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

content warning: war, genocide, sexual assault

The Word for World Is Forest is Ursula K Le Guin’s 1972 smash hit novel (I’ve seen it described as a novella, but it’s over 100 pages of normally spaced text… Is Where Angels Fear To Tread a “novella”?) that won both Hugo and Nebula award (the SF books equivalent of the Oscars and the Golden Globes, but with both being considered of equal importance) upon its release and it’s

It’s

It’s

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Time has passed.

I keep opening the draft of this post to add to it and getting distracted before anything hits the screen.

I keep starting to think about The Word for World Is Forest and then I think about it more and I stop being able to write about it.

I stop being able to think of something to say about this novel because there isn’t much it doesn’t say itself.

There isn’t much more to be said than can be found within its own pages…

This isn’t the first of Le Guin’s books I’ve read that wasn’t marketed at children and/or younger people, but it’s the first I’ve read that categorically is adult.

There is nothing cosy or light or unserious here; this is a novel about war and about genocide and about cruelty and about the contagious destruction of colonialism…

It is about capitalistic society’s sick fucking hard-on for violence and genocide, for othering and the denial of humanity, and it’s about the consequences of unbridled aggression and the absurdity of starting a fight you couldn’t possibly win just because you think you have the right to win every fight you start…

There is lots of extreme violence here. Descriptions of torture, and a violent sexual assault that ends in the victim’s death is a crucial plot point. We’re not on Earthsea any more.

–///–

This is serious war fiction, serious political writing and it’s so unsubtle that it’s not even really fair to call it allegory: this is retrofuturism, a future by way of the 1960s and the Vietnam War…

The colonisers on an alien planet play with hallucinogens and helicopters, they espouse the same ideologies and the same attitudes as right wing nutjobs of the sixties and the now; Le Guin’s villain – whose narrative ending is both crueller, more fitting and far darker than I was expecting even as I neared the novel’s dénouement and he remained – almost alone amongst the Terrans, the Earthlings – committed to a violent war against the previously peaceful locals (Athsheans) who vastly outnumber the human colonialists and—

–///–

It’s not subtle, no.

It’s not subtle.

It’s firebombs and intentional forest fires being used to try and route out a guerilla army unsubtle…

It’s the most American space force you’ve ever seen anywhere except maybe Starship Troopers, but without any gags.

Maybe the seriousness of this would grate a little if the book was longer, but I don’t think it would. I don’t think it would.

–///–

Le Guin evokes this forest planet and the small, humanoid distant species cousins of ours who live on it bluntly, simply, directly.

There’s no fucking ambiguity and there’s no fucking attempt at it.

This is raw fiction picking at a raw wound (colonial wars innit) at a raw time in a raw way. It is harrowing, moving, serious, wise.

No, this is not a bedtime SF novella. This is a fucking grown up novel about grown up things.

Nightmare stuff.

Perfect stuff.

Fucking recommended.