Well deserving of its status as a classic, but the anagonists are a little too broadly charicatured compared to current SF. ( )

Reminded me a great deal of Heart of Darkness, and while still feeling very much Le Guin felt very different from other of her works I’ve read to date. The situation felt immediately recognizable as the hundreds of colonization events that have taken place on earth, with typical motivations and roles represented. It also evokes images of the Vietnam War, ongoing at the time it was written. Earth humans exhibit serious flaws and do serious damage. I did not want to put it down until finished. I wish I’d been exposed to it at the time it was written. ( )

I enjoyed the spectrum of perspectives and tone of this novella. Definitely going to explore more of the Hainish Cycle -- although goddammit that I've stumbled upon another "series". I, too, would be appalled to find instant communication available when I'd agreed to spend my career way off the central planet. ( )

2023-12-30: Right off the bat and I'm hating Davidson. Hopefully one of the natives will eat him shortly. I mean, if you can get his head out of his ass to teach him something that would be okay but it's pretty far up there.

2023-12-30: Chapter 2 changed to the viewpoint of a native and now it's getting better. It's clear that Davidson is the villain and that the Avatar folks probably own Le Guin some cash for telling the same story but with taller aliens.

2024-01-05: Still think the Avatar folks owe Le Guin some cash, maybe they at least gave her a nod for inspiration. A good read. I think the humans going away for 50 years was a bad plan. They should have said, "with your permission we'd like to have a few people hear so that we can trade knowledge".

The bigger thing though is for the humans to weed out ideas like Davison's. I think the thing that almost every book misses is that humanity isn't a genetic trait, it's learned. Humans would be much better off if we embraced, and taught, the idea that we are Pan Narrans, the storytelling ape, but that we can become Homo Sapiens, the wise man, through our actions. ( )

Not as depressing an ending as I thought it was going to be from the first 10-20% but still pretty miserable. The immediately obvious parallel is with European colonisation of North America - things change as the story moves on, of course, but it's obvious even down to things like the indigenous culture having sweat lodges. So you're already setting yourself up for a pretty heartbreaking story. Although weirdly I think you could almost accuse it of not doing justice to the parallel it sets up - the story is definitely tragic but the ending is nowhere near on the magnitude of what actually happened in real life. Which I'm glad of, obviously, but yeah. The book is pretty short so things move pretty fast - sometimes it feels like it's missing a big chunk of a longer book, but it's fine and goes on as long as it needs to tell the story.

Davidson is an excellent if really horrible portrayal of a hyper masculine/violent/racist/colonising man, his perspective sections are unsettling to read and I was glad there weren't more of them. He acts as the avatar for the transmission of the violence of Earth society, which is more the focus of the story than the physical colonisation - the creation of a cycle of violence, the shattering of the peaceful equilibrium that came before through greed and desire to own, control, dominate. The ending that the Earth humans have gone but the murder they've brought is around forever because it shattered everything that came before is pretty horrible to think about although the book doesn't give you time to dwell on it and the consequences. Le Guin's style is often kind of blunt and heavy handed which is fine for me but means she doesn't drag out the full implications of stuff. ( )