She was of an ancient family, a descendant of the first kings of the Angyar, and for all her poverty her hair shone with the pure, steadfast gold of her inheritance. The little people, the Füa, bowed when she passed them, even when she was a barefoot child running in the fields, the light and fiery comet of her hair brightening the troubled winds of Kirien.
Basically, knights in armour meet flying saucers. ‘My liege, the Starlords are upon us’. Starlords, yes, they’re called Starlords.
Original pulp cover of a joint edition of Rocannon’s World and Planet of Exile
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 inaugurated the cycle of sci fi stories and novels set in what came to be known as the ‘Hainish Cycle’ (after the planet Hain which is behind the Federation which sends out investigators to numerous other solar systems) the story is also rammed full of many of the elements of what is called ‘heroic fantasy’ – tall guys with swords, underground dwarves, forest people with mystical powers etc.
The anthropologist
As I’ve mentioned in my two previous le Guin reviews, the fact that she came from an academic family, and her father was a famous anthropologist, is astonishingly central to her fiction.
Here – as in The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed – the central protagonist is a highly intelligent outsider visiting a strange planet and carefully noting its culture, practices, history, myths, politics, religion and so on. He is, by profession, an ethnographer.
In fact the novel opens with a quote from the Abridged Handy Pocket Guide to Intelligent Life-forms (an anticipation of The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide To The Galaxy) about the planet he visits, which I quote in full:
Galactic Area 8, No. 62: FOMALHAUT II.
High-Intelligence Life Forms. Species Contacted:
Species I:
A) Gdemiar (singular Gdem): Highly intelligent, fully hominoid nocturnal troglodytes, 120-135 cm. in height, light skin, dark head-hair. When contacted these cave-dwellers possessed a rigidly stratified oligarchic urban society modified by partial colonial telephathy, and a technologically oriented Early Steel culture. Technology enhanced to Industrial, Point C, during League Mission of 252-254. In 254 an Automatic Drive ship (to-from New South Georgia) was presented to oligarchs of the Kiriensea Area corn-munity. Status C-Prime.
B) Füa (singular Fian): Highly intelligent, fully hominoid, diurnal, av. ca. 130 cm. in height, observed individuals generally light in skin and hair. Brief con~ tacts indicated village and nomadic communal societies, partial colonial telepathy, also some indication of short-range TK. The race appears a-technological and evasive, with minimal and fluid culture-patterns. Currently untaxable. Status E-Query.
Species II:
Liuar (singular Liu): Highly intelligent, fully hominoid, diurnal, av. height above 170 cm., this species possesses a fortress/village, clan-descent society, a blocked technology (Bronze), and feudal-heroic culture. Note horizontal social cleavage into 2 pseudo-races: (a: Olgyior, “midmen,” light-skinned and dark-haired; (b: Angyar, “lords,” very tall, dark-skinned, yellow-haired)
And a little later in the narrative:
Number 62: FOMALHAUT II.
Type AE
Carbon Life. An iron-core planet, diameter 6,600 miles, with heavy oxygen-rich atmosphere. Revolution: 800 Earthdays 8 hrs. 11 min. 42 sec. Rotation: 29 hrs. 51 min. 02 sec. Mean distance from sun 3.2 A U, orbital eccentricity slight. Obliquity of ecliptic 27° 20′ 20″ causing marked seasonal change. Gravity .86 Standard.
Four major landmasses, Northwest, Southwest, East and Antarctic Continents, occupy 38% of planetary surface.
Four satellites (types Perner, Loklik, R-2 and Phobos). The Companion of Fomalhaut is visible as a superbright star.
Nearest League World: New South Georgia, capital Kerguelen (7.88 It. yrs.). History: The planet was charted by the Elieson Expedition in 202, robot-probed in 218.
First Geographical Survey, 235-6. Director: J. Kiolaf. The major landmasses were surveyed by air (see maps 3114-a, b, c, 3115-a, b.).Landings, geological and biological studies and HILF contacts were made only on East and Northwest Continents (see description of intelligent species below).
Technological Enhancement Mission to Species I-A, 252-4. Director: J. Kiolaf (Northwest Continent only.)
Control and Taxation Missions to Species I-A and II were carried out under auspices of the Area Foundation in Kerguelen, N.S.Ga., in 254, 258, 262, 266, 270; in 275 the planet was placed under Interdict by the Allworld HILF Authority, pending more adequate study of its intelligent species.
First Ethnographic Survey, 321, Director: G. Rocannon.
The background facts
So, because she is depicting an entire world and its peoples and languages and religions and histories, as with Le Guin’s other novels, there are a lot of facts to process and assimilate.
Gaverel Rocannon is a 43-year-old (p.45) ethnographer from the planet Davenant (p.81), who works for the League of All Worlds. As the name suggests this is an alliance of a hundred or so planets across the galaxy, inhabited by humanoids who find it reasonably easy to communicate with each other.
A hundred years earlier the first visitors from the Federation landed on Fomalhaut II, established that there were three intelligent species on the planet, and decided the Gdemiar, the nocturnal troglodyes, known on the planet as the ‘Claymen’, were the most technologically advanced, and gave them a basic spaceship and some tech to urge along their scientific evolution.
This is because the League is expecting at any moment a return of some feared extra-galactic force to attack them, and is reaching out and allying with as many other races as possible.
However, Rocannon, as a sensitive ethnologist, had his doubts about this policy, doubts which were confirmed when a beautiful maiden of the Angyar i.e. tall, blonde warrior caste, – named the Lady Semley – arrived in the spaceship left with the Claymen, because she insisted on reclaiming a precious jewel which the Starlords had taken away. Dumb-founded by the appearance of her, and half a dozen trog-men, Rocannon, at the museum on Kerguelen – eight light-years away from their planet – graciously handed it back.
However, when the maiden arrived back at her planet it was to find her husband dead and her baby grown into a woman. Inter-stellar travel took only days for her but sixteen years have passed in her absence. She runs off mad into the woods.
The plot
That story, which has passed into local folklore opens the novel.
It is intriguing to have such a long passage told in olde worlde, fake folk tale style, juxtaposed with the rest of the narrative which are cast in much more factual, sci fi style (apparently, the story of Semley’s Necklace was, originally, published as a stand-alone story in a sci fantasy magazine in 1964).
The second part opens with Rocannon on the planet Fomalhaut II, having persuaded his bosses to be more sensitive with the inhabitants, to enforce an embargo on interventions, while he sensitively studies the inhabitants.
Unfortunately, we’ve barely met him and his host, the tall Angyar Lord Mogien of Hallan, before the plot takes a dramatic lurch forward. Rocannon had parked his spaceship just over the hills from the castle of Hallan, when it is attacked and vaporised. His 13 colleagues with it, and all their notes, and tech.
News comes in that other settlements have been attacked and so Mogien undertakes to help Rocannon go to the caves of the Claymen to see if the old spaceship they were given seventy years ago contains a comms device to get in touch with Rocannon’s home base.
The Claymen take them deep into their underground caves and past all the shining new devices they’ve invented with Starlord encouragement, but their lord says No Dice. But Rocannon does get access to a radio and overhears part of the Enemy transmission. He doesn’t understand the language but the Enemy use Cetian numerals (all the universe uses Cetian numerals). He records them and realises they are co-ordinates (p.38). He will travel to the location indicated, in the south, and see what he can do to identify and stop the Enemy.
Lord Mogien says he will go with Rocannon on this adventure and bring some of his liege ‘midmen’. Mogien’s mother, Lady Haldre (the daughter of the Lady Semley who went mad) gives Rocannon back the Lady Semly’s necklace, as a lucky charm when he takes Mogien with him, to protect her son who his mother fears will die on the mission (p.41).
En route they come across Kyo, the survivor of a Fian village which has been destroyed. And thus, this small group of humans, alien and a sort of elf set off on a mission to save their world. Ring any bells? It would only need to be some men, a dwarf, an elf and a wizard, and you’d have Lord of The Rings.
In fact the small and mysterious Fian, Kyo, names Rocannon Olhor, meaning The Wanderer, and mysteriously announces that his coming, and his adventure, and his motley companions, were all foretold!
Adventures
They engage in ariel combat with the men of Lord Ogoren, the Lord-Errant of Plenot (p.47). I haven’t mentioned that Mogien and Rocannon and their handful of helpers are flying south riding windsteeds. Elsewhere referred to as gryphoncats (p.71), windsteeds are clearly a kind of tiger-sized wild cat with wings, which can be tamed, saddled and ridden by men. Ridden in to battle, too, rather thrillingly a battle during which Lord Mogien spears his man, but Rocannon gets a nasty barbed arrow in the calf.
Lord Mogien riding a windsteed
Having vanquished the recalcitrant lord by the simple expedient of dropping flaming brands onto his little castle, Mogien, Rocannon et all are rowed across the sea by the lord’s men, men of Tolen. However, as they near the cliffs of the southern shore, it is stormy, and one of the boats capsizes. Rocannon rescues Kyo, but all his remaining equipment, ray gun, maps etc, go to the bottom of the sea.
The survivors make it ashore the southern land of Fiern. They have three windsteeds left, four can ride two apiece on two of them, but Lord Mogien is such a man that a windsteed can noly carry him. So he tells his man Yahan to get back in the boat of Tolen and go home. Yahan refuses, and Mogien makes to strike him, so the man runs off.
The others set off marching south but Rocannon, pausing to pick up a promising stick to help him walk with, loses the others in the fog and it promptly knocked over the head and abducted. He regains consciousness tied to the stake in the primitive castle belonging to Zgama, Master of the Long Bay (p.55), who Rocannon outstares in a staring competition, but who gets his men to light the brands around Rocannon’s feet, with a view to burning him to death.
Unfortunately, Zgama, Master of the Long Bay doesn’t know that Rocannon is wearing his impermasuit, an invisible suit which gives complete bodily protection and so he endures as much flaming pyre as Zgama and his men can make, to their astonishment. After a couple of nights none other than Yahan sneaks into the castle, sets Rocannon free, and helps him escape. What if Mogien finds them? He will be duty bound to slay Yahan. Rocannon solves the dilemma by making Yahan his liege man, and therefore protected.
Much the worse for wear they come to the simple hut of a peasant Piai who after initial reluctance tells them there is another sound they must cross if they’re heading south. After a few days resting with Piai, he is joined by two fellows who have a mean look and sure enough, they draw a knife and say they’ll row the pair across the sound but in return for their riches. An unstable situation evolves in which they are rowed across the water, one man holding a knife to Yahan’s throat: at the last moment Rocannon throws them Lady Semly’s jewel, which he’d been keeping in a leather back ground his neck, and he and Yahan drive into the water and swim to the shore.
It is a dry flay vast land. They set off south, existing off streamwater and fruits and berries but both become thinner as the land grows more arid. Camping at night, they are troubled by shadowy shapes flitting just out of sight. They had just decided to pack it and turned round to head back to the coast when swooping out of the sky comes… Lord Mogien and his men on their windsteeds! Hurray!
Mogien bridles at the sight of Yahan, but when Rocannon explains that he has made him his servant Mogied laughs at being outwitted. Not only that, but they had found Piai and his surly mates on the shore, and forced them to admit that they’d rowed Rocannon et al across the sea, and also… recovered Lady Semly’s necklace, which Mogien now throws to Rocannon. They ascertained our hero’s precise location because the Fian Kyo used his mindspeech / telepathy powers.
They fly south, and bivouac at a stream come nightfall. In the iddle of the night they are ambushed by strange tall thin spectral figures which stun them. Rocannon wakes up in a beautifully designed and built room in a palace, to find his friends comatose by his side. Long story short: he realises he is in a kind of hive-city and their captors are thin insect-link creatures with wings – the Winged Ones of ancient legend – and his friends have been stunned but are fed a little water, so that they can be give to the larvae of the Winged Ones to suck dry.
Rocannon is left free to wander round the beautifully laid out city and feel helpless, until he comes across some small furry animals which have a very primitive speech – the Kiemhrir, who Kyo also calls
‘Wordmasters, wordlovers, the eaters of words, the nameless ones, the lithe ones, long remembering.’ (p.86)
The Kiemhrir revive his paralysed colleagues (one has died) and Rocannon, Mogien, Yahan and Kyo whistle for the windsteeds who promptly arrive, and they make their escape.
Now they journey south towards the high mountains, staying at a succession of Fian village, which give the ethnographer insight into their culture and opportunity to bring out Kyo’s uncanny quietness and wisdom. But he prefers to stay at the highest of the villages, leaving Mogian and Rocannon to fly on over the high ice mountain peaks and down into the warm valleys on the other side.
Recovering on the downward slope they see a shadow at night. Mogien insists it is his death, his destiny.
Later he goes scouting below on the windsteed, and Rocannon climbs up to a ledge to get water for Yahan, who is really weak and suffering.
But Rocannon finds a dark cleft, entrance to a cave, and goes cold with fear. Inside is the shadow, the ancient voice, who offers him wisdom, but it will come at the price of what he loves. Rocannon agrees.
Emerging dazed from the cave he realises he has been given the ability of mindspeech: he can feel the minds of his enemies. And he knows one is near. He points out to Yahan something emerging from the clouds. It is one of the enemy helicopters equipped with a laser gun. As it takes aim at him and Yahan perched on their little mountain ledge, out of the clouds flies Lord Mogien on his windspeed and deliberately flies full tilt into the side of the helicopter, wrenching it from the skies, man, beast and machine tumbling to their deaths in the gulf below.
Next thing Rocannon knows he wakes in bed in Breygna Castle being tended by the beautiful Lady Ganye, daughter-in-law and heiress of the castle’s old lord. He is hurt, the helicopter’s laser gun crippled his right hand. Slowly she tends him back to health, he is visited by Yahan, who survived, albeit frostbitten and weakened. When he goes among the castle’s folk they turn away or bow. He is regarded as a sort of god for coming down from the forbidden mountain. Also something of the mindspeech shows. The Lady Ganye tells him about the invaders from the sky who have laid waste the land to the south and killed all inhabitants, including her own husband.
A hundred days of resting & recuperating, during which Rocannon’s mind reaches out and investigates every aspect of the base to the south. It has been set up by aliens from the planet Faraday who are using it as a base to attack and recruit other planets to their growing power.
One evening Rocannon gets Yahan to saddle the remaining windsteed, and he flies to the forest, ties up the creature and makes his way in darkness into the base. He enters the spaceship where he knows there is an ansible, a device which communicates instantly across infinite distances. He sets it for his home planet and sends a warning message giving precise location of the enemy base, then sneaks out, and back across the tarmac at night, to the forest and so away.
Primed by Rocannon’s information, an hour or so later the Faraday base disappears in a fireball of death. Although men have to travel in sub-light spaceships, speed of light spaceships have been created which can be guided by computer – and programmed to destroy.
As dawn breaks Rocannon arrives back at Breygna Castle where the beautiful Lady Ganye asks him to stay. She has fallen in love with him, as tall, willowy ladies fair in isolated castles often do with brave and handsome warriors…
And stay he does. Eight years later a spaceship from the League arrives (no manned spaceship can travel faster than light) to find Rocannon has died in the meantime, mourned and loved by his widow and people. And so he was never to learn that the League goes on to name the planet after him – Rocannon’s World.
Thoughts
I liked it. In many ways I liked it better than the later, prize-winning novels, because it is more purely and unashamedly fantasy, with a new adventure and a new uncanny adversary around every corner — whereas the later books are ‘tackling issues’ with all the sometimes wearing earnestness which that implies.
It’s a boys’ adventure story with flying tigers and ray guns. What’s not to love 🙂
Credit
Rocannon’s World by Ursula Le Guin was published by Ace Books in 1966. In 1996 it was republished along with its sequels, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions, in a volume called Worlds of Exile and Illusion. All page references are to the 2015 paperback edition of the Worlds volume.
Related links
Other science fiction reviews
Late Victorian
1888 Looking Backward 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy – Julian West wakes up in the year 2000 to discover a peaceful revolution has ushered in a society of state planning, equality and contentment
1890 News from Nowhere by William Morris – waking from a long sleep, William Guest is shown round a London transformed into villages of contented craftsmen
1895 The Time Machine by H.G. Wells – the unnamed inventor and time traveller tells his dinner party guests the story of his adventure among the Eloi and the Morlocks in the year 802,701
1896 The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells – Edward Prendick is stranded on a remote island where he discovers the ‘owner’, Dr Gustave Moreau, is experimentally creating human-animal hybrids
1897 The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells – an embittered young scientist, Griffin, makes himself invisible, starting with comic capers in a Sussex village, and ending with demented murders
1899 When The Sleeper Wakes/The Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells – Graham awakes in the year 2100 to find himself at the centre of a revolution to overthrow the repressive society of the future
1899 A Story of the Days To Come by H.G. Wells – set in the same future London as The Sleeper Wakes, Denton and Elizabeth defy her wealthy family in order to marry, fall into poverty, and experience life as serfs in the Underground city run by the sinister Labour Corps
1900s
1901 The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells – Mr Bedford and Mr Cavor use the invention of ‘Cavorite’ to fly to the moon and discover the underground civilisation of the Selenites
1904 The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth by H.G. Wells – scientists invent a compound which makes plants, animals and humans grow to giant size, prompting giant humans to rebel against the ‘little people’
1905 With the Night Mail by Rudyard Kipling – it is 2000 and the narrator accompanies a GPO airship across the Atlantic
1906 In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells – a comet passes through earth’s atmosphere and brings about ‘the Great Change’, inaugurating an era of wisdom and fairness, as told by narrator Willie Leadford
1908 The War in the Air by H.G. Wells – Bert Smallways, a bicycle-repairman from Kent, gets caught up in the outbreak of the war in the air which brings Western civilisation to an end
1909 The Machine Stops by E.M. Foster – people of the future live in underground cells regulated by ‘the Machine’ until one of them rebels
1910s
1912 The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Professor Challenger leads an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon rainforest where prehistoric animals still exist
1912 As Easy as ABC by Rudyard Kipling – set in 2065 in a world characterised by isolation and privacy, forces from the ABC are sent to suppress an outbreak of ‘crowdism’
1913 The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle – airman Captain Joyce-Armstrong flies higher than anyone before him and discovers the upper atmosphere is inhabited by vast jellyfish-like monsters
1914 The World Set Free by H.G. Wells – A history of the future in which the devastation of an atomic war leads to the creation of a World Government, told via a number of characters who are central to the change
1918 The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs – a trilogy of pulp novellas in which all-American heroes battle ape-men and dinosaurs on a lost island in the Antarctic
1920s
1921 We by Evgeny Zamyatin – like everyone else in the dystopian future of OneState, D-503 lives life according to the Table of Hours, until I-330 wakens him to the truth
1925 Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov – a Moscow scientist transplants the testicles and pituitary gland of a dead tramp into the body of a stray dog, with disastrous consequences
1927 The Maracot Deep by Arthur Conan Doyle – a scientist, engineer and a hero are trying out a new bathysphere when the wire snaps and they hurtle to the bottom of the sea, where they discover…
1930s
1930 Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon – mind-boggling ‘history’ of the future of mankind over the next two billion years – surely the most sweeping vista of any science fiction book
1938 Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis – baddies Devine and Weston kidnap Oxford academic Ransom and take him in their spherical spaceship to Malacandra, as the natives call the planet Mars
1940s
1943 Perelandra (Voyage to Venus) by C.S. Lewis – Ransom is sent to Perelandra aka Venus, to prevent a second temptation by the Devil and the fall of the planet’s new young inhabitants
1945 That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-ups by C.S. Lewis– Ransom assembles a motley crew to combat the rise of an evil corporation which is seeking to overthrow mankind
1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell – after a nuclear war, inhabitants of ruined London are divided into the sheep-like ‘proles’ and members of the Party who are kept under unremitting surveillance
1950s
1950 I, Robot by Isaac Asimov – nine short stories about ‘positronic’ robots, which chart their rise from dumb playmates to controllers of humanity’s destiny
1950 The Martian Chronicles – 13 short stories with 13 linking passages loosely describing mankind’s colonisation of Mars, featuring strange, dreamlike encounters with Martians
1951 Foundation by Isaac Asimov – the first five stories telling the rise of the Foundation created by psychohistorian Hari Seldon to preserve civilisation during the collapse of the Galactic Empire
1951 The Illustrated Man – eighteen short stories which use the future, Mars and Venus as settings for what are essentially earth-bound tales of fantasy and horror
1952 Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov – two long stories which continue the future history of the Foundation set up by psychohistorian Hari Seldon as it faces attack by an Imperial general, and then the menace of the mysterious mutant known only as ‘the Mule’
1953 Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov – concluding part of the ‘trilogy’ describing the attempt to preserve civilisation after the collapse of the Galactic Empire
1953 Earthman, Come Home by James Blish – the adventures of New York City, a self-contained space city which wanders the galaxy 2,000 years hence powered by spindizzy technology
1953 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – a masterpiece, a terrifying anticipation of a future when books are banned and professional firemen are paid to track down stashes of forbidden books and burn them
1953 Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke a thrilling narrative involving the ‘Overlords’ who arrive from space to supervise mankind’s transition to the next stage in its evolution
1954 The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov – set 3,000 years in the future when humans have separated into ‘Spacers’ who have colonised 50 other planets, and the overpopulated earth whose inhabitants live in enclosed cities or ‘caves of steel’, and introducing detective Elijah Baley to solve a murder mystery
1956 The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov – 3,000 years in the future detective Elijah Baley returns, with his robot sidekick, R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve a murder mystery on the remote planet of Solaria
1956 They Shall Have Stars by James Blish – explains the invention, in the near future, of i) the anti-death drugs and ii) the spindizzy technology which allow the human race to colonise the galaxy
1956 The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester – a fastpaced phantasmagoria set in the 25th century where humans can teleport, a terrifying new weapon has been invented, and tattooed hard man Gulliver Foyle is looking for vengeance
1959 The Triumph of Time by James Blish – concluding story of Blish’s Okie tetralogy in which Amalfi and his friends are present at the end of the universe
1960s
1961 A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke a pleasure tourbus on the moon is sucked down into a sink of moondust, sparking a race against time to rescue the trapped crew and passengers
1962 A Life For The Stars by James Blish – third in the Okie series about cities which can fly through space, focusing on the coming of age of kidnapped earther, young Crispin DeFord, aboard space travelling New York
1962 The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick In an alternative future America lost the Second World War and has been partitioned between Japan and Nazi Germany. The narrative follows a motley crew of characters including a dealer in antique Americana, a German spy who warns a Japanese official about a looming surprise German attack, and a woman determined to track down the reclusive author of a hit book which describes an alternative future in which America won the Second World War
1966 Rocannon’s World by Ursula Le Guin – planetary romance or sci fantasy set on Fomalhaut II where ethnographer Rocannon rides winged tigers and meets all manner of bizarre foes in his quest to track down the aliens who attacked his spaceship
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey a panoramic narrative which starts with aliens stimulating evolution among the first ape-men and ends with a spaceman being transformed into a galactic consciousness
1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick In 1992 androids are almost indistinguishable from humans except by trained bounty hunters like Rick Deckard who is paid to track down and ‘retire’ escaped ‘andys’ – earning enough to buy mechanical animals, since all real animals died long ago
1969 Ubik by Philip K. Dick In 1992 the world is threatened by mutants with psionic powers who are combated by ‘inertials’. The novel focuses on the weird alternative world experienced by a group of inertials after they are involved in an explosion on the moon
1969 The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
1970s
1971 Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis – a genetically engineered bacterium starts eating the world’s plastic
1973 Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke – in 2031 a 50-kilometre-long object of alien origin enters the solar system, so the crew of the spaceship Endeavour are sent to explore it
1974 Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick – America after the Second World War is a police state but the story is about popular TV host Jason Taverner who is plunged into an alternative version of this world where he is no longer a rich entertainer but down on the streets among the ‘ordinaries’ and on the run from the police. Why? And how can he get back to his storyline?
1974 The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin – in the future and 11 light years from earth, the physicist Shevek travels from the impoverished, communal, anarchist world of Anarres to its consumer capitalist cousin, Urras, with a message of brotherhood and a revolutionary new discovery which will change everything – the novel is a searching exploration of the psychology of a propertyless civilisation
1980s
1981 The Golden Age of Science Fiction edited by Kingsley Amis – 17 classic sci-fi stories from what Amis considers the ‘Golden Era’ of the genre, basically the 1950s
1982 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke – Heywood Floyd joins a Russian spaceship on a two-year journey to Jupiter to a) reclaim the abandoned Discovery and b) investigate the monolith on Japetus
1987 2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke* – Spaceship Galaxy is hijacked and forced to land on Europa, moon of the former Jupiter, in a ‘thriller’ notable for Clarke’s descriptions of the bizarre landscapes of Halley’s Comet and Europa
Books & Boots 