Great story (and at 112 pages, a very quick read). I first ran into Ursula Le Guin back at school when I read the Earthsea Trilogy which was a showcase for her mastery of world building. Rocannon's World was her first novel and that world-building skill was already evident.
Protagonist Rocannon is a geographic surveyor putting together key details of all of the planets he visits... break down of types of sentient life forms, levels of intelligence, geographic specificities etc. He'd slot right into Star Trek's reconnaissance services or Hari Seldon's Encyclopedia Galactica.
He provides assistance to one particular world and then, thanks to time dilation from near-light-speed travel, visits them some decades later (only a handful of his own years) to find they're in need of his help from other races who DON'T respect Trek's Prime Directive.
I'll stop there... no spoilers... but it's a very clever story that effortlessly crosses over between sci-fi and fantasy with the life forms on said world analogous to several fantasy tropes.
The best science fiction stories ask "what if" questions and shows us worlds we have barely imagined. Le Guin, a bona fide grand master of science fiction, delivers in spades... weaving time dilation into the plot (one of the first stories to do so) and even inventing the "ansible" device which many subsequent SF writers have borrowed.
Rocannon's World was followed by another eight loosely-connected novels in the Hainish Cycle (including the award winning Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed) in addition to a bunch of short stories, so this is the perfect place to start. You can buy the first three novels in an omnibus edition - World's of Exile and Illusion. So do yourself a favour.
No comments:
Post a Comment