The Hainish Cycle consists of a number of science fiction novels and stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is set in a future history in which civilizations of human beings on planets orbiting a number of nearby stars, including Terra ("Earth"), are contacting each other for the first time and establishing diplomatic relations, and setting up a confederacy under the guidance of the oldest of the human worlds, peaceful Hain. In this history, human beings did not evolve on Earth but were the result of interstellar colonies planted by Hain long ago, which was followed by a long period when interstellar travel ceased. Some of the races have new genetic traits, a result of ancient Hainish experiments in genetic engineering, including people who can dream while awake, and a world of hermaphroditic people who only come into active sexuality once a month, not knowing which sex will manifest in them. In keeping with Le Guin's style, she uses varied social and environmental settings to explore the anthropological and sociological outcomes of human evolution in those diverse environments.
The Hainish novels The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974) have won literary awards, as have the novella The Word for World Is Forest (1972) and the short stories "The Day Before the Revolution" (1974) and "The Matter of Seggri" (1994).
Le Guin herself often discounted the characterization 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] [2]
In the first three novels—Rocannon's World (1966), Planet of Exile (1966), and City of Illusions (1967)—there is a League of All Worlds. By City of Illusions, the League seems to have been conquered or fragmented by an alien race, the Shing, from beyond the League.
In the fourth, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), it seems that the planets of the former League have reunited as the Ekumen, which was founded by the Hainish people.
In the fifth, The Word for World Is Forest (1972), the League of All Worlds and the ansible are new creations, and the term "Ekumen" is not used; it is set before any of the first four books. It was part of the anthology Again, Dangerous Visions, and only published as a separate book in 1976.
The sixth, The Dispossessed (1974), is the earliest novel chronologically in the Hainish Cycle. The Cetians have been visited by people from other planets, including Terra (Earth) and Hain. The various planets are separate, though there is some talk of a union. The idea of the ansible is known but none yet exists.
The seventh and final novel, The Telling (2000), and later short stories speak only of the Ekumen—which now includes the Gethenians, who were the subject of The Left Hand of Darkness—and not of the League.
Le Guin offers the following thoughts on the order in which readers should approach the series:
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 Rocannon's World are the product of genetic engineering, as are the "hilfs" ("highly intelligent life forms")[3] of Planet S[4] (whose story has not been told), and probably the androgynous humans 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"[5] — presumably along with new colonies. By the time of Rocannon's World it has grown but is also under threat from a distant enemy. In City of Illusions it is recalled as having been a league of some 80 worlds at the time it was destroyed by aliens called the Shing, who are uniquely able to lie in mindspeech. After the apparent overthrow of the Shing by the descendants of marooned Terrans and the inhabitants of Alterra / Werel who have succeeded in interbreeding (as related in Planet of Exile) and are capable of detecting Shing lies, the alliance is eventually reconstructed.
A 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", although characters occasionally refer to it as "the Household",[6] which is in turn a reference to the Greek "oikos", a word which developed from the same root as "oikoumene". Unexplained references are made by the protagonist from Terra in The Left Hand of Darkness to a long-past "Age of the Enemy", which presumably refers to the time that the Shing controlled Terra, portrayed in City of Illusions.
The Ekumen (or the League of All Worlds, though that is also believed to be the previous planetary coalition, before some sort of galactic crisis) 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. The process of reaching out to potential civilizations is a tedious and sometimes dangerous one.
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 (Nearly As Fast As Light) ships. The physics is never explained; the ship vanishes from where it was and reappears somewhere else many years later.[7] 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 be used for trips within a solar system. 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, at least according to the Shing, whose information may be suspect.[8] It is also lethal if the traveler is pregnant.[9]
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. The weapons 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 people and spacecraft instantaneously, but there are side effects. These are described in three short stories, "The Shobies' Story," "Dancing to Ganam", and "Another Story, or, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," all collected in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994).
The ansible has been adopted by other science fiction and fantasy authors, such as Orson Scott Card,[10] Elizabeth Moon,[11] and Vernor Vinge.[12]
The ideas of post-technological societies and social and ecological collapse are in several of the stories. These are portrayed as the end result of the wrong kind of civilizations, i.e., competitive, capitalist, patriarchal, "dynamic, aggressive, ecology-breaking cultures," while successful societies are close to the land, peaceful, non-authoritarian, non-competitive, static, communitarian, with the holistic outlook of Eastern religions. The Earth, called "Terra" in the Cycle, is mentioned as one of the failed civilizations.
Most of the people in the tales have a common descent from the planet Hain, whose people settled many worlds. Some of them are genetically similar enough to produce children together. The unusual hairiness of the Cetians is mentioned in The Word for World Is Forest and The Dispossessed. The Telling includes the detail that the people of Chiffewar are all bald.
There are some cases of ancient biological manipulation:
| Title | Date | Publisher | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rocannon's World | 1966 | |||
| Planet of Exile | 1966 | Ace Books | ||
| City of Illusions | 1967 | Ace Books | ||
| The Left Hand of Darkness | 1969 | Ace Books | Nebula Award winner, 1969;[14] Hugo Award winner, 1970[15] | |
| The Word for World is Forest | 1972 (anthology); 1976 (book) | Doubleday | Hugo Award winner for Best Novella, 1973;[16] Nebula Award nominee for Best Novella, 1973; Locus Award nominee for Best Novella, 1973 | |
| The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia | 1974 | Harper & Row | Hugo Award winner, 1975;[17] Nebula Award winner, 1974;[18] Locus Award winner for Best SF Novel, 1975 | |
| Three Hainish Novels | 1978 | Nelson Doubleday | Omnibus of Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions; republished in 1996 as Worlds of Exile and Illusion | |
| Five Complete Novels | 1985 | Avenel Books | Omnibus of Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Left Hand of Darkness and The Word for World is Forest | |
| Four Ways to Forgiveness | 1995 | HarperCollins | Prometheus award nominated, 1996[19] | |
| The Telling | 2000 | Harcourt Brace & Company | Locus SF Award winner, 2001;[20] Endeavour Award winner[21] | |
| The Hainish Novels & Stories | 2017 | Collection of all Hainish novels and stories in two volumes. | ||
| Five Ways to Forgiveness | 2017 | Library of America | Collection of the four stories in Four Ways to Forgiveness with the addition of the story "Old Music and the Slave Women" |
| "The Dowry of Angyar" | 1964 | Amazing Stories September 1964 | appears as "Semley's Necklace" in The Wind's Twelve Quarters; also used as the first chapter of Rocannon's World, where it is titled "Prologue: The Necklace". | |
| "Winter's King" | 1969 | Orbit 5[22] | collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters | |
| "Vaster than Empires and More Slow" | 1971 | New Dimensions 1: Fourteen Original Science Fiction Stories | collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters, and The Found and the Lost | |
| "The Day Before the Revolution" | 1974 | Galaxy Science Fiction August 1974 | collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters; winner of the Nebula Award[23] and Locus Award[24] | |
| "The Shobies' Story" | 1990 | Universe 1[25] | collected in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea | |
| "Dancing to Ganam" | 1993 | Amazing Stories September 1993 | collected in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea | |
| "Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea" | 1994 | Harper Prism | collected in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, and The Found and the Lost | |
| "The Matter of Seggri" | 1994 | Crank! #3, Spring 1994[26] | collected in The Birthday of the World, and The Found and the Lost; winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award, 1995 | |
| "Unchosen Love" | 1994 | Amazing Stories Fall 1994 | collected in The Birthday of the World | |
| "Solitude" | 1994 | collected in The Birthday of the World; winner of the Nebula Award, 1996 | ||
| "Coming of Age in Karhide" | 1995 | New Legends[27] | collected in The Birthday of the World | |
| "Mountain Ways" | 1996 | Asimov's Science Fiction August 1996 | collected in The Birthday of the World; winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award | |
| "Old Music and the Slave Women" | 1999 | Far Horizons 1999 | collected in The Birthday of the World, The Found and the Lost, and Five Ways to Forgiveness |