The Word for World is Forest

hardcover, 189 pages

Published Sept. 8, 2010 by Tor / Science Fiction Book Club, Tor Science Fiction Book Club.

ISBN:
978-1-61129-318-0
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4 stars (7 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,” …

19 editions

Mais relevante do que nunca

5 stars

(original com links → sol2070.in/2024/04/floresta-e-o-nome-do-mundo-ursula-le-guin/ )

"Floresta é o Nome do Mundo" (The Word for World Is Forest, 1972) é uma das consagradas ficções da imortal Ursula K. Le Guin. Ganhou o prêmio Hugo, talvez os mais importante da literatura de ficção científica. Como o nome e capa (da bela edição da Morro Branco) sugerem, é uma história ecológica.

Hoje, 52 anos depois da publicação, a sinopse pode soar batida: homens com as piores intenções aterrizam num planeta de natureza prístina e são confrontados pelo povo nativo alienígena. Como em Avatar, a tragédia básica por trás desse contexto interestelar é a velha e recorrente exploração geno-ecocida — também muito viva fora da ficção, principalmente em regiões onde ainda há florestas e indígenas, como o Brasil.

O que faz toda a diferença é Le Guin, com sua sutil sensibilidade para interações entre corações e mentes, o olhar mágico da natureza e …

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 …

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.

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.

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