There is no societal “mass” generically representing all people, but ongoing struggle leading to argument, opposition and even conflict. In Le Guin’s work, a society is made up of complex individuals, who have different reasonings and motives, where there is no “correct” attitude, where the “good” is not absolute. Le Guin makes an effort to represent different societies neither in purely positive, nor in purely negative ways, but capturing their achievements and flaws alike, especially in the midst of internal clashes and large-scale changes. Her writing allows a glimpse into the workings of a society by focusing on those on its fringes, or those that have been purposefully marginalized.
All the novels here feature outsiders and those that, for one reason or another, don’t or can’t fit in. Therein lies another point in her work, one already present in these three novels: the dynamics between the individual and the societal. Communication is a theme in SF at large, but in Le Guin’s work, even early on, it is fundamental, and is perhaps the key to how she can write of alien cultures and species, along with their interactions with humanity, beyond simple all-out war. Communication, whether it is for the survival of a whole society or for an individual’s needs, comes up in The Dispossessed with the creation of the ansible, and in The Left Hand of Darkness as the people of the planet of Winter receive an invitation to join the interplanetary alliance of the Ekumen. Communication, for a start: how do peoples, cultures, and species connect, learn and exchange with one another? That ongoing process, its challenges, limitations, successes, and failures become key to her work. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of these early novels, however, is how many elements are already present that would continue to be important to Le Guin’s later work. We see this in the first of the novels with a man of advanced technology and communication abilities, stranded in a bronze age world in the second, a people of a future era, exiled in a similar world, struggling to both connect and survive finally, in the third, a being seeking answers to a lost past in the capital of the conquerors of a world. With an inviting introduction by Amal El-Mohtar, Worlds of Exile and Illusion encourages us to look at the three novels of Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exiles, and City of Illusions with kind eyes: to examine the themes Le Guin would work with again or reinvent in her later fiction, but also to learn what is novel about these particular titles. Le Guin’s work is always worth visiting and revisiting, from her famous The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness to earlier pieces such as those contained in this edition.
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