The Word for World Is Forest

by Ursula K. Le Guin

mass market paperback, 169 pages

Published Nov. 30, 1976 by Berkley.

ISBN:: 978-0-425-03279-4
OCLC Number:: 1028957200

(3 reviews)

Centuries in the future, Terrans have established a logging colony & military base named “New Tahiti” on a tree-covered planet whose small, green-furred, big-eyed inhabitants have a culture centered on lucid dreaming. Terran greed spirals around native innocence & wisdom, overturning the ancient society.

Humans have learned interstellar travel from the Hainish (the origin-planet of all humanoid races, including Athsheans). Various planets have been expanding independently, but during the novel it’s learned that the League of All Worlds has been formed. News arrives via an ansible, a new discovery. Previously they had been cut off, 27 light years from home.

The story occurs after The Dispossessed, where both the ansible & the League of Worlds are unrealised. Also well before Planet of Exile, where human settlers have learned to coexist. The 24th century has been suggested.

Terran colonists take over the planet locals call Athshe, meaning “forest,” rather than “dirt,” …

Terran colonists take over the planet locals call Athshe, meaning “forest,” rather than “dirt,” like their home planet Terra. They follow the 19th century model of colonization: felling trees, planting farms, digging mines & enslaving indigenous peoples. The natives are unequipped to comprehend this. They’re a subsistence race who rely on the forests & have no cultural precedent for tyranny, slavery or war. The invaders take their land without resistance until one fatal act sets rebellion in motion & changes the people of both worlds forever.

18 editions

Fionnáin reviewed The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

Learning nonviolence

3 stars

I don't generally enjoy science fiction, and although I do love Ursula le Guin's theory and ideas I have never managed to finish any of her books before this one. Her writing is good, but I find that science fiction often gets too tied up in hammering home its analogies without remembering to tell a good story. The Word for World is Forest does not have this problem.

Ostensibly, this is a novel about two races of human. The first are Terrans (from Earth) who have landed on a distant planet and are cutting down its rich forested surface because there is no wood left on Earth. The other are Athsheans, who are colonised, enslaved in all but name, and are being forced to live their lives in a "terran" way by sleeping at night and working in the daytime, for example. The book weaves in the injustices of settler …

Although at times the book goes to great lengths to hammer its messages home, it remains interesting enough throughout. The real strength is in the way it presents "otherness". The Athsheans call their world "forest", and so all life comes from trees, just as terrans call their world "earth" as they are promethean, born from clay. Terrans cannot "dream" like the Athsheans without using hallucinogenics, and violence, once introduced as an idea to their society, cannot be unlearned.

Some of the analogies are unresolved. For example, all of the main characters are male, and no female character is given any prominent voice. Le Guin was not a writer who did things accidentally, but it's not clear whether she was critiquing how women are portrayed in similar novels, or how violence is a male obsession, or something else. Irrespective, this is still worthwhile, contemplative and an enjoyable book.

bookafnd reviewed Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

trees

5 stars

it's a fairly short and straightforward story about resistance to colonization, but embedded in it is a kind of complicated discussion about the legitimacy of violence. It seems like it was in part a commentary on the Vietnam War (which is even alluded to at one point).

Don Davidson is one of the more thoroughly unpleasant viewpoint characters I've read; fortunately he is meant to be villainous, & at any rate it's only from his point of view for about a third of the book. His motivation, worldview & actions are disturbing but accurate for a certain sort of man.

tastytea reviewed Das Wort für Welt ist Wald by Ursula K. Le Guin

Krieg im wald

4 stars

Das buch behandelt kolonialismus, hat also viele sehr gewalttätige und rassisitische szenen. Die geschichte ist eigentlich ganz einfach: 2 gruppen menschen, die in sehr verschiedenen umgebungen aufgewachsen sind, treffen aufeinander und hauen sich die köppe ein. Trotzdem war es spannend zu lesen, denn die Athsheaner haben eine interessante art, an die dinge heranzugehen.