City of Illusions by Ursula K Le Guin

Oh, okay. I get it. This is the book where Le Guin becomes Le Guin. Earlier she has touched on some ideas about politics, gender, the role of science or creativity, and interesting characters. But never to the depth I know she achieves later in her career. Here, in this novel, she finally does. Though it’s not shown all the way through the novel. And it’s not quite brilliant yet. But hey, it’s the switch I was waiting for.

Hope is a slighter, tougher thing even than trust, he thought, pacing his room as the soundless, vague lightning flashed overhead. In a good season one trusts life; in a bad season one only hopes, But they are of the same essence: they are the mind's indispensable relationship with other minds, with the world, and with time. Without trust, a man lives, but not a human life; without hope, he dies. When there is no relationship, where hands do not touch, emotion atrophies in void and intelligence goes sterile and obsessed. Between men the only link left is that of owner to slave, or murderer to victim.

And this change occurs over a single page within this novel. It might be halfway through, three-quarters through, two-thirds through—somewhere around there—where the novel flips a switch and later Le Guin writing suddenly appears. No slow growth leads to it. She starts with a fantasy/science fiction quest storyline by now familiar from the two prior novels. Here, Falk, a forgotten man who has forgotten everything, resurrects in the forest, learns to be human, and then returns to the only place from where he could have come to find answers about his past, including whether he came from there. The book focuses on Falk’s journey. And that journey allows the only hint at Le Guin’s later complexity: Falk explores the world, showing states of humanity—small kingdoms, cowboy cults, forest houses filled with inbred families. These heights of human culture exist so far fallen from us in their post-apocalyptic American midwest. Their variety of natures fascinate while tending towards primitive, a variety that hints at Le Guin’s later writing. She’s known for depth of discussion from multiple viewpoints, and here we start to get multiple viewpoints on primitivization, though it takes most of the book in the slow telling.

Fish and visitors stink after three days.

And then Falk gets to the city he seeks, and he gets jumped by a bunch of goons. This is where Le Guin starts: writing character, delving deeper into themes, exploring them from different points of view at the same time instead of slowly over two thirds of the novel. At one point, her main character simultaneously has four minds within his own, so she kind of has to include multiple viewpoints. But boy does she run with it! Even before Falk inhabits minds with three other characters, he’s introspective and moody and allowed to ruminate deeply. Where I had begun contemplating whether I bored of Falk and his journey, suddenly everything happens all at once. And it’s a bit of a mess. She’s not the best at writing complex things right off the bat here. But it feels like the other shoe dropping: it’s a relief as a reader who started on later Le Guin novels. What great heights really start to be forged here. Emphasis on start to be. It’s a touch confused and confusing, but it’s passionate and breathtaking and it reads more like The Dispossessed than Rocannon’s World.

I am no more lonely than the loon on the pond that laughs so loud.

The biggest problem with the novel should be apparent from what I said above: this novel reads like two novellas shoved together. The awakening and journey, and the rest. And this shift is awkward. To me, it felt like the other shoe dropping only because I started with later Le Guin books, but I would not have enjoyed it as much if I hadn’t.

Was he leaving home, or going home?

The themes are sanctity of life, lying, the Tao Te Ching, and the earth being over run by humanoid aliens that keep humans primitive for no apparent gain. Le Guin states that lying is bad, and shows some examples. The aliens are clear monsters, and the main liars in the tale, and she uses a few examples of them and views about them. The Tao not only acts as a talisman in the novel, but informs much of the words with this constant light-dark interplay, the consistent illusion-reality discussion. For instance, the bomb bird looks like a bird, but is a bomb, putting Falk onto the ground instead of his air-transportation. Also, the walls of the city are clear but not, projections and windows being indistinguishable. And of course, the illusion of a lie and the reality of a truth.

Seen rightly, any situation, even a chaos or a trap would come clear and lead of itself to its one proper outcome: for there is in the long run no disharmony, only misunderstanding, no chance or mischance but only the ignorant eye.

But she also uses the lying aliens’ lionization of the sanctity of life to question their reasons for illusion, which she blames on anxiety over the biological necessity of death. This strong critique sounds contemporary today, almost fifty years later, as it is trendy to do anything that could result in a longer life, even at the expense of enjoying the moment and the life you have now. But her earlier critique of the sanctity of life—through having Falk murder somebody right in front of the alien representative sent to bring him in—seems at odds with this later, more interesting critique. Like I said, she somewhat confuses the theme. But when she looks at the themes from different viewpoints, by using different characters, she wrinkles the theme instead of confusing it. So, Falk’s ruminations on the origin of alien obsession with life, and his sudden murder of another human are at odds with each other. While her later discussion of the sanctity of life through multiple viewpoints seems more even handed, the former murder acts to counterpoint this even handedness. And by placing the whole on her reader’s same earth, she runs the risk of sounding mean spirited instead of interested.

Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself. Do not kill was the Shing's vaunted single Law. All else was permitted: which meant, perhaps, there was little else they really wanted to do.

The other main problem is lack of explanation. What do the aliens get out of keeping humans down? Jollies? Self-worth? Are they proselytizing? Where in later books Le Guin seems to know which questions need to be answered, here she slides over things that she has built up too much and they seem more like plot holes. Why so much talk about primitivization with no real conclusion? This is a dropped ball. Likewise, Estrel goes away as suddenly as she appeared, despite spending so much time on-screen and being so influential to Falk. This shows a missed opportunity more than a necessary focusing of the novel—especially as it happens after Le Guin has so widely expanded the scope of the novel. Falk stays alive, yet forgets about the house in the forest as much as Le Guin does.

"Oh fool, oh desolation!" said the Prince of Kansas. "Ill give you ten women to accompany you to the Place of the Lie, with lutes and flutes and tambourines and contraceptive pills. I'll give you five good friends armed with firecrackers. I'll give you a dog—in truth I will, a living extinct dog, to be your true companion. Do you know why dogs died out? Because they were loyal, because they were trusting. Go alone, man!"

So, this is a good book, and the one where Le Guin really starts to flex her writing. And after she does start to flex, boy does this book become engrossing. Yet, issues remain within both the book and that second half that hold it back from achieving the greatness that Le Guin will become known for. This is the first time her writing can be great, but she wasn’t able to match story structure to that greatness quite yet. Six novels later, the structure of The Dispossessed—where every other chapter works either towards or away from the first chapter—explores a similarly split narrative with but solves the structural issues I have with this book. Two novels later, The Left Hand of Darkness includes a slow journey but puts it at the end of the novel where I already care about the characters. It shows that Le Guin learned from this admittedly enjoyable book, and wrote even better later. She also translated the Tao Te Ching and used it extensively throughout this work, which should probably be noted.

Planet of Exile by Ursula K Le Guin

Ursula K Le Guin splits her focus very well: in this second-published novel, on a different world than the earlier Rocannon’s World, she continues the technique of telling a story focused on the planet and characters. But not totally focused. In Rocannon, we see the noblewoman retrieving her necklace from a museum lightyears away, which takes only a couple of pages, and the rest of the story takes place on-scene, boots on the ground, in situ. And Le Guin ensures that even when the outside context intrudes again, at the end, Rocannon’s destroying the rebels’ interstellar base happens on the world that would come to take his name. This focusing of the story allows so much.
—First, don’t show the monster—the one writing “rule” I have ever been accused of advocating for. In other words, allow space for the reader’s imagination to fill in, but give enough hints that you can guide their imagination towards horrifying or beautiful or whatever you want them to think of. Le Guin does this with her wider Hainish Universe. She drops hints and statements about the wider universe, and lets the reader wonder. I appreciate not being spoonfed.
—Yet it ultimately allows her to focus on the story she is interested in writing, the one here discussing preparations for hibernation over a fifteen year long winter. In other words, instead of building characters, the world, and the wider universe, she focuses her writing on building the first two, and barely mentions the third in order to keep the story moving and allow depth of exploration. This focus clearly keeps me engaged in her story.
—Though she does “split her focus”, the slight split merely allows wonder and depth, while helping the reader focus on what’s important to the story at hand. She doesn’t bite off more than her talent or story can chew, but she also doesn't ignore the wider context.

What is hard is to keep alive on a world you don't belong to.

Again, like the earlier book, Le Guin shows and doesn’t tell. She didn’t tell me that Rocannon is compassionate, and here she doesn’t tell me that Umaksuman is a pragmatist. But I see it over and over again through Umaksuman’s actions. And because he never acts to contradict that aspect of his personality, it is clear to the reader. The one time he seems to contradict this, it is later explained as a misunderstanding on the part of a character in great pain who couldn’t quite tell what was going on.

Wold felt sorry for him, as he often did for young men, who have not seen how passion and plan over and over are wasted, how their lives and acts are wasted between desire and fear.

The themes here focus on the ubi sunt motif of English literature. The colony of “farborn”, or people from another planet, remember little of life before the six hundred earth-years they have been on-planet. The begin to doubt even their own records. Their abandonment has left them essentially native, but differences in genetic code mean that they are unable to breed and integrate with the main populace of the planet, though politics, myth, and custom also interfere. Set against the invasion of migrating northern tribes, the Gaal, this ubi sunt motif doesn’t drive the story so much as the characters themselves.
—But this book also starts to show Le Guin’s tendency to allow multiple themes comfortable room in her book. Racial issues, custom, politics, love, death, Wold as Hrothgar, an aged king in a warrior culture who hasn’t been usurped yet.

She the stranger, the foreigner, of alien blood and mind, did not share his power or his conscience or his knowledge or his exile. She shared nothing at all with him, but had met him and joined with him wholly and immediately across the gulf of their great difference: as if it were that difference, the alienness between them, that let them meet, and that in joining them together, freed them.

The writing here improves over her earlier novel, simply by being more readable. There are less awkward phrases to pause over, as Le Guin starts to find her voice. But the book is largely another pulp fiction adventure tale about a besieged city populated by two slightly antagonistic tribes, filled with relics of the past, and being attacked by both winter and the united Gaal tribes.

Neither grief nor pride had so much truth in them as did joy, the joy that trembled in the cold wind between sky and sea, bright and brief as fire.

One other strength here is Le Guin’s consistent worldbuilding. This world has an orbit of 60 earth years, meaning that each season is 15 years long. Le Guin allows this to influence the story and characters in believable, consistent ways. Instead of translating everything to earth years, she points out the difference a couple of times, then stops, letting the reader fill in the translation or get drawn into the world built by starting to think like these people. Yet it’s not an unfamiliar thinking—these are nomadic farmers preparing for winter, just a 15 year winter. It’s known to us, how to prepare for winter when your resource gathering area is as far as you can walk, but it’s multiplied by the length of the winter. So, instead of taking something from far out of human conception and forcing it down her reader’s throat, she merely multiplies a known historical process, and this lends the whole legibility.

In the big, crowded, noisy room where golden suns swam on the walls and the years and Years were told on golden dials, he searched for the alien, the stranger, his wife.

It’s a good book. I really enjoyed reading it. But, again, it’s not as strong as Le Guin’s later mastery. It shows her steadily improving, especially in storytelling as this isn’t a split narrative but one whole narrative from start to finish. This book even begins to show her later strengths as a writer more than her first novel did. I’m impressed, even if it still isn’t deep enough for me in the themes it discusses, or broad enough in the viewpoints on those themes.

The Diary of a Nobody by George and Wheedon Grossmith

I knew nothing about this book, other than that it was a Punch novel, when I picked it up. I quickly found that the main character was the crux of the book here. Whether I find him funny or annoying clearly influences whether I find the book funny or annoying as a whole.

Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see—because I do not happen to be a ‘Somebody’—why my diary should not be interesting. My only regret is that I did not commence it when I was a youth.

And there’re layers to it here, like an onion, you know? With Pooter and humor, there is variety.
—For instance, Pooter knows he doesn’t tell good jokes, he accepts this about himself, yet he is happy when he does tell a joke that works for him. It’s kind of the best he can hope for with his limited intellect and social reach. To himself, he is rarely funny, but when he happens to joke it’s the funniest thing ever, and he has to repeat himself so everybody can share his pleasure.

I said: “A very extraordinary thing has struck me.” “Something funny, as usual,” said Cummings. “Yes,” I replied; “I think even you will say so this time. It’s concerning you both; for doesn’t it seem odd that Gowing’s always coming and Cummings’ always going?” Carrie, who had evidently quite forgotten about the bath, went into fits of laughter, and as for myself, I fairly doubled up in my chair, till it cracked beneath me. I think this was one of the best jokes I have ever made.

—To his friends, Pooter is rarely funny, but he’s such a constant, loyal, dependable man that they put up with his lack of humor. He also shines slightly too dimly to get their insults of him, or is so full of propriety seriousness that he will not acknowledge their insults, so they freely insult him to his face with no repercussions, which amuses them. To them, he is mostly just funny as the butt of their jokes.

It was very late when Carrie and I got home; but on entering the sitting-room I said: “Carrie, what do you think of Mr. Hardfur Huttle?” She simply answered: “How like Lupin!” The same idea occurred to me in the train. The comparison kept me awake half the night. Mr. Huttle was, of course, an older and more influential man; but he was like Lupin, and it made me think how dangerous Lupin would be if he were older and more influential. I feel proud to think Lupin does resemble Mr. Huttle in some ways. Lupin, like Mr. Huttle, has original and sometimes wonderful ideas; but it is those ideas that are so dangerous. They make men extremely rich or extremely poor. They make or break men. I always feel people are happier who live a simple unsophisticated life. I believe I am happy because I am not ambitious.

—To Carrie, Pooter is to be laughed both at and with. She loves laughing at the jokes about him, and some of the jokes he makes. But she abhors the funny situations that happen to Pooter, as they usually reflect poorly on her as well. Like when he collapses on the dance floor. And truly, this beautiful relationship is a major highlight of the book—their mutual tenderness, understanding, and forbearance is touching.

Charlie dear, it is I who have to be proud of you. And I am very, very proud of you. You have called me pretty; and as long as I am pretty in your eyes, I am happy. You, dear old Charlie, are not handsome, but you are good, which is far more noble.

—To Lupin, Pooter represents a sort of tragic comedy. He is annoyed by Pooter more than anything, so he laughs at who Pooter is, and what happens to his father. He’s the only one I noticed really kicking his legs up in the air over the misfortunes of his father—except society as a whole, who mostly just laughs at what happens to Pooter. But Lupin also appreciates and loves his father in a way society doesn't seem to.

Lupin burst out laughing, and, in the most unseemly manner, said: “Alas, poor Cummings. He’ll lose £35.” At that moment there was a ring at the bell. Lupin said: “I don’t want to meet Cummings.” If he had gone out of the door he would have met him in the passage, so as quickly as possible Lupin opened the parlour window and got out. Gowing jumped up suddenly, exclaiming: “I don’t want to see him either!” and, before I could say a word, he followed Lupin out of the window. For my own part, I was horrified to think my own son and one of my most intimate friends should depart from the house like a couple of interrupted burglars.

These separate characters help to inform the brothers Grossmith’s view of humor, showing that humor arises from the interactions of people and people, or people and their environment. The brothers further give us examples of humor that offer a broad spectrum read of the subject—am I comfortable with how Lupin treats his father? With how Carrie does? With how his friends do? With how he treats himself? I contemplated these questions while reading this book, and they’re interesting to me.

April 11.—Mustard-and-cress and radishes not come up yet. To-day was a day of annoyances. I missed the quarter-to-nine ’bus to the City, through having words with the grocer’s boy, who for the second time had the impertinence to bring his basket to the hall-door, and had left the marks of his dirty boots on the fresh-cleaned door-steps. He said he had knocked at the side door with his knuckles for a quarter of an hour. I knew Sarah, our servant, could not hear this, as she was upstairs doing the bedrooms, so asked the boy why he did not ring the bell? He replied that he did pull the bell, but the handle came off in his hand.

Who is Charles Pooter? Well, he’s a lower class man who hangs onto upper crust-isms, proprieties. Flights of fancy take Pooter away from what he knows, like when he paints the bathtub red, and yet he thinks that he is above reproach, able to resist anything he doesn’t agree with. For instance, he puts his foot down on seances, eventually. But the reader gets a kick out of his not putting a foot down earlier than he does—five nights in a row at the table seancing before he puts his foot down. Really, he can "resist anything except temptation", to quote another comic work from the period. And this humor was most poignant to me: that which pointed out the difference between Pooter’s view of reality and what reality actually was at the time. I mean, a hundred pounds a year raise is the greatest thing ever to him, and at exchange rates, that’s fifteen thousand dollars in today’s money. That’s a lot! Yet he spends it on a piece of glass for the fireplace, then still buys the cheapest champagne, and pinches pennies everywhere he can. His son Lupin comes into money too, hires a trap, and then gives it up shortly thereafter—confirming Pooter’s thriftiness in Pooter's own head. This perception-reality intersection is delightful. And the interaction with the American journalist seems the most revealing scene to me. Maybe the key to the whole book, or at least this thread of reality and perception within the book. Pooter is revealed as incompetent, and yet appreciative of the arguments the journalist raises. Yet he doesn’t take offence when he is roasted, just when others are roasted. He self-consciously denies a good joke at anothers' expense. Does he realize he is being roasted? Probably. Does his view of himself allow him to feel roasted? Probably. But he will not countenance it with a comment or sink to that level.

He then walked round the table and kissed all the ladies, including Carrie. Of course one did not object to this; but I was more than staggered when a young fellow named Moss, who was a stranger to me, and who had scarcely spoken a word through dinner, jumped up suddenly with a sprig of misletoe, and exclaimed: “Hulloh! I don’t see why I shouldn’t be on in this scene.” Before one could realise what he was about to do, he kissed Carrie and the rest of the ladies. Fortunately the matter was treated as a joke, and we all laughed; but it was a dangerous experiment, and I felt very uneasy for a moment as to the result. I subsequently referred to the matter to Carrie, but she said: “Oh, he’s not much more than a boy.” I said that he had a very large moustache for a boy. Carrie replied: “I didn’t say he was not a nice boy.”

Through my research, there seems to be universal love for this work, after about 1910, and I wonder why. I think it’s funny, of course, but the language and specifics being discussed tend to go over my head. I wish I had found an annotated copy to read my first go around, so I could understand what a scraper is, for instance. The time-gap between when it was written and now is brutal on some of the humor. Most of the arguments I read online point to this book as some sort of literary turning point, some refocusing of literary comedy on normal people, not upper crust assholes. I don’t know enough about literature in the time period, but I do know Chaucer and Shakespeare, and these two old white dudes definitely engaged normal people as characters, even as unreliable narrators. But did they do so in the same way? Yes, and no. No, because Pooter is the narrator of his own tale—I think Chaucer's Italian frame-narrative is somewhat different here. And yes, because these breaks between perception and reality are certainly still present. The wife of Bath, for instance, acts as if reality is different than it is. So, I’m not sure I buy the critical narrative about this book being some watershed for the normal man. But it’s a good book I enjoyed reading and rereading. Even if I feel my appreciation would grow more with more understanding of the context. An annotated copy certainly helps a lot.

Never in my life have I ever been so insulted; the cabman, who was a rough bully and to my thinking not sober, called me every name he could lay his tongue to, and positively seized me by the beard, which he pulled till the tears came into my eyes. I took the number of a policeman (who witnessed the assault) for not taking the man in charge. The policeman said he couldn’t interfere, that he had seen no assault, and that people should not ride in cabs without money.

[In discussion with friends, we came to a conclusion that this book was probably right time, right place. Published at the cusp of the lower-middle class ballooning in size and influence, this likable character from that class became influential. He's full of himself and propriety, and this seriousness is largely poked fun at, yet he's dependable and loyal, traits which reward him throughout the book with a good marriage, a workable relationship with his son, more money, and ownership of his own house. This may influence online arguments for this book being a watershed or hinge point in literary history.]

Rocannon's World by Ursula K Le Guin

The fact that Le Guin goes from this pulp fiction, science fiction, adventure tale on a fantasy planet to The Left Hand of Darkness in three years of publishing staggers me. The amount of work put into her writing impresses. But, come on, let’s talk about this book alone before the context.

Here, in her first published novel, Le Guin writes a science fiction adventure tale on a fantasy planet. The plot is simple: a beautiful native woman receives the curiosity of a lightyears distant scientist (Rocannon) when she shows up demanding an artifact from his museum as her cultural heritage, he then finds the research on her planet and people woefully under-cooked, he travels there to research with a team, then they’re ambushed by an interstellar rebellion and he has to hero’s quest his way through legends and myths of the world to find his unsuspecting enemy and get revenge, acceptance, a place in the world. Look, the plot rests on the tired standard of heroes questing, but she doesn’t muddle her language the way CJ Cherryh did with her slightly similar first-novel, Gate of Ivrel. Le Guin’s writing is clear and effective, but never anything spectacular.

"What I feel..." Rocannon began.
"Well?" Ketho inquired hoarsely, after a long pause.
"What I feel sometimes is that I ... meeting these people from worlds we know so little of, you know, sometimes ... that I have as it were blundered through the corner of a legend, of a tragic myth, maybe, which I do not understand."

Structurally, the book takes a turn after that initial noblewoman goes crazy and runs off into the woods from the lightyear time dilation. This shift is followed by Rocannon’s arrival, the revolutionaries' ambush, and the hero’s quest storyline. This shift almost works, because that noblewoman’s quest for the necklace was also a hero’s quest of a sort, and because Rocannon’s companions are all descendants of that woman, but the split in the narratives is still somewhat jarring. From research after I finished reading, it seems that first part was initially published as a short story, so I guess this is a bit of a fixup novel. But Le Guin takes pains to tie the two parts together through similar characters and themes, so it almost works.

Not all roads that lead down lead up as well.

On its own, the book is an entertaining page turner. Two moments stand out as unexpectedly saving the hero without being foreshadowed—deus ex machina in the escape from the flying people’s city and in gaining telepathy; though the latter is somewhat foreshadowed, sort of, I guess. But it’s a good adventure tale despite these two moments. Except that the pacing is slower and I like adventure tales with faster pacing, I would put this up there with other pulp fiction I like. If you’re feeling like pulp fiction, you can do much worse than this book.

"Take cover!" but could not move himself. The helicopter nosed in unsteadily, rags of cloud catching in its whirring vanes. Even as he watched it approach, Rocannon watched from inside it, not knowing what he looked for, seeing two small figures on the mountainside, afraid, afraid—a flash of light, a hot shock of pain, pain in his own flesh, intolerable. The mind-contact was broken, blown clean away. He was himself, standing on the ledge pressing his right hand against his chest and gasping, seeing the helicopter creep still closer, its vanes whirring with a dry loud rattle, its laser-mounted nose pointing at him.

But I know Le Guin’s strengths later in life are character development, deep exploration of themes without losing the book’s entertainment level, and solid wordbuilding that leaves the reader wanting more. So let me examine those strengths now. First, character development. Rocannon himself is well-realized, as is Mogien, though the latter is more a foil that helps her explain her world. This companion-character-as-worldbuilder technique functions well within this novel, but the focus is clearly on Rocannon. So, what can I remember about Rocannon? He’s compassionate, intelligent, and determined. He tirelessly works to help those around him, even when they don’t realize he is helping them. He isn’t looking for reward, but the self-satisfaction of helping others. Le Guin shows this through Rocannon’s actions, words, and interior monologues, helping cement him in the reader’s mind as a guy to be friends with, both when he is powerful and after the ambush leaves him dependent. It's Le Guin showing, not telling. The only critique that I have here is that she took a while to build his character. Instead of changing Rocannon constantly through the novel, he doesn’t change much, just the reader’s understanding of him changes. Some of his terrible experiences, like being burned alive at the stake for three days and surviving, are forgotten as they alter him not at all, while he seems to have come to this world with everything he needed to save it already present in his personality. This unfortunate writing choice is something Le Guin improves on later, but at least here she has a well-founded, complex character to start from here, even if it takes her the whole book to build that character.

He had intended to add, "Give me a couple of hours to get clear," but did not. If he were caught as he left, the Faradayans would be warned and might move out the FTLs.

Second, the depth of exploration and variety of viewpoints of Le Guin’s themes are legendary in her later writing and storytelling. Here the themes touch on death, cultures, races, and working together. There are few deeper themes or philosophical ideas, and little in the way of exploration, but Le Guin points out some questions that are fascinating. One is lightyears. As the time dilation allows the initial noblewoman to outlive her husband, and is completely out of her conception, this realization drives her crazy. This isn’t so much explored as noticed and brought up. It’s an interesting take on time dilation, but not terribly so. The second is communication: instantaneous communication across lightyears is possible, so is telepathy. But she really just brings these ideas up without delving into them deeply. So, in terms of her later tendency to explore themes deeply from different angles, here she just mentions themes from one or two angles, and doesn’t really explore their implications or how those themes would change characters. But they’re interesting themes examined from an interesting angle, even if it isn’t explored deeply and that angle is really just one angle. It’s a good start, yet not up to the par of her later works.

"How far a journey, Lord?"
His lips drew back and back. "A very far journey, Lady. Yet it will last only one long night."

Third, Le Guin’s strong worldbuilding shows up here through her tactic of involving off-scene developments, or an unexplored broader context, that influences the characters and story. For example, there is an explosion (the ambush), and Rocannon’s response (after mourning his friends) plays out in interior monologue, where he reflects that the revolution that had been brewing when he left civilization for this backwater world must have begun.
—This hint, this taste of a broader context can do two things. First, if it’s not followed up, it can easily feel like post-action explanation (ex post facto), which tends to feel cheap to the reader. You know, you spend a hundred pages reading the murder mystery, you get to the end, and it turns out the killer was really off-screen the whole time and there was no way you could have guessed who it was. It’s a let down. Second, if it’s followed up on well, this reflection can help build the world, and help the initial event achieve more surprise. Le Guin accomplishes this here: tracking down these rebels and destroying their presence on this world becomes the hero’s quest, the rest of the book. In other words, rather than explaining the event afterwards and then dropping it, Le Guin explains the event afterwards and then builds on it. Even helpful Rocannon becomes revenge oriented.
—One thing Le Guin consistently does in her later books and here in her first book, is to build the world—by which I mean her universe—through these aspects, through these glimpses that change people’s lives, that are built off of, that could so easily be asides but end up being key to the story and the characters. This is solid worldbuilding for Le Guin, and it was exciting for me to see her already good at that in her first novel. Not great at it, but good at it already.

They can send death at once, but life is slower.

In all, this is a fine first novel. I’m impressed with how somebody who wrote this could later write something as great as The Dispossessed, and my conclusion is that in order to break the rules, you need to first show you understand the rules. Now, I’m not one for rules of writing, but Le Guin here shows that she can write a page-turning novel comfortably, then later allows herself to experiment and try new things while still being based on that strong foundation. It’s a good trajectory that encourages me as a young author. In all, this novel is a good read, but I probably will not go back to it due to the shallowness of the themes, the lack of change in the main character, and, frankly, the quality difference between this and her later works.

The prisoner is the jailer's jailer.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin

I knew nothing about this novel before opening it. This novel follows Shevek as he grows up, goes on sabbatical, and invents faster-than-light physics. The structure of the novel interlaces the chapters with ones leading up to and from the first chapter. In the first chapter, Shevek leaves Anarres for Urras, chapter two begins way back at the beginning of his life, chapter three starts from the end of chapter one, chapter four starts from the end of chapter two, and so on until the end of the novel. This structure provides a slow start to the second chapter, but things quickly build up to tensions that take hold and drive the book forward.

The usage the creator spirit gives its vessels is rough, it wears them out, discards them, gets a new model.

While reading this, I found aspects of it reminded me of one of my favorite books, The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. Similarities in the balance between science, character development, drama, and action first tipped me off—hey, this mix is familiar from a later-published but earlier read book. As Rhodes delves deep into Leo Szilard, Albert Einstein, and Robert Oppenheimer, he includes biographical sketches that expand and contract based on their importance to the Manhattan Project or character. Yet he never loses sight of the scientific development, political drama, and action around the Manhattan Project.

A scientist can pretend that his work isn't himself, it's merely the impersonal truth. An artist can't hide behind the truth. He can't hide anywhere.

Le Guin’s novel here predates this mix which favors biography but incorporates science, drama, and action. As Shevek works through the famine years, he is assigned to write up death lists, to decide which people will die and live—the post-bombing reaction of many of the Manhattan Project scientists is echoed in Shevek’s responses to questions surrounding this job posting. Of course, after I finished the novel and started looking around at information about it, I learned that Le Guin consciously modeled Shevek after parts of Oppenheimer. But this conscious modeling should never be an excuse, so was Shevek a believable character, or did Le Guin use Oppenheimer to get out of having to build all of Shevek’s character?

“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.” “It’s nothing to do with eternity,” said Shevek, grinning, a thin shaggy man of silver and shadow. “All you have to do to see life whole is to see it as mortal. I’ll die, you’ll die; how could we love each other otherwise? The sun’s going to burn out, what else keeps it shining?”

Shevek’s introverted nature is deep and wide. His lack of attention paid during his formative years handicaps Shevek later on in life—he wins some and loses some, but never really knows why he wins or loses. Shevek is just Shevek, and he expects others to react to him, rather than changing how he acts to better influence others. Yet he eventually begins to realize and appreciate the influence and insights of others in his life. I see it like this: Shevek unthinkingly accepts Odonian communal truisms as a boy, ignores everything to focus on physics as a teen and twenty-something, then gains understanding into Odo’s thoughts and meanings through discovering people. As this surface-level understanding of Odonism stretches and frays, as Shevek realizes that truth exists behind the truisms, he starts to understand that other perspectives are beneficial to his own thinking and problems. At first he forgets the people in the usefulness of their perspectives, but after he loses the people and feels their lack in his life, he realizes that he has to put energy and effort in to get energy and effort out, and finally he starts to value people for themselves rather than what they can do for him or the culture. To be clear, every other character in the novel is Shevek’s foil. Shevek faces down the world. And Shevek is a complex, changing character who is fully realized within the novel. His consistent tendencies are not dropped because of deus ex machina moments, but they are modified by things like his being posted to be a death lister, his realization of subtextual human intentions, and love.

Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The baby, again, the animal, they don’t see the difference between what they do now and what will happen because of it. They can’t make a pulley, or a promise. We can. Seeing the difference between now and not now, we can make the connection. And there morality enters in. Responsibility. To say that a good end will follow from a bad means is just like saying that if I pull a rope on this pulley it will lift the weight on that one. To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past; therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future. If time and reason are functions of each other, if we are creatures of time, then we had better know it, and try to make the best of it. To act responsibly.

And the novel is about that change in Shevek, about the journey from lonely scientific genius, to integrated member of a group. From not understanding his religious ideals, but holding them rigidly, to understanding the truth in them, and accepting his place in the world. The journey of enlightenment, in a sense. And that’s what makes this novel so keen. From a nominal anarchist to a real one. From a nominal Odonian to a real one. From a driven scientist who is on the brink of the great understanding of his life, to a scientist who has gotten that understanding and realizes what he has missed in the process.

You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.

As noted above, the book—and Shevek’s changing—is about death, love, and the nastiness of humans. Though these themes are strong, Le Guin touches on many other themes and some of them are quite unique and well developed: anarchism and politics, collectivisation and personal property, gender relationships and the other, individuality versus and in support of the culture as a whole, interpersonal relationships, suffering and plenty, the creative process and overcoming barriers to it, introversion and hidden intentions, the effect of physical environments on personality and culture—this book covers a lot of territory.

The explorer who will not come back or send back his ships to tell his tale is not an explorer, only an adventurer; and his sons are born in exile.

But where other novels cover a lot of themes without satisfying depth to any, Le Guin tends towards depth, exploring concepts from multiple angles through including actions and changes in characters that wrinkle those concepts. Instead of pulp fictional writing which often hammers a single theme home and merely mentions other themes, Le Guin designs each scene to allow themes to expand. Yet she doesn’t lose sight of what her characters believe, and this is where this novel attains greatness: these character and theme changes throughout the novel do not diverge massively, it’s not a clean break from introverted Shevek to partnered Shevek. Rather, Shevek goes through stages of introversion and reliance upon others, finally finding a balance in the latter chapters. This tendency of Le Guin’s to modify instead of discard earlier aspects of characters, to allow space for the transition to breathe, reflects the brilliance of her storytelling.

And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.

And her writing similarly rewards the reader. Instead of focusing on short, declarative sentences, she uses what declarative sentences there are as powerful transition points, as short summaries of understanding to both build towards and build from. Instead, Le Guin spends most of her words exploring topics and leading the reader to and from these transition points, these understandings. For instance, two sentences like, “I’m thinking like an Urrasti, he said to himself. Like a damned propertarian.” leads from a series of unanticipated realizations by Shevek about the nature of hidden intentions in those around him, and leads directly to the next few sentences which start to wrinkle and expand the realization of those two short sentences: “As if deserving meant anything. As if one could earn beauty, or life!” This immediate expansion shows how these transition points work in Le Guin’s writing, and she builds from them further to deeper exploration of their effects on Shevek and the world around him.

It’ll be explained. The great physicist was misled by a disaffected group, for a while. Intellectuals are always being led astray, because they think about irrelevant things like time and space and reality, things that have nothing to do with real life, so they are easily fooled by wicked deviationists.

Another strength of her writing rests on her ability to make characters feel alien. Though the aliens in the book are all humans from different planets, their views and personalities feel more alien than other science fiction books with exotic, non-human aliens. The nature of the Urrasti is significantly different than the nature of the Annaresti, and Le Guin never loses sight of that. She allows that difference to modify her characterisation of each individual. Though secondary characters are secondary, less focused on and less fully developed than Shevek, they feel different in their interactions with him and statements to him. Instead of changing both her writing of and the philosophies of aliens like Iain M Banks does in Matter, Le Guin changes only their philosophies, and it works. It kind of surprises me that it works as well as it does, but it’s a testament to her developed skill that the aliens feel so alien while sounding similar to Shevek.

My world, my Earth is a ruin. A planet spoiled by the human species. We multiplied and fought and gobbled until there was nothing left, and then we died. We controlled neither appetite nor violence; we did not adapt. We destroyed ourselves. But we destroyed the world first.

So, yes, this is a great book and I already look forward to rereading it. On one hand, it’s just a tale of a pretty cush scientist discussing suffering, but there is so much more to it than that surface level story. The story is fascinating because of the support it receives from the depth of the themes, exploration, character building, world building, structure, and writing. It lacks incessant action, so the book isn’t for fans of pulp fiction, but it gains so much more by exploring interesting themes to a satisfying depth. I love this book.

The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

Outside of his short stories, my appreciation for Asimov remains pretty low. This novel helped me like Asimov more. I actually liked this novel more than Foundation’s info dumping and The Caves of Steel’s unbelievable police work. There were still some major problems with this novel—both in story and writing—but there were also positives that surprised me.

It is a mistake to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. [...] Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer.

First, the biggest problem: the verb “was” appears more than any other word in the book. Whole paragraphs only use this verb. The repetition of “was” bores as the novel continues, and I wonder that Asimov can’t be bothered to put more effort into the writing itself. This mono-verb-use betrays even the alienness of the middle alien section, helping the aliens feel human. I applaud aliens that feel alien to human readers, and these aliens do not, largely because the writing so rigidly utilizes “was”. Nothing has caused me to stop reading any novel more that poor writing. I almost stopped reading this one.

Of such things, petty annoyance and aimless thrusts, is history made.

The book is composed of three novellas, and I think this novel shows how fixups can achieve cohesion.
—The first deals with Lamont discovering that the greatest boon to humanity ever, the electron pump, reflects the genius of parallel-universe beings, and not humanity—specifically not Hallam, who claims discovery and invention of the electron pump. Lamont also believes that the pump will blow up our universe much more quickly than Hallam believes. Through Hallam’s influence, Lamont is frozen out of important positions and outcast.
—The second novella deals with those parallel universe beings who exist in three genders that eventually melt together to form one. One of the three main characters wants to shut down the electron pump to save humanity, one of the others masterminded the pump in the first place, and the third tokens traditionalism. They eventually coalesce into a unified being that continues the pump’s usage.
—The third part of the book deals with humans again, as Ben Denison tries to escape earth to rehabilitate a scientific career shuttered by Hallam. Denison has similar concerns as Lamont and has been similarly frozen out by Hallam. He eventually wins the intellectual contest and gets the girl.
—I don’t feel that a fixup is necessarily a bad novel, and I’m actually pretty happy with this one as a fixup. One of the things that separates this fixup from bad ones is that these three novellas work together—they make sense to put together because they share a main theme and tension.

There's a certain drama in going down in a good cause. Any decent politician is masochistic enough to dream now and then of going down in flames while the angels sing. But, Dr. Lamont, to do that one has to have a fighting chance. One has to have something to fight for that may—just may—win out.

The main driving theme in all three surrounds ideas of the dangers of scientific advances being exacerbated by the ugliness of people’s behavior. It’s like Frankenstein, but the monster is a machine and Dr. Frankenstein is still Dr. Frankenstein (Dr. Hallam here). Asimov does a good job creating and not forgetting the central tension of the electron pump destroying the universe—his writing’s focus on science means that it’s pretty detective-novel-esque how he doles out terms and explanations to readers. Yet he doesn’t belabor the point too much, and gets on with the story. You know, instead of spending 600 pages setting up the central problem of the book, Asimov does it effectively much more quickly, and then writes the book.

His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I’d say his mind stops functioning, but I lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop.

The one place where Asimov’s characterization really shines portrays the scientific community as a cut-throat place of backroom politics and conspiracies, most scientists searching for personal glory, and outliers appreciating scientific truths for their own sake. Considering the peer-reviewed, hierarchical nature of this scientific community, Asimov’s design of it rings true to human experience. When people are promoted for publicity and length of service instead of merit, these types of infighting always happen. Asimov did a great job here—Lamont being interviewed by the senator, Denison’s desperation for a fulfilling job in the sciences, Neville’s distrust of everybody but himself. This part of the storytelling or world building is the strongest I’ve seen Asimov do, though I haven’t read too much of him. Each of the characters reacts to this overall tendency in scientists in different ways—Lamont’s rage, the senator’s political calculations, Ben’s stoic acceptance, Selene’s spark to work around the problem, Neville’s secretive conspiring—they all end up different characters, but unified into a group by reacting to the same force of the group itself. I need to be better at this and here Asimov shows one way how. He focuses on the group dynamics in explaining character emotions. Like the following quote, which is Lamont reacting to the backroom politics of these scientists.

"I'm going to see Hallam again."
Bronowski's eyebrows lifted. "What for?"
"To have him turn me down."
"Yes, that's about your speed, Pete. You're unhappy if your troubles die down a bit.”

That said, the rest of Asimov’s characterizations are weak. Not as weak as other novels, but still weak. The characters are so consumed by their work that Asimov disallows them depth of personality. Selene and Ben end up in love, but this "romance" arises coincidentally, rather than naturally. I’m not even sure what either sees in the other—a break from the manipulation of her current man for Selene, and a nymph for Ben maybe? It’s thin, whatever it is, and it reads more like pulp fictional writing than an exploration. Dua ends up subverted completely by Odeen and Tritt in a way all to familiar to how women are consistently represented in fiction, again with no exploration at all—boring. Lamont’s great triumph is off-scene and the reader ends up as wistful as Denison that they may have been allowed to see this scene—probably because the rigidity of the novella structure Asimov set up disallowed him from going back to Lamont. And that’s a big problem. The structure might be a cool concept, a cool idea, but if it doesn’t let the author tell his story in the best way possible, why keep to it so rigidly? It hurts his building of characters.

“Does everyone just believe what he wants to?"
"As long as possible. Sometimes longer."
"What about you?"
"You mean, am I human? Certainly. I don't believe I'm really old. I believe I'm quite attractive. I believe you seek out my company because you think I'm charming - even when you insist on turning the conversation to physics.”

The biggest problem is that the main tension in the book, people discovering that the electron pump will destroy the universe much faster than they had thought, gets forgotten by the end. This search for evidence drives Lamont, Dua, and Denison, but they never discover conclusive evidence. Yet the book assumes they have and concludes as if they have won, without the main thread of tension actually resolving. Instead, Selene and Denison solve the problem that should have been proven, while the problem is never proven. This plot-hole is gaping and obvious and I am stumped as to why any author would let that slip past them.

There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.

In all, this is a better Asimov book than any I have read yet. Though big problems remain, at least I now have something other than his short stories to point to when people ask me about Asimov. I look up to his writing of group-individual dynamics in here, and I’m thinking of reading more Asimov eventually.