Talk:Hainish Cycle

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[edit] Problems With The "Timeline" section

I'm busy re-reading the whole cycle at present (have a box set of four of the novels here on my desk). And I'm certain the time line suggest by Ian Watson is wildly optimistic. In "The Dispossessed", the Urrasis talk about "Eight and a half millennium of history" and one of the Hainish ambassadors talks about Hain having "A thousand millennium of history". Plus the amount of action which has taken place before the stories even begin - humans colonize then lose touch with a number of planets, then re-discover them. Not to mention the evolution of "semi-human" species. The proposed dates don't even begin to have this kind of scope - the earliest date is only three hundred years in the future. I am reading the dates correctly?

I actually think trying to assign actual dates to the novels is pointless, given they'd have to be in the form of "100,000 AD" etc. I'd be happy if we just dumped this section.

maxcelcat 11:24, 22nd November 2007. —Preceding comment was added at 00:33, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

The time-line does link to near-future Earth, so I think it is worth keeping. Le Guin's idea is that Earth was settled from Hain, perhaps displacing some locally evolved hominids. So it's not 100,000 years in our future.
Qualifying the dates as speculative might be justified. --GwydionM (talk) 18:22, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ancestry of Alterrans

The article states that Alterrans are human alien hybrids, and also states them to be interfertile with humans, which if true would be a major scientific howler. My recollection is that the Alterran culture was human descended, but their biological ancestry was strictly alien. They had culturally assimilated to a now extinct human settlement, the human settlement being the more advanced culture, but no interbreeding had occurred, implying no interbreeding possible. They were culturally human, the way that the German descended invaders who conquered the Roman Empire in the west became culturally classic Greek.

To my recollection, the human settlement from which the Alterrans were culturally descended was described as dying out, not as being biologically absorbed in the Alterran majority, living on culturally, but not biologically. James A. Donald 20:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, you misremembered. It is stated that the dwindling Terran population has adapted and can now interbreed. In City of Illusions there are individuals of mixed descent.--GwydionM 16:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A separate page for a 'Timeline of Hainish history'?

This article is getting big. I'd like to do a separate page, leaving the sequence of the books but moving the rest. Also adding reasons. E.g. the ansible is made possible by the discoveries in The Dispossessed, is new in The Word for World is Forest and well-established in Planet of Exile. In The Left Hand of Darkness the 'Age of the Enemy' is over and no Gethenian has yet left their world. Later works featuring Gethenians must come afterwards. Short stories can also be fitted in on this basis.

Incidentally, what is the basis for putting The Telling after Four Ways to Forgiveness? Both mention Gethenians as part of the Ekumen, but what other clues are there?

--GwydionM 16:28, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Move to Hainish Cycle?

The first three stories (Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions) speak of a League of All Worlds. The term Ekumen appears for the first time in The Left Hand of Darkness, which is also after the 'Age of the Enemy'.

Those four are in chronological order. But then she goes back to a time before Rocannon's World in The Dispossessed and The Word for World is Forest. There is no mention of any Ekumen: it is the League of All Worlds that is suggested in the first book and which exists in the second.

All later books contain references to Gethenians and take place after The Left Hand of Darkness. The sequence would seem to be:

Original Hainish expansion (references but so far not shown directly)
Early Contact
League of All Worlds
Age of the Enemy (disunity)
Ekumen Era

All of these would fit as part of a 'Hainish Cycle' - Rocannon comes from Hain, etc. If it's OK with others, I'd like to move the page to Hainish Cycle and fix the various references. Put a small entry here, which would be valid for the stories and novels set in that period.--GwydionM 17:02, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this, but there should not be a small entry here; the Hainish Cycle page should just have an Ekumen section. -- Evertype·✆ 20:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Did the move, 1st July. I'll wait for people's reaction before changing the secondary links.--GwydionM 17:00, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hilf

Various humans in UKL space stories (such as Planet of Exile) refer to indigenous sapient species as "hilfs": Highly Intelligent Life Forms. It is a category or descriptor rather than a specific species. - Frankie (talk) 19:05, 4 January 2008 (UTC)