Worlds of Exile and Illusion: Three Complete Novels of the Hainish Series in One Volume

I really enjoyed all of these. They are simpler, more direct scifi/fantasy novels, done in a very easy to read style with good characters. I appreciated the old fashioned minimal prose style that described the world and the action in sufficient detail, but not too much detail. These books are only loosely connected, this is not a series.

Rocannon's World - more of a fantasy adventure when Rocannon gets stranded on a primitive world.
Planet of Exile - a sort of 'first law' type of novel, when the high tech members of the league of worlds get stuck on a different primitive planet.
City of Illusions - set even farther in the future, humans on Earth are repressed by the alien Shing.

Rocannon's World:
When all the other members of his ethnographic survey are killed, Gaverel Rocannon is stranded on the planet Fomalhaut II. The weapons that were used in the attack could only have come from an alien military faction. To stop them Rocannon must get a message back to the League of All Worlds. But on this planet the only equipment that can span the distance between the stars quickly enough to deliver the message in time could only be located on the enemy’s base. So Rocannon and his hosts from what The Abridged Handy Pocket Guide to Intelligent Life-forms describes as a “clan-descent society,” with a “feudal-heroic culture,” set out on a quest to find and infiltrate the base in the forgotten lands to their south. show more Will it be swords, lances, and griffins against helicopter gunships and faster than light bombers?

Planet of Exile:
The native girl Rolery, born out of season and impetuous, finds herself strangely attracted to Jakob Agat Altetta, the dark leader of the farborn, even though her people consider the farborn to be inhuman practitioners of witchcraft, and so rude that they would look you directly in the eyes. The attraction is mutual, and it leads to bitter misfortune and near disaster just when the two peoples should unite against a common enemy.

City of Illusions:
Five years ago a man without memory or language stumbled out of the wilds of the forest. At least he had the body of man, but his yellow eyes were like those of a cat. In Zove’s household the family debated what he was and what to do with him. Was he a spy, an agent of their enemy the Shing, or possibly an alien, even though, “No being from the Other Worlds that once were know has walked on Earth for twelve hundred years.” They let him live and learn, and now he’s about to journey across a continent to the city of the Shing, the masters of the “mind-lie” that defeated the League of All Worlds and enslaved humanity, to uncover the truth about himself.

These first three of Le Guin’s science fiction novels were published in 1966 and 1967. Each is set on a different planet. The backstory to all three stories, each set about a millennium apart, is the rise and fall of an interstellar human, or perhaps humanoid civilization. During this time humanity gains and develops the skill of telepathy. More in the forefront of the stories is the clash between cultures, the interstellar and the native, and in final one, City of Illusions, between human and the truly alien.

The three, taken together as in this edition, are two heroic quests framing a siege. If all this sounds more like the themes found in heroic fantasy rather than in science fiction to you, you have the author’s agreement. Eleven years after its first publication, in an introduction to the 1977 edition of Rocannon's World (reproduced in The Language of the Night, the author writes, "...of course fantasy and science fiction are different, just as red and blue ; different; they have different frequencies; if you mix them (on paper—I work on paper) you get purple, something else again. Rocannon's World is definitely purple." show less

I purchased this collection of three novellas after having read Leguin's outstanding novel, The Left Hand of Darkness. These works are ostensibly related to LHoD, dealing with formation and history of the Hainish League.

The first novella, Rocannon's World, has virtually nothing to do with science fiction, instead being almost entirely a work of fantasy, and not particularly good fantasy at that. Rocannon is something of an anthropological surveyor on behalf of the Hainish League, attempting to establish technologically advanced civilizations in order to present a line of defense against an anticipated invasion from outside the galaxy.

The story presents a collection of life forms which are strikingly similar to Tolkien's elves, dwarves show more and even classes of men. Again, not particularly original and not very captivating. Two and a half stars.

The final two novellas, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions, are really neither fantasy nor science fiction. Each is more about the interaction between intelligent hominid species, and though I was expecting science fiction, I enjoyed these two stories significantly more than the first.

In Planet of Exile, we have three vastly different cultures interacting against a highly unusual planetary climate pattern (unusual from our perspective). The World of Werel contains two native hominid species, the Tevarans, of roughly Iron Age technological proficiency, and the Gaal, more Stone Age in sophistication. Add to these, the Farborn, a much more technologically advanced species (from Earth, as it turns out), which has been on Werel for roughly 600 years. Part of an advance party from the Hainish League, they have ostensibly been exiled, supposedly as a result of a successful galactic invasion by the Shing.

The planet of Werel has a moon phase of 400 days, and an elliptical orbit of 60 moon phases. Thus, each "season" lasts roughly 15-20 years. Our story is set at the onset of Winter and the seasonal migration of the Gaal through Tevaran lands. Always warlike, the Gaal have organized this Winter and are a very real threat to the civilizations of the Tevar and the Farborn. Prejudice, jealousy and distrust mark the relationship between the two species as they attempt to cooperate against their much more numerous and savage opponents. Four stars.

The final novella, City of Illusion, finally introduces us to the Shing, the galactic invaders who threaten the Hainish League. In fact, the setting for this story is the Earth, far in the future, following its conquest by the Shing. We are introduced to Falk, a non-human hominid who finds himself stranded in a forested region of the United States (seemingly near Kentucky), without any memory of his past, only a desire to travel West to the Shing city of Es Toch, where he hopes to learn of his identity and past.

Falk undergoes much hardship and experiences many adventures during his travels through the virtually deserted and depopulated United Sates, which eventually lead to Es Toch (located in southern Utah or northern Arizona). The experiences of Falk upon reaching Es Toch neatly tie up all the loose ends, binding the three novellas together. Four and a half stars.

These final two novellas should be required reading for college level Anthropology majors. show less

I did not expect Le Guin's early entries in the Hainish cycle to be as interlinked as they are (at least, as interlinked as may be given the vast amounts of time and space that occurs between each of them), considering that I started with The Dispossessed, Left Hand, and The Word for World, in that order, none of which have the same kind of thematic and situational throughline that these three novels have.

Of the three, I enjoyed Rocannon's World the most, I think, given its more traditional hero's journey with fantastical elements based on a science fiction premise, much in the same vein as Robert Heinlein's Glory Road. It may be something in the simplicity of the narrative, with a hint of the larger intergalactic struggle, both of show more which build in intensity to the climax, that I enjoyed most. Planet of Exile was interesting as a story of two dying and incompatible cultures, one old and the other new(ish), coming together so that both can survive, even though their combination means that each will be lost and become something new. A similar scenario at the individual level presents itself as the ultimate struggle in City of Illusions (which is inaptly named, though not opaquely so), wherin the main character has to reconcile himself -- or himselves, rather -- through losses and resorations of memory, the lies and misleading truths of those around him, and the ultimate responsibility he has for the survival of the civilization that struggled so hard to endure in Planet of Exile. As one might expect, Le Guin threads all these stories with elements of the dualism and (communal) anarchism for which she is so well known.

While none of the novels in this volume supplants The Left Hand of Darkness as my favorite of the Cycle, they are all worth reading for their own sakes. I highly recommend reading them in a volume like this one that collects all three, given that they are more connected than the other novels of the Hainish Cycle (at least, that I have read so far). show less

Le Guin's first three Hainish novels collected in one spellbinding volume. For such short novels (the longest, City of Illusions, is barely 150 pages) Le Guin packs a hell of a lot of story, ideas and emotion into them. There is no feeling of a writer "finding her voice" here. These stories spring to life fully formed.

In Rocannon's World the sole survivor of a planetary survey mission must go on a quest to warn other worlds of the secret invasion by a deadly enemy. It's a simple enough trope - a group of people travelling across vast distances to do/find/fight something. But Le Guin fills the story with such pathos, especially at the end, that it is quite moving.

In Planet of Exile group of human colonists, abandoned to their own devices show more when the League of Worlds collapsed, must help a group of native hilfs (High Intelligence Lifeforms) fight off a marauding army of savages. Again the story is shot through with loss, and a real fight for survival. This is probably my favourite of the three.

In City of Illusions a man is found in the forests of Earth, naked and mindless and is nursed back to health and sanity. But he has no memory of his previous life. He must then go on a journey to the city of Es Toch, home of the alien Shing, who have conquered Man and destroyed the League of Worlds. But who is the man, where did he come from? The most convoluted of the three novels here, Le Guin packs the story with plot and, despite threatening to spiral out of control towards the end, manages to tie all the story strands up, the man, Falk, achieving some kind of victory.

The common denominator here is the brilliant prose. This is SF that is a pleasure to read, fully formed characters, logical plot development and weighty ideas. If you haven't read any Le Guin, or only know her Earthsea books, try some of her Science Fiction. This is the ideal place to start. Wonderful stuff. show less

These are the three backbone novels of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Series, and sweet jeebis they're pleasant to read! In each one Le Guin serves up a little bit of the shooting of the lazer guns, a little bit of the falling in love and getting busy, and a bucket full of the existential crisis of figuring out what it means to be human and how can people from different planets all be human together. I like feeling like I'm thinking about something important while I read about spaceships that can melt planets. I blame the paint chips. There are also baddass winged cats. And marauding barbarians. Le Guin is my hero.

There are 3 novellas or very short novels in this collection. The first is Rocannon's World about a scientist from a group called The League of All Worlds who is in the process of making second contact with a civilization on the planet when he realizes he has been cut off from the rest of the League, which can only mean that war has broken out and that The Enemy have come to this planet. The only thing he can try to do is break into the enemy's base to use their communication device to warn The League that the Enemy have come. The story becomes a fairly straightforward '70s adventure story, but I appreciated the little details here. Careful attention is placed on the anthropological details. I appreciated the way Rocannon's name is show more spelled when a native is pronouncing it versus how people from off-world spell it. The League has an interesting approach to these worlds, in that they do not want to interfere with the natural development of the people on these planets and don't introduce technology that could sway them in a particular direction. This story, and well, all of the stories to some extent could be considered space fantasy, because the civilization on this planet that Rocannon is involved in, uses swords and armor, ride flying cats, and believe prophecy more than science. But on his journey, Rocannon basically assimilates into the native culture, but his name become's legendary in the greater League culture. The second story is called Planet of Exile, and it was a bit shorter, about 100 pages in the edition I read. The story involves another group of League scientists trying to survive on a remote planet where the seasons are incredibly long, and an invading group from the Northern part of the planet is threatening to destroy their settlement along with another native group who is slightly allied with the League scientists. Again, the League scientists don't use technology from the League and are also cut off from communicating with the rest of the League. This story is crucial for the last book, because it shows how the League group and the natives are able to merge and survive instead of staying separate and dying out. The story was more brutal with its depictions of violence and war, distrust, and stereotyping. But it ended on a hopeful note. The third story, City of Illusions was very interesting, especially the last 20 or so pages. The story follows a man with no memory as he travels the continent of North America in an attempt to find the truth of who he is and what happened to him. He appears to be from off-world, but during his journey he becomes an Earthling in his heart. We meet the Enemy, the Shing, in this story and the true conflict between the two groups is very interesting to me. The Shing believe in Reverence For Life, and preach not killing any life. They have figured out how to lie using Mindspeech, a form of telepathy that all of the main characters have been able to use to some extent. The difference being that normally, you cannot lie when using it. You are sharing pure thought, intention, and emotion directly from your mind to another's mind, and lying is impossible, but the Shing have figured out a way to transmit falsehoods, and so they are able to take over, despite their smaller numbers, because they convince everyone that there is no war, there is no enemy, just rebels from the League, and that they, with their reverence for life doctrine, are better at being the leaders and unifying everyone. But their process for doing this is to limit the technology that people develop or use, and using a device to destroy a person's personality and memory, but keeping them alive, because they have the superior reverence for life. How the main character learned about this and overcame the enemy was very interesting and thought-provoking. All of the stories were interesting, but the third one was the best and more mature novel. I'm looking forward to diving further into the Hainish cycle. show less