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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

Planet of Exile (1966) by Ursula Le Guin


Ursula Le Guin. Planet of Exile. | Ursula, Science fiction art, Sf art
Paperback cover of Planet of Exile by Ursula Le Guin, the second book in her Hainish cycle

Book Review
Planet of Exile (1966)
 by Ursula Le Guin

      Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle is a great Audiobook listen- genre enough to go down easy, inventive enough to hold attention.   Le Guin herself was critical of the idea of a Hainish "cycle" when interviewed.  The books exist in a shared universe, but they take place in radically different places and times.  It is never made clear whether this is an "alternate future" or actually a future/past from "our" world.   The major links between each book are the shared timeline- The Hainish "seeded" humanity on several worlds through the galaxy, then lost their ability to travel between worlds, then picked it back up and recontacted the civilizations which had sprung up in the meantime- including "our" Earth, called Terra.  The reconnected human worlds form a tenuous alliance and start exploring the galaxy together, then they are attacked by aliens and reform under a different name later on.

   The pattern of contact between humans and "HILFs": highly intelligent lifeforms take place under what might be called "Star Trek" constraints: No intervention unless there is a decision made to elevate an existing HILF group into interstellar civilization.   This point is quite crucial in the first two books- both of which take place on isolated planets cut off from the wider interstellar civilization.

    In Planet of Exile, the second book in the series,  a smallish colony has been cut off from the wider civilization after an unspecified attack- an event unknown to anyone in the book.  The interstellar "humans" have picked up the the ability to communicate telepathically- a trait which was "discovered" in the course of the first book, but wasn't a skill of the interstellar humans.    On their exiled planet the interstellar humans are slowly going extinct due to long term incompatibilities between colonist and local DNA/biology.  The remaining colony faces a "long winter" due to the local planetary arrangement, and a seasonal onslaught by uncultured barbarians fleeing the harsh northern winter.

    Alongside the colonists are the Tevar, a herding people who can build stone cities and look down on both the Gaal, who they see as barbarians, and the "Outlanders."  Once Le Guin gets her pieces in place events unfold along genre lines, but the set up is way beyond the complexity that you see in similar books. 




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