Rocannon's World

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Rocannon's World
Author	Ursula K. Le Guin
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science Fiction
Publisher	Ace Books
Publication date	1966
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
ISBN	NA
OCLC	9159033
Followed by	Planet of Exile (1966)

Rocannon's World was Ursula K. Le Guin's first novel. It was published in 1966 as an Ace Double, along with Avram Davidson's The Kar-Chee Reign. Though it is one of Le Guin's many works set in the universe of the technological Hainish Cycle, the story itself has many elements of heroic fantasy. The hero Rocannon encounters lords who live in castles and wield swords, and other races much like fairies and gnomes, in his travels on a backward planet. It may be classified as science fantasy or planetary romance.

It was republished in 1978 along with Planet of Exile and City of Illusions in a volume called Three Hainish Novels and in 1994 with the same novels as Worlds of Exile and Illusion.

[edit] Plot summary

[edit] Semley's story

The novel begins with a prologue called "Semley's Necklace", which was previously published as a stand-alone story. A young woman named Semley takes a space voyage from her unnamed, technologically primitive planet to a museum to reclaim a family heirloom, not realizing that, while the trip will be of short duration for her, many years will elapse on her planet. She returns to find her daughter grown up and her husband dead.

The story in effect combines the Rip Van Winkle-type fairy tale—where a person goes underground in the company of dwarves or elves, spending an apparently brief time but on emerging finding whole generations had elapsed—with modern science fiction having the same effect through relativity and traveling at near-light velocities.

In the story, the planet's “dwarves” live underground and have an early industrial society that (unlike industrial societies in Earth's history) doesn't interfere with the less-developed societies on the surface. The interstellar society of the Ekumen has placed an automated spaceship at the dwarves' disposal, with which Semley travels. Semley descends into the dwarves' tunnels, like Rip van Winkle, from where she makes the flight - and returns after a generation due to relativistic time dilation.

[edit] Rocannon's story

The novel then follows Rocannon, an ethnologist who meets Semley at the museum. He later goes on a mission to search her planet for the base of an enemy of the League of All Worlds - a young world named Faraday, which embarked on a career of interstellar war and conquest, and which chose this "primitive" world as the location of a secret base. After the enemy destroys his ship and his companions, Rocannon sets out to find their base.

However, with his advanced means of transport destroyed, he must have recourse to those used by the locals - mainly, on the back of the carnivorous "windsteeds" (see depiction on cover) though on some occasions reduced to simple walking. His long and dangerous quest, undertaken with loyal companions from a local culture, takes him through many lands, encountering various cultures and species and facing numerous threats having nothing to do with the one he intends to confront - and increasingly, as the plot progresses, impact on his personality and make him more attuned to the planet's culture and changed from the interstellar sophisticate he had been.

Finally, after suffering much loss and bereavement, he does reach the enemy's stronghold, in the center of an area which they have throughly despoiled and depopulated. Six ships are ready to set out and sow death and destruction througout the League of All Worlds, with fanatic pilots ready to sacrifice their lives (since life cannot survive the instantaneous travel).

Rocannon reverts from the effective role of a Bronze Age hero, into which he had been increasingly pushed during most of the book, back to being the resourceful operative of an interstellar civilization. Infiltrating the enemy base he unobtrusively uses an ansible (instantaneous communication device) in one of the parked ships to alert his people. An unmanned vessel destroys the installation after Rocannon got away. Having some telepathic ability, Rocannon must feel what he had done: "(...)The knowledge in his own flesh of the death of thousand men all in one moment. Death, death, death over and over and yet all at once in one moment in his one body and brain. And after it, silence."

Like LeGuin's later protagonist Ged in "The Farthest Shore", Rocannon had completely consumed himself in the quest and in this final act of necessary destruction and killing. There are left to him a few years of retirement, surrounded by sympathetic people and with a loving woman at his side. Since life cannot survive the instantaneous travel, a manned rescue ship - restricted to relativistic travel below light speed - arrives only after he has lived out his life among Semley's people, and finding "The people of Breyga mourning for their lord, and his widow, tall and fair-haired, wearing a great blue jewel set in gold at her throat" (i.e., Semley's Necklace from which everything started).