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Nov. 27th, 2015 05:14 pmI've been vaguely meaning to read more Ursula K. LeGuin for a while now; The Word For World Is Forest jumped to the top of my list by virtue of being available from my library as a downloadable Kindle eBook.
This is quite a depressing little book, isn't it? The plot is fairly simple:
- humans colonize a heavily wooded alien planet, including enslaving exploiting the local alien species in all the gross ways that one would expect
- to everyone's surprise, the initially-pacifist aliens eventually revolt
- the one anthropologist who has established friendly relations with the aliens is depressed
- suddenly, deus ex orders arrive from Earth dictating that everyone needs to calm the hell down and behave more ethically
- alas, gross humans continue to ruin the planned de-escalation and everything ends in bloodshed
Obviously, I find none of this implausible. It's kind of a misery to spend at least half the book trapped inside the head of the grossest human being of all -- again, I fully believe people like Davidson exist, but he's so! awful! I don't think I'll ever be rereading this one; life's too short to spend that much time in his head again.
This is quite a depressing little book, isn't it? The plot is fairly simple:
- humans colonize a heavily wooded alien planet, including enslaving exploiting the local alien species in all the gross ways that one would expect
- to everyone's surprise, the initially-pacifist aliens eventually revolt
- the one anthropologist who has established friendly relations with the aliens is depressed
- suddenly, deus ex orders arrive from Earth dictating that everyone needs to calm the hell down and behave more ethically
- alas, gross humans continue to ruin the planned de-escalation and everything ends in bloodshed
Obviously, I find none of this implausible. It's kind of a misery to spend at least half the book trapped inside the head of the grossest human being of all -- again, I fully believe people like Davidson exist, but he's so! awful! I don't think I'll ever be rereading this one; life's too short to spend that much time in his head again.
