The Word for World is Forest

189 pages

English language

Published July 6, 2010 by Tor.

ISBN:
978-0-7653-2464-1
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4 stars (6 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,” …

22 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 …

(Anti-)Colonialism in Space

4 stars

A novella about colonialism and fighting it, but also about ecology, indigenous knowledges, dreaming and waking, perception and reality, and hope in the face of seemingly overwhelming power.

LeGuin is scarily good at making colonialism tangible from both the perspective of the colonised and the coloniser, and she's doing so in her usual unpretentious and precise way.

After reading lots of white male apolitical hard sci-fi, this was a breath of fresh air – or, as the Athsheans would put it, sanity.

Highly recommended.

Review of 'Word for World Is Forest' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

I love Le Guin's writing but don't think this is up with her best. It's a very angry novella; raging against conolialism (obviously inspired by the Vietnam war). From the author's note at the beginning it sounds like it was written in a rush and that means the characters are one dimensional (especially the villain) and there isn't much structure to the story. The Athsean's dream culture is interesting though, and the final downbeat message is important. 

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.