Rocannon's World
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Ursula K. Le Guin |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Gerald McConnell |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Hainish Cycle |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Published | 1966 (Ace Books) |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 117 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 9159033 |
| 813/.5/4 | |
| LC Class | PZ4.L518 Ro4 PS3562.E42 |
| Followed by | Planet of Exile (1966) |
Rocannon's World is 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, following the tête-bêche format. Though it is one of Le Guin's many works set in the universe of the technological Hainish Cycle, the story itself has many elements of heroic fantasy. The hero Gaveral Rocannon encounters lords who live in castles and wield swords, and other races much like fairies and gnomes, in his travels on a backward planet. It may be classified as science fantasy or planetary romance.
The word ansible for a faster-than-light communicator, was coined in the novel. The term has subsequently been used throughout the canon of science fiction.
The novel begins with a prologue called "Semley's Necklace", which was first published as a stand-alone story titled "Dowry of the Angyar" in Amazing Stories (September 1964). A young woman named Semley takes a space voyage from her unnamed, technologically primitive planet to a museum to reclaim a family heirloom, not realizing that, while the trip will be of short duration for her, many years will elapse on her planet. She returns to find her daughter grown up and her husband dead.
The story in effect combines the Rip Van Winkle-type fairy tale—where a person goes underground in the company of dwarves or elves, spending an apparently brief time but on emerging finding whole generations had elapsed—with modern science fiction having the same effect through relativity and the time dilation resulting from traveling at near-light velocities.
In the story, the planet's "dwarves" live underground and have an early industrial society that (unlike industrial societies in Earth's history) doesn't interfere with the less-developed societies on the surface. The interstellar society of the Ekumen has placed an automated spaceship at the dwarves' disposal, with which Semley travels. Semley descends into the dwarves' tunnels, like Rip van Winkle, from where she makes the flight - and returns after a generation (sixteen years) due to relativistic time dilation.
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