Le Guin explores the issues of a clash of cultures, despite a shared origin and how genocide can be caused by ignorance or greed.
A classic in all ways, shapes, and forms. Then there is Selver, the native Athshean, who despite being raised in a pacifist culture, realizes that force will become necessary in dealing with the invading humans.Ī short story, THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST proves that Le Guin was ahead of her time. Their ‘laziness’ stems from a culture with vastly different sleep cycles–in fact dreaming is an important and revered ability among the Athsheans. The natives’ tribes are named for the different trees which makes the forest an important part of their culture. The scientist Lyubov, however, doesn’t see things the same way as Davidson. Not only that, but the landscape gives them trouble: after logging an area instead of making it farmable for soybeans, the land turns into mush. Davidson is running a remote logging camp on the planet New Tahiti and is having trouble with the natives he calls ‘creechies’, which they’ve been using for menial labor, but they’re lazy and incompetent. So, how different are the three-foot, green-furred Athsheans from Earth’s humans? The answer to that is actually very important.Ī quick read, TWFWIF is told from the PoV of our three main characters: Captain Davidson, Captain Lyubov, and Selver.
Here it starts off with the interesting dilemma: the planets were all seeded thousands of years ago by a main race, so the ‘aliens’ are actually distant cousins who evolved differently from the same stock. It’s worth it to see the origins of some of these ideas (see also Shawn’s review on LITTLE FUZZY ( EBR Classic). Le Guin was a trailblazer with not only her stories and characters, but with her ecological and race-relation themes. If this story reads as predictable, it’s because, well, it was written 40 years ago, and the story has been used in many different incarnations since then. The similarities will be obvious from the start: humans can now travel to the stars and will take other planets’ natural resources for their own use the nature-loving natives who just want to preserve their way of life the racist Army dude who is willing to do anything to fulfill his objective. At the very least it’s an entertaining comparison to Cameron’s blue-peopled visual extravaganza. Written in 1972, and the winner of the 1973 Hugo Award for best novella, Tor decided that the current furor over sustainable ecology would make this novel a timely re-release. Le Guin‘s THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST ( Amazon). Before there was Avatar there was Ursula K.
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