Book Review: Rocannon’s World by Ursula K. LeGuin
Ursula K. LeGuin (1929-2018) was an acclaimed science fiction writer who wrote such works as The Left Hand of Darkness, The Word for World is Forest, and The Dispossessed, as well as fantasy works like A Wizard of Earthsea. Her bibliography is massive, also consisting of many essays and works of nonfiction. She is one of my favorite authors, and today I will be reviewing her first published book.
Rocannon’s World is much more traditionally science fiction than much of Le Guin’s later works. Whereas her later stuff is much more intellectual, dealing with discussions of gender and nonbinaryness (The Left Hand of Darkness), colonialism (The Word for World is Forest) and capitalism (The Dispossessed), this book is more of an adventure across a world.
The book follows an ethnologist, Gaverel Rocannon, who has returned to the titular world, which has been placed under embargo in order to preserve the native culture. He comes to do an ethnographic study, but when he discovers that there is a base of an enemy galactic nation, his ship is shot down, killing all but him. He and some of the native peoples of the planet work together to travel to the far south in order to send out an interstellar message to the League of All Worlds, which Gaverel is a citizen of.
The rest of the book consists of many different encounters with different cultures of this planet, which is technologically in the Medieval Era, with flying cat-like beasts called Windsteeds (which act much like dragons), and the use of swords. The book is short, but with its dense text, it covers many cultures. The one that sticks out to me is the one that is most disturbing, a city of winged angel like creatures which consume the flesh of the other humanoids upon the planet.
Even in this rollicking adventure tale, Le Guin is already considering philosophical questions and adding a sense of melancholy to the story. Due to her parents being anthropologists, many of those questions surrounding interstellar anthropology in a science fiction sense come up. Much of Le Guin’s work has an accessible take on academic questions that may be difficult to start discussing.
If you are more used to science fiction of an action-adventure type, but want to delve into more philosophical science fiction, this is a good gateway novel. It’s short and combines both types in a fun read. And for those Le Guin fans that have read her major works, this book is a good way to see where Le Guin started, and to begin to see her unique style come to fruition.
Rocannon’s World is in the Westchester Library System as a standalone book, as well as in a compilation of three early Le Guin novels.
