Цикл Хайниш: Миры Урсулы К. Ле Гуин

Science fiction series by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Hainish Cycle consists of a number of science fiction novels and stories by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is set in a future history in which civilizations of human beings on planets orbiting a number of nearby stars, including Terra ("Earth"), are contacting each other for the first time and establishing diplomatic relations, and setting up a confederacy under the guidance of the oldest of the human worlds, peaceful Hain. In this history, human beings did not evolve on Earth but were the result of interstellar colonies planted by Hain long ago, which was followed by a long period when interstellar travel ceased. Some of the races have new genetic traits, a result of ancient Hainish experiments in genetic engineering, including people who can dream while awake, and a world of hermaphroditic people who only come into active sexuality once a month, not knowing which sex will manifest in them. In keeping with Le Guin's style, she uses varied social and environmental settings to explore the anthropological and sociological outcomes of human evolution in those diverse environments. The Hainish novels The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and The Dispossessed (1974) have won literary awards, as have the novella The Word for World Is Forest (1972) and the short stories "The Day Before the Revolution" (1974) and "The Matter of Seggri" (1994). Le Guin herself often discounted the characterization of a "Hainish Cycle", writing on her website that "The thing is, they aren't a cycle or a saga. They do not form a coherent history. There are some clear connections among them, yes, but also some extremely murky ones."

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the people of Hain colonized a large number of worlds, including Earth, known as Terra. Most of these were similar enough that humans from one world can pass as natives of another, but on some the old Hainish 'colonisers' used genetic engineering. At least one of the various species of Rocannon's World are the product of genetic engineering, as are the "hilfs" ("highly intelligent life forms") of Planet S(whose story has not been told), and probably the androgynous humans of Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness. The Ekumen do not know whether the colonisers sought to adapt humans to varied worlds, were conducting various experiments, or had other reasons. Hainish civilization subsequently collapsed, and the colony planets (including Earth) forgot that other human worlds existed. The Ekumen stories tell of the efforts to re establish a civilization on a galactic scale through NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light) interstellar travel taking years to travel between stars (although only weeks or months from the viewpoint of the traveler because of time dilation), and through instantaneous interstellar communication using the ansible. This seems to have happened in two phases: First, the League of All Worlds was formed, as an alliance of planets, mostly descended from colonization efforts from the planet Hain, uniting the "nine known worlds" — presumably along with new colonies. By the time of Rocannon's World it has grown but is also under threat from a distant enemy. In City of Illusions it is recalled as having been a league of some 80 worlds at the time it was destroyed by aliens called the Shing, who are uniquely able to lie in mindspeech. After the apparent overthrow of the Shing by the descendants of marooned Terrans and the inhabitants of Alterra / Werel who have succeeded in interbreeding (as related in Planet of Exile) and are capable of detecting Shing lies, the alliance is eventually reconstructed. A second phase begins with The Left Hand of Darkness. The 80 plus planets seem to have reunited as the Ekumen – a name derived from the Greek "oikoumene", meaning "the inhabited world", although characters occasionally refer to it as "the Household", which is in turn a reference to the Greek "oikos", a word which developed from the same root as "oikoumene". Unexplained references are made by the protagonist from Terra in The Left Hand of Darkness to a long past "Age of the Enemy", which presumably refers to the time that the Shing controlled Terra, portrayed in City of Illusions.

The Ekumen (or the League of All Worlds, though that is also believed to be the previous planetary coalition, before some sort of galactic crisis) contains a very large number of planets and is continually exploring new ones. Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness explains that there are 83 planets in the Ekumen, with Gethen a candidate for becoming the 84th. The process of reaching out to potential civilizations is a tedious and sometimes dangerous one.

Societies tend to use sophisticated but unobtrusive technologies. Most notable is the ansible, an instant communication device that keeps worlds in touch with each other. Physical communication is by NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light) ships. The physics is never explained; the ship vanishes from where it was and reappears somewhere else many years later. The trip takes slightly longer than it would to cross the same distance at the speed of light, but ship time is just a few hours for those on board. It cannot be used for trips within a solar system. It is also lethal if the traveler is pregnant. City of Illusions mentions automatic death machines that work on the same principle as the ansible and can strike instantly at distant worlds. Such a device is clearly used in the events of Rocannon's World. The weapons are not mentioned again in later books. Churten theory, as developed by the physicists of Anarres, should allow people to go instantly from solar system to solar system. It is a development of the work of Shevek, whose tale is told in The Dispossessed. Shevek's work made the ansible possible—it is mentioned in his tale that engineers decided they could build it once the correct theory was found. Churten theory offers a way to move people and spacecraft instantaneously, but there are side effects. These are described in three short stories, "The Shobies' Story," "Dancing to Ganam", and "Another Story, or, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea," all collected in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1994). The ansible has been adopted by other science fiction and fantasy authors, such as Orson Scott Card, Elizabeth Moon, and Vernor Vinge.

The ideas of post technological societies and social and ecological collapse are in several of the stories. These are portrayed as the end result of the wrong kind of civilizations, i. e., competitive, capitalist, patriarchal, "dynamic, aggressive, ecology breaking cultures," while successful societies are close to the land, peaceful, non authoritarian, non competitive, static, communitarian, with the holistic outlook of Eastern religions. The Earth, called "Terra" in the Cycle, is mentioned as one of the failed civilizations. In City of Illusions, Earth has suffered some sort of collapse in a distant future, losing contact with the stars. In The Dispossessed, the ecological disaster of Earth is described; it has become "a planet spoiled by the human species" through wars and runaway industrial development. Pollution has turned it into a desert and ruined the carrying capacity of the land. The population has fallen from nine billion to half a billion, who only survive by rationing, labor conscription, euthanasia, forced birth control, and the charity of the Hainish. In "Another Story" in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, it is mentioned that Earth still suffers badly from pollution. Eleven Soro had a high level of technology and then a massive crash, as is told in the short story "Solitude" in The Birthday of the World. Hain itself has gone back to a simpler life, with high technology used only where it can be justified, as is told in the first part of "A Man of the People" in Four Ways to Forgiveness. This also seems to apply to the planet Ve. Orint and Kheakh are mentioned in passing as worlds that have totally destroyed themselves. In The Left Hand Of Darkness, the planet Gde is described as extremely hot rock and desert, the result of a technological society that "wrecked its ecological balance" some millennia previous, and "burned up its forests for kindling."

+Hainish short storiesTitleDateOriginal PublicationNotes"The Dowry of Angyar"1964Amazing Stories September 1964appears as "Semley's Necklace" in The Wind's Twelve Quarters; also used as the first chapter of Rocannon's World, where it is titled "Prologue: The Necklace". "Winter's King"1969Orbit 5collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters"Vaster than Empires and More Slow"1971New Dimensions 1: Fourteen Original Science Fiction Storiescollected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters, and The Found and the Lost"The Day Before the Revolution"1974Galaxy Science Fiction August 1974collected in The Wind's Twelve Quarters; winner of the Nebula Award and Locus Award"The Shobies' Story"1990Universe 1collected in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea"Dancing to Ganam"1993 Amazing Stories September 1993collected in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea"Another Story or a Fisherman of the Inland Sea"1994Harper Prismcollected in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, and The Found and the Lost"The Matter of Seggri"1994Crank! #3, Spring 1994collected in The Birthday of the World, and The Found and the Lost; winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award, 1995collected in The Birthday of the World"Mountain Ways"1996Asimov's Science Fiction August 1996collected in The Birthday of the World; winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award"Old Music and the Slave Women"1999Far Horizons 1999collected in The Birthday of the World, The Found and the Lost, and Five Ways to Forgiveness