Rocannon's World

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**Rocannon's World**
Image:RocannonsWorld.jpg
Author	Ursula K. Le Guin
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Science Fiction
Publisher	Ace Books
Publication date	1966
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
ISBN	NA
Followed by	Planet of Exile (1966)

Rocannon's World was 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. 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 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.

It was republished in 1978 along with Planet of Exile and City of Illusions in a volume called Three Hainish Novels and in 1994 with the same novels as Worlds of Exile and Illusion.

[edit] Plot summary

The novel begins with a prologue called "Semley's Necklace", which was previously published as a stand-alone story. 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 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, and returns after a generation due to relativistic time dilation.

The novel then follows Rocannon, an ethnologist who meets Semley at the museum. He later goes on a mission to search her planet for the base of an enemy of the League of All Worlds. After the enemy destroys his ship and his companions, he sets out to find the base. He uses the ansible (an instantaneous communication device) there to alert his people. An unmanned vessel destroys the installation, but manned travel is much slower; a rescue ship arrives after he has lived out his life among Semley's people.

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v • d • e Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle
The Dispossessed \| The Word for World is Forest \| Rocannon's World \| Planet of Exile \| City of Illusions \| The Left Hand of Darkness \| Four Ways to Forgiveness \| The Telling

v • d • e Ursula K. Le Guin bibliography
Earthsea	Listed in order written with publication date in parentheses. "The Word of Unbinding" (1964) • "The Finder" (2001) • "Darkrose and Diamond" (1999) • "The Rule of Names" (1964) • "The Bones of the Earth" (2001) • A Wizard of Earthsea (1968) • The Tombs of Atuan (1971) • "On the High Marsh" (2001) • The Farthest Shore (1972) • Tehanu (1990) • "Dragonfly" (1997) • Tales from Earthsea (coll 2001) •The Other Wind (2001)
Hainish Cycle	"Dowry of the Angyar" (1964) • Rocannon's World (1964) • Planet of Exile (1966) • City of Illusions (1967) • The Left Hand of Darkness (1967) • "Winter's King" (1969) • "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" (1971) • The Dispossessed (1974) • "The Day Before the Revolution" (1974) • The Word for World is Forest (1976) • "The Shobies' Story" (1990) • "Dancing to Ganam" (1993) • "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" (1994) • "The Matter of Seggri" (1994) • "Unchosen Love" (1994) • "Solitude" (1994) • Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995) • "Coming of Age in Karhide" (1995) • "Mountain Ways" (1996) • "Old Music and the Slave Women" (1999) • The Telling (2000)
Other fiction (novels bold)	The Lathe of Heaven (1971) • The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) • Orsinian Tales (1976) • The Eye of the Heron (1978) • Malafrena (1979) • The Beginning Place (1980) • The Compass Rose (1982) • Always Coming Home (1985) • Buffalo Gals, and Other Animal Presences (1987) • Searoad (1991) • A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (1991) • Unlocking the Air and Other Stories (1996) • The Birthday of the World (2002) • Changing Planes (2003)
Nonfiction	The Language of the Night (1979) • Dancing at the Edge of the World (1982) • Revisioning Earthsea (1992) • Steering the Craft (1998) • The Wave in the Mind (2004)