JonDent - Exploring Electronic Music: The Hainish Cycle

Monday 11 January 2021

The Hainish Cycle - Ursula K. Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness is the most famous book in the Hainish cycle - The LHOD was published in 1969.

The novel is set in the fictional Hainish universe and many readers describe it as part of the 'Hainish Cycle

although Le Guin herself often discounted the idea 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.

The Hainish Cycle is also sometimes referred to as the Ekumen Cycle .

The Hainish Universe consists of different civilizations of human beings on planets orbiting a number of nearby stars. The idea is that humans did not evolve on earth.

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the people of the planet Hain colonized a large number of worlds including Earth, which they named Terra. Most of these planets were similar enough that humans from one world can pass as natives of another.

Hainish civilization eventually collapsed and the colony planets (including Earth) over time lost contact with one another and eventually forgot that other human worlds existed.

Ekumen (or the League of All Worlds,

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 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 story "The Day Before the Revolution" (1974).

You don't necessarily need to read these books in any order.

I read the Left Hand of darkness first.

All the books are pretty stand alone. Left Hand of Darkness is a great place to start! ...

Order of publication

Rocannon's World (1966),

Planet of Exile (1966),

City of Illusions (1967)

The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

The Word for World Is Forest (1972)

The Dispossessed (1974),

Hainish Reading Order by Ursula LeGuin:

Rocannon's World.
Planet of Exile.
City of Illusion.
The Word for World is Forest.
The Left Hand of Darkness.
The Dispossessed.
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea.
Four Ways to Forgiveness.

Ansible

An ansible is a category of fictional devices or technology capable of near-instantaneous or faster-than-light communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. As a name for such a device, the word "ansible" first appeared in a 1966 novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. Since that time, the term has been broadly used in the works of numerous science fiction authors, across a variety of settings and continuities.^[1]

^{The word was a contraction of "answerable", as the device would allow
its users to receive answers to their messages in a reasonable amount of
time,}

Sci Fi

My sci fi index.

Synthesizers and Sci-Fi go hand in hand.

Electronic music is about Futurism.

Synths and drum machines represent a new future where science and technology

hold the promise of a better world.

From special effects, to movie soundtracks they feed off each other.

I owe programs such as "Dr Who" and movies like "Star Wars", “Forbidden Planet” and “The Day The Earth Stood Still” a great debt for introducing me to electronic sounds and music. Those early films and programs were enhanced by those synths and they in turn paved the way for commercial artists like David Bowie and Pink Floyd to expose the masses to electronic music.

I'll update this post over time. .. The link can be found in the index to the right.