Rocannon's World is a science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, her debut novel. Published in 1966, it appeared as an Ace Double novel alongside Avram Davidson's The Kar-Chee Reign. The novel is one of several of Le Guin's works that take place in the same universe and have relationships among characters and history, works that readers have termed the Hainish Cycle. The novel's protagonist, "League of All Worlds" ethnographer Gaveral Rocannon, returns to the planet Fomalhaut II after its quarantine to lead a further advanced survey of its "higher intelligence life forms" (or "hilfs"). As the novel opens, a rebel faction of the League violently attacks Rocannon's ship, taking the lives of all of his colleagues—and, in foretelling an invasion, endangers the future of the planet's sentient species. Rocannon engages with three of these species, including the following:
the tall, feudal, aristocratic Angyar two shorter, comparably intelligent species: the troglodyte technologists and makers, the Gdemiar the nontechnological, colonially telepathic Fiia. The purpose is to battle both harsh planetary elements and other sentients to accomplish a quest—to beckon the distant League to block the invasion. In developing the story, Le Guin introduces the term ansible as a key technology (and plot element) that allows instantaneous communication across vast distances. This term was later used more widely in science fiction, including by novelist Orson Scott Card and others.
Plot summary
Prologue: The Necklace
The novel opens with a prologue occurring many years prior to its main action, entitled "The Necklace" (from an earlier published stand-alone story, "The Dowry of Angyar"). A young woman, Semley, the wife of an aristocrat of the Angyar people, decries the fate of husband and clan for its lack of wealth, a consequence of constraint against gain by spoils by war, imposed on them by extraterrestrial starlords that had visited. She recalls a precious necklace, a family heirloom of great value, lost to another of the sentient races of the planet, and departs covertly by flight on a windsteed—a large, winged, domesticated, cat-like species—to set out to reclaim her legacy, for the sake of her lord's and family's future. Semley engages a troglodyte species of sentients, the Gdemiar, by whom she understands the heirloom to have been taken, descending with them into their subterranean dwelling. Despite that species having been favoured by the starlords—they were selected to serve as intermediaries between the starlords and planet sentients, and given means to engage the starlords—the Gdemiar show deference to the stately Angyar Lady, and agree to take Semley to those holding her heirloom. As she proceeds, it becomes clear that the means by which the Gdemiar engage the starlords takes the form of an automated spacecraft that the starlords—visiting scientists from the more advanced, interstellar "League of All Worlds"—have placed at the disposal of the Gdemiar, who they judged technologically most capable of the planet's sentients. Hence, Semley takes a space voyage from the unnamed, technologically primitive planet, her destination an off-planet museum of collected ethnographic artifacts gathered by the League surveyors, Gaverel Rocannon and others. The survey scientists she engages are enthralled to meet this further, beautiful sentient, and gladly agree to return the artifact heirloom to her, and then to facilitate her return to Angyar. Unfortunately, the time dilation associated with her travel means that while of short duration for Semley, 16 years have passed on her planet, and with her lord and family. She returns with her prize, and is met by an old woman that she does not recognise, but who is a peer and confidante from her life before departure. She learns that her lord and husband has perished in an intervening battle in her absence, and that the young daughter she had left is now a grown woman.
The Starlord, The Wanderer, and Epilogue
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
