The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Word for World is Forest won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1973. The timing is significant - firstly, because readers initially encountered the story when the Vietnam War was still ongoing and secondly because it represents what Le Guin called her “most overt political statement” and helped to precede The Dispossessed, which is also explicitly political. This was as a part of Again, Dangerous Visions, a mammoth two-volume anthology edited by Harlan Ellison. However, it was first published much earlier, in 1972. Its publication as a separate book didn’t occur until 1976 - after The Dispossessed had been published in 1974, and the Vietnam War had ended with the Fall of Saigon in 1975.

While The Word for World is Forest is sometimes referred to as the sixth Hainish book, it should surely be considered the fifth. After all, its calls for tolerance, respect for the natural world, and fierce condemnation of colonialism are sadly as important now as ever.

While Le Guin later regretted this bluntness, it is arguably crucial to its significance today. Many of the elements of the book are analogues for aspects of the war then raging in Vietnam, and consequently the novella - only 126 pages long in the Gollancz SF Masterworks edition - feels direct and pointed. While this process is evident in other examples of her work, The Word for World is Forest is particularly strongly suffused with the author’s feelings about contemporary events. Le Guin later wrote of science fiction not as a means of predicting the future, but of explaining and commenting on the present. While certainly a “reflection”, the novel is also a forceful howl of anger. While this description is accurate, it is also an understatement. As Ken MacLeod put it in his introduction, the book is a “reflection on invasion, exploitation and oppression, and on the necessity and cost of resistance.” This would profoundly influence the fifth entry in her Hainish series, The Word for World is Forest. While Le Guin’s career was taking off, she was profoundly troubled by outside events - specifically the horror of the Vietnam War. She had also published A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) and The Tombs of Atuan (1971), the first two entries in her Earthsea fantasy series, to some acclaim. Following three fascinating but mostly ignored novels, the Oregon-based author and her Hainish series were brought to wide attention by The Left Hand of Darkness (1969). Le Guin was increasingly being seen as one of the most important writers of science fiction and fantasy.

The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin