Worlds of Exile and Illusion by Ursula K. Le Guin

The tight perspective and gritty fate of colonists and natives at the hands of each other and the depredations of a harsh sixty year winter make this a dark read. Le Guin weaves a variety of ideas together in this story. Jacob Allterra is forced to co-operate with the indigenous Hainish to survive a siege.

The colonists of Werel live alongside the humanoid natives and practice a similar form of non-interference until the existence of everyone is threatened by a migrating horde of Gaal. Our location has changed, but there are still some remembered stories of the past. Planet of Exile follows a different path, but explores some similar themes. Rocannon’s World is still clearly an early work with some laborious moments, but its quest holds up well against some of its contemporaries. Working with a fictionalised future and a fantasy past, Le Guin is able to bring the best of both to the story. What is interesting here is the blend of styles and tones. When he does, the story resolves in truce of prophecy and protagonism. Eventually, Rocannon is forced to rely on the mythology they are constructing around him and his journey. Rocannon knows his means of survival at times is to rely on the technology he has, but the natives often see this as wizardry. The opportunity she grants for herself in being able to blend and blur the address and tone of Fantasy with Science Fiction in this premise makes for a duality of perception. In many ways this is reminiscent of the ideas explored in Star Trek: The Next Generation, but Le Guin was writing about this a good twenty years earlier. The aforementioned Rocannon goes on a quest to find a way to communicate with his interstellar superiors about a planetary invasion that defies the non-interference protocols his mission have adopted. We begin with Rocannon’s World, a story that explores the ways in which a technologically advanced culture might choose to observe but not intervene in the development of a planetary civilisation that has yet to rise above the late mediaeval period. However, there are links and legacies to be found between the three situations that are described. This compilation edition is not quite the trilogy a reader might expect with explicit transition and interconnection between the three different stories.

Worlds of Exile and Illusion begins with the short story prologue – The Necklace, a story I reviewed as Semley’s Necklace in The Real and Unreal: Volume 2: Outer Space and Inner Lands. This is the same science fiction setting as her award winning stories The Dispossessed and the Left Hand of Darkness. The first three Hainish novels written by Ursula Le Guin in the 1960s are brought together in this one volume.

Worlds of Exile and Illusion by Ursula K. Le Guin