chiang’s short story Story of Your Life, which became the film Arrival. Again, in the sections from Selver’s viewpoint, we get an insight into the Athshean way of life, and learn more about specific cultural aspects, like their attitudes towards sleep and dreaming. She’s also adept at creating different societies with just a few lines of dialogue – within the first few pages, we get a very vivid sense of “New Tahiti” (because we’re in Davidson’s point of view) and the way the men colonising it interact, both with one another and with the indigenous population. That provides a natural way for Le Guin to really develop the world without resorting to dumping pages of exposition. Because Lyubov is an anthropologist and is one of the central characters, it makes sense that he views the world through a lens of wanting to learn as much as he can about it. Because it’s a novella, to give any details about the plot beyond the basic set-up feels like spoilers, so I’ll steer clear.Ī lot of what Le Guin is doing here is about the worldbuilding rather than the plot (though the plot is compelling).

Although the plot draws in a wider circle of characters, the plot is really about the relationships between these three men and what occurs as a result of them.

There are three point-of-view characters: Davidson, one of the colonial commanders who despises the Athsheans but loves a bit of murder and pillaging Lyubov, an anthropologist who has come to respect and care for the Athsheans, including learning their language and Selver, the main Athshean protagonist, who has become friends with Lyubov and has a long-standing grudge against Davidson for reasons that become apparent. It focuses on their enslavement of the native Athshean population, as well as other interactions between the two races. This novella is the tale of humans (Terrans) colonising Athshe, which they call New Tahiti.

The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin