Hainish Novels and Stories

Library of America

[Hainish Novels & Stories boxed set] [Vol. 1] [Vol. 2]
at Powell’s Bookstore

Tables of Contents

Awards

Locus Award: Best Collection

2017 Locus Recommended Reading List

Interviews

“Pure imagining,” within limits: Ursula K. Le Guin on The Hainish Novels & Stories, at Library of America.

Le Guin: At this rate, if I don’t watch out, I may begin feeling respectable: a terrible fate for an artist.

Powell's Interview: Ursula K. Le Guin, Author of The Hainish Novels and Stories, by Mary Jo Schimelpfenig, at Powell’s website.

About the Ansible

From the Introduction to Volume Two

Long ago I made up the ansible, a device that would permit people light-years apart to talk to one another without interval. Most science-fictional spaceships go much faster than light (FTL), but mine stolidly obey Einstein, going only nearly as fast as light (NAFAL). Travel through the Hainish galaxy involves the Einsteinian paradoxes of time dilation. The traveler in a NAFAL ship traversing the distance of a hundred light-years experiences the interval between departure and arrival as very brief, perhaps an hour or two, while on the home world and the destination more than a century is passing. Such gaps in relative time would forbid any continuous interchange of information between worlds. This is why FTL is so popular: you really can’t have a Galactic War without it. I didn’t want a war, but I did want my worlds to be able to talk with one another, so in 1966 I introduced the ansible. Later on, I met its inventor, Shevek, the temporal physicist in The Dispossessed, who could explain the principles on which it functions much better than I can. I’m pleased that several other science fiction writers have found the ansible useful — stealing ideas is plagiarism, but both art and science function by sharing them.

Around 1990 I was allured by the notion of transilience, the transfer of a physical body from one point in space-time to another without interval. The Cetian word for it is churten*. From time to time it has, as it were, been done. Madeleine L‘Engle called it a wrinkle in time. Sometimes I think my cat churtens downstairs, but I do not know how he does it. My stories about churtening indicate that, even after doing it, nobody is certain how they did it or that it can be done more than once in the same way. In this it much resembles life.

* ”The Shobies’ Story,” ”Dancing to Ganam,” and “Another Story, or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea.” All are in Volume 2 of the Library of America Hainish Novels and Stories.

Around the corner from the revolution: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish stories

by Brian Attebery

“I was struck not only by how good they are but how important, which is a harder thing to articulate....” [Complete article at LoA]

Story of the Week

“The Day Before the Revolution” — Story of the Week from Hainish Novels & Stories at Library of America.

Endpapers for The Hainish Novels and Stories

Gethen Map by UKL
Colorization by Donna G. Brown

List of Known Hainish Worlds by Donna G. Brown, LoA.

Reviews

• Always coming home: The remarkable science fiction universe of Ursula K. Le Guin gets a reboot with a new boxed set, by Bibek Bhattacharya, at livemint.com

  2 December 2017

  
  
• Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Novels and Stories from Library of America, at The Once and Future Podcast.
  
  “This set would be the perfect holiday gift for a Le Guin fan or even a science fiction fan in general. No reader of SF should go without reading at least one Ursula K. Le Guin book, and this set is a wonderful package of stories that can be read again and again.”

  30 October 2017

  
  
• The Library of America Canonizes Ursula K. Le Guin’s Science Fiction in The Hainish Novels & Stories, by Ceridwen Christensen
  
  “Gorgeous. . . . A landmark release. . . . Working though the leap-frogging galactic history of The Hainish Novels & Stories illuminates another kind of history: one of a writer creating and returning to an invented past and future, again and again; a history as long as imagination, and as deep as craft.”

  18 September 2017

  
  
• Sci-Fi Author Ursula LeGuin’s Stories of Class War, Religious Dissension, Identity Politics and More, by John L. Murphy.
  
  “No matter what ignites the dynamic fusion of thought and action in her Hainish fictions, Le Guin generates provocative and intelligent considerations of complex forces. A tribute to her craft, these elegant volumes combine into a welcome set for loners, introverts, and the rest of us.”

  17 September 2017

  
  
• 27 Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Books to Read in September, by John DeNardo. Review of The Hainish Novels & Stories at Kirkus Reviews. “There's a lot more to say about this gem....”
  
  [Hainish Novels & Stories boxed set] [Vol. 1] [Vol. 2] at Powell’s Bookstore

  31 August 2017

  
  
• The Hainish Novels & Stories previewed at Book Riot.
  
  “The elegant black and white LOA editions are a far cry from these old colorful paperbacks. I wonder if Ursula K. Le Guin imagined back then a future of literary acceptance — or was that too much of a fantasy even to be science fiction?” — James Wallace Harris
  
  23 August 2017