Reading Ursula K Le Guin - Rocannon's World
Publisher - Ace
Published - 1966
Earth-scientist Rocannon has been leading an ethnological survey on a remote world populated by three native races: the cavern-dwelling Gdemiar, the elvish Fiia, and the warrior clan, Liuar. But when the technologically primitive planet is suddenly invaded by a fleet of ships from the stars, rebels against the League of All Worlds, Rocannon is the only survey member left alive. Marooned among alien peoples, he leads the battle to free this newly discovered world - and finds that legends grow around him as he fights.
So let me be honest and ashamed so far I’ve only read one book by Le Guin which I really enjoyed but it’s easy to forget books you meant to read sometimes as those TBRs grow. So this year I’m going to read Le Guin’s novels in publication order. Sometimes it is interesting to see how authors change over time.
We place these days so much attention on a debut and forget that for many of us what we do for the very first time is often bettered in the future. This is certainly true of Rocannon’s World where it’s innovative but at the same time I think misses opportunities for a much richer story.
We start with what is a very pseudo scientific dsecription of the races of a planet named Fomalhaut II and then quickly we follow Semley a noble of the planet who wants great riches. She goes on an epic quest below the ground and eventually to the mysterious StarLords who give it to her. But the journey has an unexpected high price reminiscent of fairy tales but with a SF rationale - thanks to travelling through near light speed relativity means her world has aged quite a bit.
It’s then revealed that the StarLords who are actually a race studying this world and part of one of the Galazy’s powers; one of these is a man named Rocannon. A battle with a powerful galactic enemy maroons him as the sole survivor of the mission and his only hope is to get to his enemy’s base and steal a comms machine to get help. Rocannon has to work with the various races of the world and battle for escape.
Ok if I said this could be read as Le Guin and her SF take on Lord of the Rings you may go oooh? But this book reminds me that debut authors are unlikely to hit it out of the park first try. This is a new author called Ursula K Le Guin not yet the giant of the genre so it’s a bit more hum drum than you may expect.
What does jump out is that already Le Guin is an eloquent and inventive author. her world is painted with colour rather than flat desert or mechanical cities I tend to think of from this period, she is not afraid to have the main race Rocannon meets as non-white and there is fun to be had as to which race is being turned into an SF equivalent of elves, dwarves and even vampires.
What though gets in the way is the plot is pretty much by the numbers. Its very fast. The finale is wrapped up in a final battle of just a few pages and ultimately the characters are flat as pancakes. We follow them, things happen and that wraps it all up. What was more interesting to me is how this world is just one of many being studied and sometimes enhanced by these greater and now warring powers putting worlds in danger they don’t understand. There is a really provocative idea of powerful worlds (nations) using other planets (countries) as strategic locations that they bring up to certain levels of technology in exchange for loyalty or riches. Its not hard to see the influence of 20th century Cold War politics on this idea. But sadly this appears to gets forgotten about instead we get many races visited across a dangerous world and meets people. It’s fun but it’s slight.
At best one of those book I could call signs of a promising author who I’d like to see what they do next…and happily for this project I will!
