Shing

The Shing are a fictional alien race, in the Hainish Cycle of novels and short stories of the science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin. They are only explicitly described in City of Illusions, but seem to be the same as the distant but threatening 'enemy' mentioned in Rocannon's World and Planet of Exile. In The Left Hand of Darkness, brief reference is made to an earlier 'Age of the Enemy' which is now past. It seems the planets of the former League of Worlds have re-united as the Ekumen.

In her introduction to the 1978 hardback edition of City of Illusions, Le Guin regrets the improbable and flawed depiction of the villains, the Shing, as not convincingly evil.

Originating in a distant region of the galaxy, perhaps hundreds of light-years from Earth, the Shing infiltrate and destroy the League of All Worlds twelve hundred years before City of Illusions begins. The League has received prior warning of alien conquerors subduing distant worlds and for generations have worked to prepare defensive alliances and weaponry. However when the Shing finally arrive they are able to speedily subdue the eighty League planets, apparently without encountering effective opposition. The main weapon enabling this rapid and confused occupation is the Shing's ability to lie in Mindspeech. The Shing closely resemble humans though they seem to be unable to interbreed with them. Coming to Earth as "exiles or pirates or empire builders from some distant star" the Shing, who are not numerous, establish themselves in a single fantastical city Es Toch. Under their rule the remainder of Earth declines into a thinly populated collection of backward and often mutually hostile tribal societies.

Mindspeech is an advanced form of telepathy practiced by the Shing. Mindspeech was first learned by Rocannon, an ethnologist from the planet New South Georgia of the League of All Worlds on the world called in his honor Rokanan. Two of the races on Rokanan have indigenous telepathy and from one of them Rocannon learns the skill himself, and later it spreads throughout the League. One axiom held to be undeniable was that it is not possible to lie through mindspeech, however the alien Enemy of the League, the Shing are able to mind-lie and use that ability to infiltrate and destroy the League.

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