Hainish Cycle

The Hainish Cycle consists of a number of science fiction novels and stories of Ursula K. Le Guin. Most of them are not set on the planet Hain, but have it as a distant background. People from Hain are often present but mostly as secondary characters. In keeping with Le Guin's soft science fiction style, the setting is used primarily to explore anthropological and sociological ideas.

The Hainish novels The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed have won literary awards, as have the novella The Word for World Is Forest and the short story "The Day Before the Revolution."

LeGuin herself has discounted the idea of a "Hainish Cycle", writing on her website that "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."^[1]

Sequence of writing

In the first three novels—Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions—there is or was a League of All Worlds; in City of Illusions, it seems to have been conquered or fragmented by an alien race, called the Shing, from beyond the League.

In the fourth, The Left Hand of Darkness, it seems that the planets of the former League of Worlds have re-united as the Ekumen, which was founded by the Hainish people.

The fifth, The Dispossessed, is the earliest chronologically in the Hainish Cycle. The Cetians have been visited by people from other planets, including Earth and Hain. The various planets are separate, though there is some talk of a union. The idea of an ansible is known but none yet exists: Shevek's new physics may be - in fact, eventually is - the key.

The sixth, The Word for World Is Forest, has the League of All Worlds and the ansible as new creations. The term 'Ekumen' is not used.

Later novels and short stories speak only of the Ekumen, which now includes the Gethenians, who were the subject of The Left Hand of Darkness.

Back Story

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the people of Hain colonized a large number of worlds, including Earth, known as Terra. Most of these were similar enough that humans from one world can pass as natives of another, but on some the Old Hainish 'Colonisers' used genetic engineering. At least one of the various species of Rokanan are the product of genetic engineering, as are the hilfs^[2] of Planet S (whose story has not so far been told), and perhaps the androgynes of Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness. The Ekumen do not know whether the Colonisers sought to adapt humans to varied worlds, were conducting various experiments, or had other reasons.

Hainish civilization subsequently collapsed and the colony planets (including Earth) forgot that other human worlds existed. The Ekumen stories tell of the efforts to re-establish a civilization on a galactic scale through NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light) interstellar travel taking years to travel between stars (although only weeks or months from the viewpoint of the traveler because of time dilation), and through instantaneous interstellar communication using the ansible.

This seems to have happened in two phases. First the League of All Worlds was formed, as an alliance of planets, mostly descended from colonization efforts from the planet Hain, uniting the "nine known worlds"^[3] - along with colonies, presumably. By the time of Rocannon's World it has grown but is also under threat from a distant enemy. It is destroyed by aliens called the Shing, who have the ability to lie in Mindspeech. After the apparent overthrow of the Shing by Terran descendants from Alterra/Werel, the alliance is eventually reconstructed as the Ekumen. In City of Illusions it is recalled as a league of some 80 worlds.

The second phase begins with The Left Hand of Darkness. The 80-plus planets seem to have reunited as the 'Ekumen' – a name derived from the Greek "oikoumene", meaning "the inhabited world", though characters occasionally refer to it as "the Household",^[4] which is in turn a reference to the Greek "oikos", a word which developed from the same root as oikoumene. Unexplained references are made to the 'Age of the Enemy.'

Planets of the Hainish Cycle

The Hainish Cycle contains a very large number of planets and is continually exploring new ones. Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness explains that there are 83 planets in the Ekumen, with Gethen a candidate for becoming the 84th.

Technology

Societies tend to use sophisticated but unobtrusive technologies. Most notable is the ansible, an instant-communication device that keeps worlds in touch with each other.

Physical communication is by NAFAL ships, Nearly As Fast As Light. The physics is never explained: the ship vanishes from where it was and reappears somewhere else many years later.^[5] The trip takes slightly longer than it would to cross the same distance at the speed of light, but ship-time is just a few hours for those on board. It cannot apparently be used for trips within a solar system.^[4] Trips can begin or end close to a planet, but if used without a "retemporalizer", there are drastic physical effects at the end of long trips.^[6] It is also lethal if the traveler is pregnant.^[7]

City of Illusions mentions automatic death-machines that work on the same principle as the ansible and can strike instantly at distant worlds. Such a device is clearly used in the events of Rocannon's World. They are not mentioned again in later books.

Churten theory, as developed by the physicists of Anarres, should allow people to go instantly from solar system to solar system. It is a development of the work of Shevek, whose tale is told in The Dispossessed. Shevek's work made the ansible possible - it is mentioned in his tale that engineers decided they could build it once the correct theory was found. Churten theory offers a way to move whole spacecraft instantaneously, but there are side-effects. These are described in two short stories, "The Shobies' Story" and "Dancing to Ganam", both of which appeared in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea.

The ansible has been adopted by other science fiction and fantasy authors, such as Orson Scott Card, Elizabeth Moon, and Vernor Vinge.

Post-technological worlds

The idea of post-technological societies and social collapse comes into several of these stories:

• In City of Illusions, Earth has suffered some sort of collapse in a distant future, losing contact with the stars.
• In "Another Story" in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, it is mentioned that Earth still suffers badly from pollution.
• Eleven-Soro had a high technology and then a massive crash, as is told in the short story "Solitude" in The Birthday of the World.
• Hain itself has gone back to a simpler life with high technology only where it is justified, as is told in the first part of "A Man of the People" in Four Ways to Forgiveness. This also seems to apply to planet Ve.
• Orint and Kheakh are mentioned in passing as worlds that have totally destroyed themselves.
• In The Left Hand Of Darkness, the planet Gde is described as extremely hot rock and desert, the result of a technological society that "wrecked its ecological balance" some millennia previous, and "burned up its forests for kindling."

Biology

Most of the people in the tales have a common descent from the planet Hain, which settled many surrounding worlds. Some of them are genetically similar enough to produce children together. The unusual hairyness of the Cetians is mentioned in The Word for World Is Forest and The Dispossessed - though to Cetians, it seems that other types of human have unusually little hair. The Telling includes the detail that the people of Chiffewar are all bald.

There are some cases of ancient biological manipulation:

• Unique among known humans, the Hainish have complete voluntary control of their fertility. In order for a Hainish man and woman to reproduce, they must both consciously choose to produce viable genetic material, which they learn to do in adolescence. The required genetic changes to the Hainish population were made in the far distant past, and apparently took many generations to accomplish.^[8]
• The Left Hand of Darkness mentions that the hilfs^[2] of S must have been produced by human genetic manipulation by the ancient Hainish people, along with the Gethenians and the degenerate winged hominoids of Rokanan. We hear no more about the hilfs of S, unless these are the same as the small furry natives of Athshe, who are also of Hainish descent.
• The hermaphrodite humans of Gethen may have been produced as an adaptation to a harsh climate, or an experiment to see how people would live without gender. Both ideas are mentioned and nothing is definitely settled.
• The degenerate winged hominoids are seen in Rocannon's World. They live in cities that require much higher technology to build than the rest of the races on Rokanan, but live in bat-like societies, hunting for humans and animals on which their larvae feed by sucking their blood.
• The Matter of Seggri tells us that the extreme gender imbalance of the people of Seggri may be another case of genetic manipulation.

Alterrans with their distinctive cat-like eyes are nevertheless able to breed with Earth-humans. They may be another case of genetic manipulation, or a natural adaptation.

The Shing of City of Illusions are not of Hainish origin and cannot interbreed with Earth-humans.

List of books

Novels

The order presented here is the internal chronology of the series, proposed by Ian Watson in March 1975 Writing for Science Fiction Studies,^[9] not the order in which the books were written.

Short stories

In publishing order.

• Dowry of the Angyar (1964) - appears as Semley's Necklace in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) - Rokanan
• Winter's King (1969) - appears in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) - Gethen
• Vaster Than Empires and More Slow (1971) - appears in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) - World 4470
• The Day Before the Revolution (1974) - appears in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) - Urras
• The Shobies' Story (1990) - appears in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) - Hain, Ve, M-60-340-nolo
• Dancing to Ganam (1993) - appears in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) - Ganam (Tadkla)
• Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) - appears in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994) - O
• Betrayals (1994) - appears in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995) - Yeowe-Werel
• Forgiveness Day (1994) - appears in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995) - Yeowe-Werel
• Unchosen Love (1994) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) - O
• A Man of the People (1995) - appears in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995) - Hain, Yeowe-Werel
• A Woman's Liberation (1995) - appears in Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995) - Yeowe-Werel
• The Matter of Seggri (1994) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) - Seggri
• Solitude (1994) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) - Eleven-soro
• Coming of Age in Karhide (1995) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) - Gethen
• Mountain Ways (1996) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) - O
• Old Music and the Slave Women (1999) - appears in The Birthday of the World (2002) - Yeowe-Werel

References

1. ↑ Ursula K. LeGuin, "Ursula K. Le Guin: Answers to a Questionnaire (FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions)", 2007.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Hilf" is a generic acronym for "highly intelligent life form". Hainish Encyclopedia. Accessed 2013-04-10.
3. ↑ The Dispossessed
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 The Left Hand of Darkness
5. ↑ Vaster than Empires and More Slow
6. ↑ City of Illusions
7. ↑ The Shobies' Story
8. ↑ A Man of the People (Hain)
9. ↑ Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven and the Role of Dick: The False Reality as Mediator
10. ↑ "1974 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-28. 
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 "1975 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-28. 
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 "Index of Literary Nominees". 
13. ↑ "1969 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-28. 
14. ↑ "1970 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-28. 
15. ↑ "2001 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-28. 

External links

• Le Guin's World - Unofficial Le Guin fan site. "Search engine disabled for now. Sorry." Last update 2003-02-11; accessed 2013-04-10.
  • Le Guin's World: The Hainish Series with Hainish chronology, plot summaries, encyclopedia, and other resources
• In what order should I read the Ekumen books? - Ursula K. Le Guin on the coherency and chronology of the Ekumen books
• Wholeness and Balance in the Hainish Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin