A short sci-fi novel from the late, great Ursula LeGuin, originally published in 1972. I discovered once I was part of the way through reading it that it is the fifth in a cycle of books she set in the same universe, none of which I have read before, but that didn’t seem to matter. It is a very frank portrayal of Earth-human colonial conduct towards related but physiologically and culturally distinct humans (very clearly constructed in the book as “Indigenous”) whom they discover on another planet and whose resources they covet. Different chapters are written from the viewpoint of a highly reactionary colonial soldier, a ‘liberal’ settler who serves the colonial process as an anthropologist and who works from a place of conflicted but genuine care to understand the people of this world, and a colonized man who becomes central to the resistance. Showing these different perspectives, and particularly the differences in worldview across the “settler/native” divide as well as the impact of the colonial encounter is, I think, the key work of the book. I’d be interested to read Indigenous critiques of it. I don’t doubt that there’s lots to be critical of, despite the book’s clearly anti-colonial orientation. But other than the fact that LeGuin is too soft on the anthropologist – it may be relevant both to the sophistication of the book as a whole and to that particular soft spot that her father was a famous anthropologist – I’m not sure what the content of such a critique might be. Very glad I read it. Would recommend!
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.