Vaster than Empires and More Slow

"Vaster than Empires and More Slow" is a science fiction story by American author Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in the collection New Dimensions 1, edited by Robert Silverberg. It is set in the fictional Hainish universe, where the Earth is a member of an interstellar "League of Worlds". The anthology was released in United States in 1971, by Doubleday Books.

The story follows an exploratory ship sent by the League to investigate a newly discovered planet, named World 4470. The team includes Osden, an "empath" who is able to feel the emotions of those around him; however, he has an abrasive personality that leads to tensions within the team. The ship finds World 4470 to be a world covered in forests, and apparently devoid of animal life. However, the team eventually begins to feel a fear emanating from the planet. The team realizes that the entire vegetation on the planet is part of a singular consciousness, which is reacting in fear at the explorers after spending its whole life in isolation.

Like Le Guin's earlier novel The Word for World Is Forest, this story examines the relationship between humans and their natural environment. The story also makes repeated references to the poetry of Andrew Marvell, including in the title. The story was republished in Le Guin's collections The Wind's Twelve Quarters and Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, as well as in many other anthologies. It was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1972.

"Vaster than Empires and More Slow" is set in the fictional Hainish universe, which Le Guin introduced in her first novel Rocannon's World, published in 1966. In this alternate history, human beings did not evolve on Earth, but on Hain. The people of Hain colonized many neighboring planetary systems, including Terra (Earth) and Athshe, possibly a million years before the setting of the novels. The planets subsequently lost contact with each other, for reasons that Le Guin does not explain. Le Guin does not narrate the entire history of the Hainish universe at once, instead letting readers piece it together from various works.

...
Wikipedia