Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle

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Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle

1Peace2
mei 31, 2021, 8:46 pm

Hi - I'm just wondering if anyone can offer thoughts on Ursula Le Guin's Hainish Cycle.

I currently own three of the titles The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest and The Dispossessed. LT lists these in two variations of the Hainish Cycle series - one chronological and the other... not sure what. In the chronological order, I have books 1, 2 and 6 and in the other variation I have books 4,5 and 6.

My question is what's the best way to read these? Which of the two series orders is the best to appreciate them? Part of me is hoping that I don't need to buy three more books before I can start reading!

Thanks for your thoughts.

2YouKneeK
Bewerkt: mei 31, 2021, 9:20 pm

I’m not the best person to answer because I haven’t read all the books yet, but I’m actually currently reading them. I decided to go in publication order, because I usually prefer to be introduced to an author’s work in the order he or she created it. It feels more natural to me that way.

So I started with Worlds of Exile and Illusion which includes the first 3 published stories, then moved on to The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World is Forest. Next up on my list is The Dispossessed.

These stories really do all stand alone though, and the author herself has said the reading order doesn’t matter. There are some small connections in terms of the political backdrop, but each story I’ve read has been set on a different planet, focusing on unrelated characters. The books I’ve read so far would each have made perfect sense without having read the others.

3ScoLgo
Bewerkt: mei 31, 2021, 11:18 pm

>1 Peace2: I have read them all and what >2 YouKneeK: says is true. The reading order is not really all that important. I too read them in publication order, (well... the novels at least. The short stories as I acquired the books containing them). That being said, here is what Le Guin had to say on the subject, (I lifted the following from The FAQ on UrsulaKLeGuin.com):

People write me nice letters asking what order they ought to read my science fiction books in — the ones that are called the Hainish or Ekumen cycle or saga or something. 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. And some great discontinuities (like, what happened to "mindspeech” after Left Hand of Darkness? Who knows? Ask God, and she may tell you she didn’t believe in it any more.)

OK, so, very roughly, then:

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 read The Word for World is Forest, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, in any order. In Dispossessed, the ansible gets invented; but they’re using it in Left 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 stories A 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 suite Four Ways to Forgiveness is part of that universe, and so is the novel The Telling. But I have to warn you that the planet Werel in Four Ways is not the planet Werel in Planet 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 for The Lathe of Heaven and Always Coming Home, my Terran science fiction novels, they definitely don’t exist in the same universe as the Hainish or Ekumenical books.


I hope this helps and that you enjoy your foray into The Ekumen.

4Peace2
jun 1, 2021, 1:38 am

Thank you both for the help. This is perfect as it means I don't need to wait until I'm next allowed to acquire the other books (that TBR pile must be worked at steadily to avoid a catastrophe!) and can read the ones I have now when I get chance. I shall look forward to starting them in the next month or so.

Thanks again for the help.

5reading_fox
jun 1, 2021, 4:40 am

Obviously your mileage may vary, and I've not read Forest, but I found the three books you don't have to substantially better than the famous ones you do. Both Left Hand and Dispossessed can be appreciated for the concepts they introduce and were ground-breaking at the time they were written..... but they're not very good as books. I found them to be far more focussed on making a point than telling a story.

6Jim53
jun 1, 2021, 10:01 am

And I'll throw in the opposite view: the first three are what many call "apprentice" works, in which the author is still figuring out what she's up to and how to do it (admittedly, many authors are doing this their whole career, but there is a level of writing and creating that exclude books from this category). While one does occasionally hear the sound of axes being round in the later works, IMHO it is integrated into much more interesting stories. TWfWIF is, by LeGuin's own admission, an attempt to get the VietNam war out of her system; its characters tend to be much less subtly good or bad. But LHoD and TD are wonderfully written, with marvelous imagery and fascinating and complex characters. IMHO; YMMV.

7Karlstar
jun 1, 2021, 12:44 pm

>3 ScoLgo: >5 reading_fox: >6 Jim53: I'm fairly certain I read the first 3 books up to LHoD from the library, long ago, I don't remember them well at all and I don't own them. LHoD I had to read for school, and I own it so while I'm tempted to jump to TWfWiF, I think I'll start at the beginning. I need to buy a couple of physical books anyway, I haven't done enough of that this year.

e-books just don't count in my mind when it comes to actually buying books.

8ScoLgo
jun 1, 2021, 3:05 pm

>7 Karlstar: I read a lot of e-books but rarely buy them. Most are borrowed from the library. When I run across an e-book I feel strongly about re-reading, I tend to buy a print copy.

In planning a re-read of the Hainish books & stories - this time in internal chronological order - I bought the Library of America Set last year. The price on Amazon has gone up a bit since I grabbed it on sale, but it's a very nice pair of hardcovers that collect all Ekumenical novels and short stories in a slip-covered 2-volume set.

The Worlds of Exile and Illusion omnibus contains Le Guin's first three published novels and the opening short story, Semley's Necklace. All three books in the omnibus are very short and would likely be considered novellas today. My favorite Hainish novel was City of Illusions, when I first read the entire arc ~9 or 10 years ago. We'll see if that holds up when I get around to re-reading.

9YouKneeK
jun 1, 2021, 5:17 pm

If I had to pick from the 5 stories I’ve read so far, I think I’d probably choose The Left Hand of Darkness as my favorite. After I finish my current non-Hainish book, I plan to read The Dispossessed. I may end up stopping with that one. It’s the last one I own, and even though I’m enjoying them for the most part, I’m not sure I’m enjoying them enough that I feel motivated to binge read the rest of the series. Since the stories stand alone so well, I wouldn't mind coming back to them sometime in the future when the mood strikes me since I wouldn't need to worry that I’d forgotten something important.

10Karlstar
jun 29, 2021, 10:38 pm

I finished the trilogy recently. I enjoyed Rocannon's World, but while reading it I kept thinking it was written by Andre Norton, not LeGuin. It has that scifi/fantasy adventure feel, like a lot of Norton's works.

Planet of Exile was, I thought, a bit too short, I wanted more detail. I liked City of Illusions the best.

I'll keep Left Hand of Darkness on my re-read list, but I have other books to get to.