Rocannon's World

What Hacker News says

1. wafflemakerSep 2024
   Roadsise Picnic and The Snail on the Slope are IMO two of their best books (A. B. Strugatsky). I really liked others like Monday starts on Saturday or It's hard to be a God.

   Sci Fi by Ursula k. Le Guin is also written from a very different perspective. Earthsea cycle, which is more fantasy, but unike any other. Also the book on the planet where people marry in quadruplets, The Planet of Exile, part of Hainish Cycle. Whole Hainish Cycle is awesome, Left Hand of Darkness, Rocannon's World.

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2. jacquesmNov 2023
   To save you some scripting:

     Alan Moore - dystopian graphic novel V for Vendetta (serialized 1982–1989)
     Alejandro Jodorowsky Jean Giraud (Moebius) - graphic novel The Incal (1980–1988)
     Anna Kavan - Ice (1967).
     Anne McCaffrey - The Ship Who Sang (1969)
     Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - Пикник на обочине (1972; Piknik na obochine; translated as A Roadside Picnic)
     Barry N. Malzberg - Beyond Apollo (1972)
     Brian Aldiss - Barefoot in the Head (1969)
     Brian Aldiss - Greybeard (1964).
     Chester Anderson - The Butterfly Kid (1967)
     Christopher Priest - Inverted World (1974)
     Cordwainer Smith - Norstrilia (1975, in complete form).
     David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
     Frank Herbert - Dune (1965)
     Frank Miller - graphic novel Rōnin (1983–1984)
     Gary Panter - comic Jimbo (serialized 1977–present)
     Gary Panter - comic strip Dal Tokyo (1983–2007)
     Gene Wolfe - The Fifth Head of Cerberus (1972)
     Harlan Ellison’s (ed.) Dangerous Visions (1967)
     Jack Kirby - Fourth World comics (1971–1974).
     Jack Kirby - pre-Fourth World sci-fi comics (1964–1970)
     James Tiptree Jr. - Up the Walls of the World (1978)
     Jane Gaskell - A Sweet, Sweet Summer (1969)
     J.G. Ballard - Crash (1973)
     J.G. Ballard - High-Rise (1975)
     J.G. Ballard - The Atrocity Exhibition (written 1967, published 1970)
     J.G. Ballard - The Burning World (1964)
     J.G. Ballard - The Crystal World (1966)
     Joanna Russ - We Who Are About To… (serialized 1976; in book form, 1977)
     John Brunner - Stand on Zanzibar  (1968).
     John Brunner - The Sheep Look Up (1972)
     John Crowley - Engine Summer (1979)
     John Crowley - The Deep (1975).
     John Sladek - Roderick at Random (1983)
     John Sladek’s - The Müller-Fokker Effect (1970)
     John Varley - The Ophiuchi Hotline (1977)
     John Wagner, Alan Grant, and Carlos Ezquerra - Judge Dredd adventures Block Mania (serialized 10/31/1981 to 12/26/81) and The Apocalypse War (1/2/82 to 6/26/82).
     Josephine Saxton - The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith (1969)
     Katsuhiro Otomo - manga series Akira (1982–1990)
     Kurt Vonnegut - Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969)
     Michael Moorcock - The English Assassin (1972)
     M. John Harrison - The Pastel City (1971)
     Moebius-s Le Garage Hermétique (The Airtight Garage, 1976–1979)
     Octavia E. Butler-s Kindred (1979)
     Octavia E. Butler - Wild Seed (1980)
     Philip K. Dick - A Maze of Death (1970)
     Philip K. Dick - A Scanner Darkly (1977)
     Philip K. Dick - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)
     Philip K. Dick - Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974).
     Philip K. Dick - Martian Time-Slip (1964)
     Philip K. Dick - Now Wait for Last Year (1966)
     Philip K. Dick - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965)
     Philip K. Dick - The Unteleported Man (1966)
     Philip K. Dick - Ubik (1969).
     Philip K. Dick - VALIS (1981)
     Richard Brautigan - In Watermelon Sugar (1968).
     Robert Heinlein - Friday (1982).
     Robert Silverberg - Dying Inside (1972)
     Roger Zelazny - Lord of Light (1967)
     Russell Hoban - Riddley Walker (1980)
     Samuel R. Delany - Babel-17 (1966).
     Samuel R. Delany - Dhalgren (1975)
     Samuel R. Delany - Nova (1968)
     Samuel R. Delany - The Einstein Intersection (1967)
     Samuel R. Delany - Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (1976)
     Stanislaw Lem - Ze wspomnien Ijona Tichego Kongres futurologiczny (The Futurological Congress, 1971)
     Thomas M. Disch - Camp Concentration (1968)
     Thomas Pynchon - Gravity’s Rainbow (1973)
     Ursula K. Le Guin - Rocannon's World (1966)
     Ursula K. Le Guin - The Dispossessed (1974).
     Ursula K. LeGuin - The Lathe of Heaven (1971)
     Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
     Vladimir Nabokov - Ada, or Ardor (1969)
     Vonda N. McIntyre - Dreamsnake (1978)
     Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins (1971)
     William Burroughs - Nova Express (1964)

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3. eszedAug 2023
   I suggest you try a couple of her other books before you give up on her entirely. Rocannon's World, for instance, is far more plot-driven, and serves as an introduction to her Hainish Cycle, which is a masterpiece of world building, presented across multiple (only loosely-interlinked) books and short stories.

   Overall, however, LeGuin is almost entirely unconcerned with technology - which, to the extent that they find that to be a significant draw of the genre, may drive away some "science-fiction" fans. (I've always thought the original name, "speculative fiction", is preferable.) LeGuin's speculations run more to the anthropological than the technological, which shouldn't be surprising, given her family background.

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4. photochemsynOct 2022
   Yes, those were some of my favorites as a kid. I think I read them about the same time as the Lord of the Rings. Rocannon's World and City of Illusions too, those were memorable.
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5. teh_klevMay 2021
   I've read a ton of speculative fiction over the years (I'm in my mid 50's) but had never gotten around to reading anything by Ursula Le Guin. One day whilst catching up on some anarchist reading I found The Dispossessed listed in a "top x books for anarchists" or some such thing. And it seemed like no better time than at that moment to dip into the Le Guin's work.

   I decided I'd start reading her scifi novels in near chronological order and began with The Left Hand of Darkness which I found devastatingly good. This is the one mentioned in the interview where Genly Ai the observer is embedded on a planet where the humanoid species are in the main genderless and only become male or female during a period of "kemmer" to reproduce. I can't do it justice here but I couldn't put the book down.

   Next up were the three previous novels; Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions. These are contained in a handy single volume published under the S.F. Masterworks imprint. All of these are also excellent novels, if a little short.

   I've just started The Dispossessed and thus far it's holding my attention.

   I think if you've never considered reading Le Guin's scifi then I can definitely recommend from the limited sampling I gotten through so far. Some folks might be put off by how old these novels are, but Le Guin cleverly shy's away from using technology as a plot driver (perhaps with the exception of the "ansible") so they don't feel dated. Her writing and story telling is as fresh today as it probably was back in the 60's and 70's.

   Also, and I almost forgot, Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" which is quite disturbing and thought provoking.

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6. celsius1414Feb 2026
   2026 is the 60th anniversary of Rocannon’s World, the first novel of her Hainish Cycle SF books. I’m rereading all of them over the course of the year to celebrate.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainish_Cycle

   She is one of my writer-heroes.

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