Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle takes place
in a science fiction universe that contains
a number of planets, some of which have been
explored and made part of an interplanetary
group called the League of All Worlds and
its successor, the Ekumen; others are explored
and re-explored by the League and the Ekumen
over a time frame spanning centuries. Le Guin
has used approximately a dozen planets as
primary settings for her novels; as such they
have detailed physical and cultural descriptions.
Le Guin reveals in The Left Hand of Darkness
that at that narrative-time, there were 83
planets in the Ekumen, with Gethen a candidate
for the 84th.
== Aka ==
Aka is a monoethnic world that recently underwent
an aggressive revolutionary change in technological
status, during which almost all of the traditional
culture was suppressed or rejected. Aka is
governed by a despotic state which mandates
a form of scientific theism and aims to turn
its citizens into ideal "producer-consumers",
with the ultimate goal of attaining advanced
spaceflight capabilities. Aka is the setting
of most of The Telling.
== Athshe ==
Athshe is a forest planet (whose name means
"forest"), also known as 'World 41' and called
"New Tahiti" by Terrans. Athshe is peopled
by a small, furred (but in fact fully human)
group of HILFs (high-intelligence life forms).
Athshe was exploited for its timber resources,
with the forests completely wiped out on many
of its islands before a native revolt expelled
the Terrans, as described in The Word for
World is Forest.
Athshe's plants and animals are similar to
those of Earth, placed there by the Hainish
people in their first wave of colonisation,
which also settled Earth. A Cetian visitor
categorically states that the native humans
"came from the same, original, Hainish stock".
It is not explained why the people of Athshe
are green-furred and only one metre tall.
Their sleeping cycles are also very different
from the Hainish norm. There are two likely
explanations. One possibility is that the
original settlers were genetically modified
by the Hainish. On the other hand, enough
time has passed since the original settlement
for the locals to have naturally evolved in
response to their environment.
== Eleven-Soro ==
Eleven-Soro is a world that had a high technology
and then a massive crash. A strange introverted
new culture has emerged, with women living
alone and unwilling to talk to visitors. The
post-collapse culture is described in the
short story "Solitude" which appeared in The
Birthday of the World.
The people of Eleven-Soro are of Hainish descent
and briefly had the maximum population density
of any known planet, with "The greatest cities
ever built on any world, covering two of the
continents entirely, with small areas set
aside for farming; there had been 120 billion
people living in the cities, while the animals
and the sea and the air and the dirt died,
until the people began dying too."
== Faraday ==
Faraday has a prominent place in Rocannon's
World. Faraday is a young planet whose inhabitants
embark on a career of interstellar war and
conquest, and construct a secret base on the
backward world where the book takes place,
from which destructive ships could be launched
to numerous targets while the League of all
Worlds spends its force on subduing their
home world. Seeing as the planet is named
for a famous Earth physicist, it was evidently
discovered and named by Terrans, who introduced
its inhabitants to interstellar civilization
(the Faradayans are specifically mentioned
as having learned to play chess from Terrans).
Faraday seems loosely modeled on Imperial
Japan – i.e., a relative late-comer to an
existing civilization, which quickly takes
up new technologies, builds up aggressive
armed forces in order to carve out a bigger
place for itself in that established civilization,
oppresses weaker cultures and peoples which
it encounters, and makes use of fanatic pilots
ready to embark on suicide missions. The act
of Rocannon at the end of the book results
in the destruction of their secret base; Faraday's
aggressive designs are evidently checked (or
destroyed, as it is mentioned in Rocannon's
World that the League is attacking the planet
itself), and the planet is not heard of again
in later books.
== Ganam / Tadkla ==
Ganam is a very diverse world with some high
technology. The inhabitants, or one group
of them, are called the Gaman.
Ancient Hainish records refer to Ganam as
'G-14-214-yomo' and also Tadkla. The tale
of the first two Ekumen visits is told in
the short story "Dancing to Ganam" which appeared
in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. It is described
as one of the outermost seedings of the Hainish
Expansion, and lost from the human community
for five hundred millennia.
== Gethen ==
Gethen is a very cold, glacier-covered planet
also known as "Winter". It is inhabited by
androgynous intelligent humanoids, surmised
in The Left Hand of Darkness to be descended
from genetically-engineered Hainish settlers.
Other than The Left Hand of Darkness, Gethen
also appears in the short stories "Winter's
King" and "Coming of Age in Karhide".
== Hain ==
Hain is the Prime World in the Hainish Cycle
and is also known as Davenant and Hain-Davenant
and is about 140 light-years from Terra/Earth.
It is the oldest culture in both the League
of Worlds and later the Ekumen. Ecumen cultural
observers, like Genly Ai in The Left Hand
of Darkness, are trained on Hain. Three of
the short stories in A Fisherman of the Inland
Sea include details of life on Hain. More
is seen in the first half of A Man of the
People in Four Ways to Forgiveness.
The history of the people of Hain goes back
three million years. Hain is supposedly the
original source of most intelligent life in
the planets of the Ekumen, and some of the
plant and animal life. It once had a culture
centered around high-technology which seeded
humans or genetically-modified humans on various
nearby planets, including Earth and the other
worlds now in the League and Ekumen. The older,
colonizing, high-tech culture crashed, and
from it a more wisely re-built culture arose
that is current during the narrative-present
in the novels.
In the novels' present, the Hanish can neither
conceive children nor sire them without consciously
deciding to do so. Conscious-choice conception
is not described elsewhere among the Ecumen
humanoids, and during the earlier seeding
/ colonial period, the Hanish genetic modifications
included apparently experimental changes to
human sexuality.
Evidence of the former high-tech life is all
around Hain, along with demonstrations of
the current Hainish indifference to it:Stse
is an almost-island, separated from the mainland
of the great south continent by marshes and
tidal bogs, where millions of wading birds
gather to mate and nest. Ruins of an enormous
bridge are visible on the landward side, and
another half-sunk fragment of ruin is the
basis of the town's boat pier and breakwater.
Vast works of other ages encumber all Hain,
and are no more and no less venerable or interesting
to the Hainish than the rest of the landscape.
The character Havzhiva is a man who grows
up on Hain, though he ends up working for
the Hainish embassy on Yeowe. We see the ruins
of past technology and learn of the highly
localised social order that exists on some
parts of the planet. Through his story we
see the dual social systems working on Hain.
Both the pueblo centered agrarian village
life directed by local gods, moieties, lineage
and inherited expectations on the one hand
and also the interstellar Ekumen culture of
the historians centered on the city of Kathhad,
which the pueblo peoples describe as Crazy.
=== Geography ===
Hain is described as possessing two continents,
referenced simply as the Great and the South
Continent. We learn that Hain had been for
several thousand years in an unexciting period
marked by the co-existence of small, stable
self contained societies currently called
pueblos, with a high-technology, low density
network of cities and information centers
called the temple. A number of settlements
are described:
Stse is a pueblo village on an isle on the
north western coast of the South continent
and the home of Havzhiva.
Etsahin is a larger town, and trading center
on the mainland opposite.
Kathhad is home to the temple, and a center
of the historians the interstellar Ekumen
culture of Hain.
Darranda is a city of the southern continent,
where Havzhiva had visited his uncle and from
where Tiu his college girl friend had grown
up. Although a city with some manufacturing
it appears to have not been sprawling. The
topography is implied to be hilly and the
terraces of Darranda are mentioned throughout
both Four Ways to Forgiveness and Another
Story.
Other cities mentioned include Arkanan, Azbahan
and Daha.
== New South Georgia ==
New South Georgia is the location of the League
of Worlds HILF Survey Base for Galactic Area
8, in Rocannon's World. Its chief city is
Kerguelen.
Outside of the fictional realm of the Hainish
cycle, the Kerguelen Islands are in the Southern
Indian Ocean, the New Georgia Islands are
in the South Pacific Ocean and the Antarctic
territory South Georgia serves as the base
of the British Antarctic Survey. With this
in mind, we may imagine that New South Georgia,
like Gethen, is a wintry Ice Age world. Since
its name is taken from Terran landscape, the
world was presumably discovered by Terrans.
== O ==
O is a planet four light-years from Hain,
described in the title-story of the collection
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea. Its people
are known as ki'O and it is notable for its
unusual four-person "sedoretu" marriage system
(a set combination of genders, sexual orientations,
and both of O's moieties). Two more tales
about this world and its customs are found
in the collection The Birthday of the World.
(O shares its name with the island of O in
Le Guin's Earthsea stories.)
== Rokanan ==
Rokanan is the second planet of the star Fomalhaut,
peopled by at least three high-intelligence
life forms. It is the setting of the novel
Rocannon's World. The planet is described
as Fomalhaut II during its exploration. Some
references list it as Rocannon's World, but
Le Guin's books refer to it as 'Rokanan',
which is Rocannon's name among the native
Gdemiar.
== Seggri ==
Seggri is a planet noted for its extreme gender
segregation, and for having sixteen adult
women for every adult man. Its history is
told in a novelette, "The Matter of Seggri"
which appears in The Birthday of the World.
The people are of Hainish descent. A Hainish
visitor believes that the imbalance of the
sexes is another ancient genetic experiment
of her remote ancestors.
My ancestors must have really had fun playing
with these people's chromosomes. I feel guilty,
even if it was a million years ago.The tiny
minority of men on Seggri live imprisoned
in complexes known as "castles" away from
the rest of society from the age of puberty.
Women have control and responsibility for
all productive endeavors, including industry,
governance, agriculture, business, and trade.
Seggri is a matriarchal society, "a society
where men have extreme privilege but no power".Men
in the castles engage in constant sporting
competitions, some of which are quite violent.
The castles are supported by stud fees paid
by their female customers. Women identify
the lovers they wish to hire during the numerous
public sporting events. If a woman conceives
an additional fee is paid to the castle. Women
marry only other women, and men do not marry.
Men on Seggri wear their hair ornamentally
long and dress ostentatiously (tailoring is
one of the few male crafts on Seggri). In
contrast, women crop their hair short and
dress in a fashion considered drab by offworlders.
The castles themselves are governed by brutal
despots who rule by force. The civil authorities
in greater female society do not concern themselves
with the castles' internal affairs. The situation
is rationalized in various ways by the matriarchy.
Men are considered to be capable only of childish
competition and acts of great courage, but
not of endeavors requiring intellect and patience
(although the women acknowledge that men can
be very clever in strategizing in sports).
Thus the castle system gives them the freedom
to do what they truly love without burdening
them with the drudgery of everyday work. The
civil authorities assume that the men can
rule themselves, and that the castle despots
will not needlessly kill the men under their
rule, because of the valuable stud fees the
men command (a clear allegory to the argument
that slaves were too valuable to mistreat
during the slavery era in the USA).
Despite the narrow view of men by women on
Seggri, men are greatly admired for their
beauty and physical prowess. Some women spend
vast amount of money hiring men as studs (apparently
men are only available in this way for a fee).
They are idolized by many young women on Seggri
in about the same manner as rock stars in
real society. Like rock stars, the high stud
fees commanded by champion athletes makes
them unattainable for the vast majority of
women.
== Terra ==
Terra is the Earth, the third planet of our
solar system. Terrans are descendents of colonists
from Hain. At some unspecified date, Terrans
join the League of All Worlds, which includes
the Cetians and other peoples of Hainish descent.
In The Left Hand of Darkness, it is said that
'Hainish Normal' people were placed among
Terra's own proto-hominid autochthones by
the ancient Hainish 'colonizers'. After that
initial contact with Hainish civilization
Terra experiences two more cycles of isolation
followed by the restoration of extraterrestrial
contact and community with other worlds.
The second period of contact with the interstellar
Hainish community is the background for The
Word for World is Forest, in which people
from Terra appear as aggressive settlers of
other planets, The Dispossessed, and Rocannon's
World. In The Dispossessed, Terra's population
is described as having collapsed from around
nine billion to only half a billion people.
Some time later, City of Illusions provides
a detailed description of Terra in the depths
of a third era of isolation.
A post-apocalyptic Earth is seen in City of
Illusions as the story takes place across
a large landmass, perhaps North America, which
shows signs of an advanced, abandoned civilization
under a rewilded landscape. A small number
of humans live in tiny, isolated settlements
where they retain some technologies from the
past but are completely cut off from any communication
with neighboring regions or with other worlds;
there is only one city with high technology
and energy-intensive construction. The events
of City of Illusions lead up to the third
period of Terran contact with other worlds,
during which The Left Hand of Darkness takes
place.
In the short story Dancing To Ganam, which
takes place in the far future of the Hainish
universe, it is said that an extreme religious
movement called the Unists developed on Terra
and engaged in mass slaughter of non-believers,
and then of rival Unists sects. It is described
as "the worst resurgence of theocratic violence
since the Time of Pollution". The inclusion
of this story is meant to show that even after
so many millennia in the League and the Ekumen,
Terra is still in many ways culturally primitive
and prone to violent self-destruction.
It unclear if the "Time of Pollution" refers
to the collapse referred to in The Dispossesed,
the collapse seen in City of Illusions, or
is another, unexplored dark period on Terra.
Likewise the novel Always Coming Home is set
on Earth, during a period of high sea-levels
and technological collapse, with the only
retained remnant of past high-technology being
remote-access links to an encyclopedic database
(via ansible?). This could situate it within
the League or Ecumen, during one of the Terran
cycles of isolation, however a central theme
of the novel is the protagonists’ cultural
indifference to places outside of their home-valley,
so information giving off-world context for
the novel are excluded from the book.
Various individuals from Terra play a part
in other stories. For example, in The Telling,
Terra's incorporation into the Ekumen is briefly
explained. Also, one of the two main characters
in The Left Hand of Darkness, the Hainish-trained
cultural observer Genly Ai, is from Terra.
== Urras and Anarres ==
Urras and Anarres form a double planet system
(the people of each regard the other as their
moon) in orbit around the star Tau Ceti. The
Cetians who inhabit both worlds are a very
hairy humanoid race which is scientifically
advanced.
Urras is divided into many countries with
a variety of political systems; Anarres is
peopled by the Odonians, an anarchist group
in voluntary exile from Urras. The action
of The Dispossessed takes place on Urras and
Anarres. Urras is also the setting of the
short story "The Day Before the Revolution"
which appears in the short-story collection
The Wind's Twelve Quarters.
=== Urras ===
The larger body of a double planet system,
Urras is covered by oceans and continents.
The oceans are simply named Tiuve Sea, Insel
Sea, North Sea, and Great South Sea. Besides
a couple of smaller islands, Urras' landmass
is split in two big continents.
Urras is the original world of the Cetians.
An anarchist group called Odonians, separating
from its propertarian society, have settled
Anarres, but still have an influence on the
various nations of Urras, as is told in The
Dispossessed.
The nation-states of A-Io and Thu, both portrayed
as developed industrial societies, are on
one of the two continents. A-Io is evidently
a capitalist and somewhat oligarchic parliamentary
republic, whereas Thu is described as a totalitarian
socialist state—allegories of the United
States of America and the Soviet Union.
On the second large continent, unstable Benbili
is found, whose society is economically underdeveloped.
In The Dispossessed, A-Io and Thu fight a
proxy war in Benbili, both claiming to be
restoring stability, an allegory of the Vietnam
War. In Day before the Revolution both Benbili
and Mand, a neighboring kingdom state, are
described as being warlike and archaic.
A-IoThe nation of A-Io is the only nation
on Urras described in extensive detail. It
is on a large peninsula in the Eastern hemisphere
of the planet, between the North Sea and the
Tiuve Sea.
It shares the entirety of its land border
with the rival nation of Thu; together, these
two nations occupy nearly half of the Eastern
continent.
A-Io is described in The Dispossessed as being
extremely verdant, amply forested and agriculturally
fertile (in contrast with Anarres) with a
small mountain range in the north and several
hilly regions. It is described by the Terran
ambassador Keng as being the closest imaginable
approximation to paradise. The native fauna
of A-Io include otters (which are commonly
kept as pets), horses and sheep.
The history of A-Io is not extensively described.
It is indicated that the nation was once a
monarchy, but by the lifetime of Odo (approximately
200 years before the events of The Dispossessed)
Ioti culture is presented as being grossly
hedonistic, obsessed with the conspicuous
display of wealth and preserving distinct
and dramatic class imbalances between the
property-owners and the common people (called
Nioti). On Shevek's home planet of Anarres,
children are typically informed about the
excesses of Ioti culture to provide a distinction
and justification for the austerity of Anarresti
culture. Although Shevek and his classmates
question the accuracy of such instructionals
(as it is unclear whether the images of poverty
and excess are modern or date back to before
the settlement of Anarres), his own curiosity
about the reality of life in cities like Nio
Esseia exposes him to similar excesses and
glimpses of economic inequality.
In Day before the Revolution it is mentioned
that the heartland of A-Io was part of an
empire centered on a town called Ae, 4400
years before Odo, and on several occasions
in both books it is mentioned that A-Io culture
is over 7000 years old. The A-Io calendar
counts 10 millennia. Although Shevek has a
curiosity about the heritage of A-Io, there
is only passing mention.
Cities on the continent UrrasThree cities
of Urras are described in detail:
Nio Esseia is described as being a city of
5 million people, and is the capital of A-Io.
It is described as having many impressive
skyscrapers, lavish structures, squares, and
frenetic shopping avenues that run for miles.
It has a metropolitan train and subway system,
and its Central Station is described as having
a dome of ivory and azure that is "the largest
dome ever raised on any world by the hand
of man". Later in The Dispossessed, Shevek
discovers the poorer and more decrepit regions
of the city, in which there is a clandestine
insurrection movement. It is built on an estuary
marsh straddling the Sua River, and has many
districts and neighbourhoods.
Ieu Eun is the location of the university
within which Shevek is provided with a teaching
position and an apartment to work on his General
Temporal Theory. There are many research laboratories
in the city, including a Light Research Laboratory.
It is in on the edge of a valley, which is
described as being thoroughly agrarian.
Rodarred is the former capital of the Avan
province, and is the current seat of the Council
of World Governments on Urras. It is therefore
home to many foreign embassies, including
that of Terra. The city itself is heavily
wooded with pine trees, so much so that their
presence has a misty, narrowing effect on
the streets. Like Nio Esseia, Rodarred is
described as having many ornate and elaborate
towers (the text is ambiguous as to whether
these are skyscrapers, as it is noted that
they ring bells indicating the hour of the
day). It is on a river, and the city has seven
bridges leading into it. The remnants of older
castles and towers lie in the shadow of newer
roadways and buildings (as is the case with
the Terran embassy, housed in an old castle).
=== Anarres ===
Anarres is the smaller body of the double
planet, recently colonised from Urras. It
is largely covered by land with two large,
isolated seas (whose fish species have evolved
differently) as the biggest bodies of water.Its
society is egalitarian, there still exists
a center, namely Abbenay, the capital city,
where a spaceport and several central facilities
are located. Ever since Annares was settled
by Odonian separatists, contact to Urras has
been strictly limited by a treaty, the only
point of contact being Urrasti freighters
landing and exchanging cargo at the spaceport
in Abbenay.
Odonianism was developed by anarchist philosopher
Laia Odo, who lived in the propertarian nation-state
of A-Io on the planet of Urras. Odonians speak
the Pravic language, which fits their outlook
and social structure and is described in considerable
detail.
Cetians appear or are mentioned in various
other tales, mostly without specifying which
world they come from. But in "The Shobies'
Story", the Cetian Gveter is from Anarres.
'Churten theory' was developed on his home-world,
which evidently retains Odonian approval of
cooperation, and rejection of 'propertarian
habits'.
== Werel / Alterra ==
In the Hainish Cycle science fiction stories
of Ursula K. Le Guin, Werel is the colloquial
name for Alterra, a fictional planet of the
star Gamma Draconis. It is one of two planets
called Werel in that series. The name is an
informal (though standard) one and means just
"the world".
=== History ===
It is the setting for Planet of Exile, and
its later history is given in City of Illusions.
The third planet of the star Gamma Draconis,
it has an elliptical orbit lasting sixty Earth-years.
Also a moon with an orbit 400 days long, leading
to some wild weather. It was settled after
the invention of the ansible and was planned
as a defence against the enigmatic 'enemy'.
But there was no contact after the first ship,
consisting entirely of people from Earth.
These colonists settled in a town called Landin,
and tried to co-exist with the native high-intelligence
life forms (HILF).
As Alterra, Werel is also mentioned in The
Left Hand of Darkness and Four Ways to Forgiveness.
Le Guin has made clear that it should not
be confused with the Werel of Four Ways to
Forgiveness, which is a planet with very different
characteristics.At first the Earth-human population
dwindled. Then they formed a close alliance
with one of the native tribes and also found
that they could interbreed, which had previously
been thought impossible. On this basis, they
recover and unify the world.
After 1200 years, the Alterrans send a ship
to Earth in City of Illusions, using a near-light-speed
system. They are attacked and all but two
perish. One of these outwits the alien Shing,
oppressors of Earth, and returns to fetch
help. Presumably he succeeds: Genly Ai in
The Left Hand of Darkness comes from Earth
and remembers the 'Age of the Enemy' as something
terrible, but also now over.
=== Science ===
The long orbit is scientifically correct,
since Gamma Draconis is a giant star and a
habitable world would have to be much further
away from its sun. The name Eltanin given
in City of Illusions is one of the star's
traditional names. Its distance from Earth
is given as 142 light-years, which is close
to the current estimate.
On the other hand, giant stars last 100 million
years or so, which is much less time than
Earth needed to evolve complex life. It is
probable that the native humanoids are of
Hainish origin, as are many other indigenous
populations in the Hainish Cycle, descendents
of genetically modified Hanish colonists from
the ancient Hanish colonial epoch, similar
to other planets in the cycle. This would
account for the successful imbreeding, which
should not be possible if they had evolved
from completely different biospheres.
In 1.5 million years, Eltanin will pass within
28 light years of Earth. At this point it
will be as bright as Sirius. This would be
long after the setting of Le Guin's tales.
== Yeowe and Werel ==
Werel is a fictional planet in the Ekumen
science fiction novels of Ursula K. Le Guin.
It is the fourth planet of a yellow-white
star. Its dominant nation, Voe Deo, colonised
Yeowe, the previously uninhabited third planet,
after contact with the Ekumen. It is one of
two planets named Werel in the Hainish cycle.
=== Werel and Voe Deo ===
Werel was colonised by the ancient Hainish
people, long ago, in the final phase of the
expansion. There seem to have been no native
animals: all existing animals are of Hainish
origin, as are some of the plants. Like most
planets of the ancient Hainish expansion,
it lost touch and forgot its origins. When
the Ekumen (re)contacted Werel, it was divided
into many nations, which for millennia had
had social systems where the dominant black-skinned
ethnic group (the "owners") enslaved the lighter-skinned
ethnic group (the "assets" or "dusties").
The dominant nation on Werel at that time
was Voe Deo, to the extent that in Four Ways
to Forgiveness it is noted that to speak of
Werel is to speak of Voe Deo as exeplerary.
Voe Deo began as one of many states and was
located to the south of the equator. Through
conquest Voe Deo went on and occupied most
of the only continent on the planet, particularly
the north. At the time of contact with the
Ekumen, a number of client state are located
in the south and on various islands.
(This Werel should not be confused with the
Werel of Planet of Exile and City of Illusions,
which is the third planet of the orange giant
star Gamma Draconis. In the introduction to
the collection The Birthday of the World,
Le Guin admits an error in reusing the name
and indicates she had forgotten its prior
use.)
=== Yeowe ===
Contact with the more technologically advanced
Ekumen caused varying degrees of panic among
Werel's nations, and led to Voe Deo developing
a space program and colonizing Yeowe, at that
time uninhabited. The vast majority of the
settlers were assets owned by Voe Deans, and
in the initial years, the asset population
was almost entirely male. This led to a social
system among the assets where hypermasculinity
was prized and formalized homosexual relationship
patterns developed. When female assets arrived
in larger numbers, they found themselves at
the bottom of the existing social hierarchy.
The Voe Deans exploited the natural resources
of Yeowe for a few hundred years and caused
a great deal of damage to its environment.
Most of the native life forms were destroyed
and replaced with transplants from Werel.
Concepts of freedom leaking in from the Ekumen
led to a widespread revolt by Yeowe's assets,
which ultimately defeated the Voe Dean military
force there. (The other nations of Werel saw
the revolt as a Voe Dean problem and refused
to assist in suppressing it.) Voe Deo had
access to a weapon of mass destruction, the
"biobomb", but decided not to use it against
the rebellion. Yeowe's independence struggle
occurred within the lifetimes of some of the
characters in Four Ways to Forgiveness.
The example of Yeowe inspired the assets of
Voe Deo to start their own revolt on Werel.
The resulting civil war is part of the background
of the short story "Old Music and the Slave
Women".
The geography of Yeowe is dominated by two
continents, most of the life forms on the
planet are introduced species from Werel,
which in turn means of Hanish origin. Native
life forms are almost exclusively plant, with
only a select few microscopic species being
classified as non plant.
=== Rakuli and other worlds ===
The star 'RK-tamo-5544-34' has 16 planets,
including Werel and Yeowe. Life also developed
on the fifth planet, Rakuli. But it is arid
and cold, fit only for its native invertebrates
and not yet used by the Werelians.
== Other worlds ==
Beldene, Centaurus, Chiffewar, Cime, Ensbo,
Four-Taurus, Gao, Gde, Huthu, Kapetyn, Kheakh,
Orint, Ollul, Prestno, S, Sheashel Haven,
Ve and Uttermosts are planets mentioned, but
not described in any detail in one or more
tales of the Hainish cycle. They have not,
so far, been the setting for a story.
The Left Hand of Darkness has Genly showing
pictures of various worlds, some described
in later stories but including Chiffewar,
Cime, Ensbo, Four-Taurus, Gao, Gde, Kapteyn,
Ollul, S, Sheashel Haven and 'the Uttermosts'.
Little is said about most of them. We are
told that Gde wrecked its natural balance
tens of thousands of years ago and is mostly
sand and rock deserts; that Ollul is the closest
world to Gethen, 17 light-years away; and
that Chiffewar is a "peaceful" planet.
We hear no more about most of these planets,
though in the short story "The Matter of Seggri",
it is mentioned that 4-Taurus is also known
as Iao. Argaven XVII visits Ollul in the short
story "Winter's King", a trip of 24 light-years
each way; this contradicts the description
in The Left Hand of Darkness that Ollul is
17 light-years away from Gethen. As for S,
it is possible that S is another name for
Athshe.
Some additional worlds are mentioned in later
short stories:
In "Dancing to Ganam", a world called Orint
is mentioned in passing. It is "the only world
from which the Ekumen has yet withdrawn",
foreseeing a disaster in which "the Orintians
destroyed sentient life on their world by
the use of pathogens in war". A few thousand
children were saved, being taken off the world
with the consent of their parent.
The "Solitude" which appears in The Birthday
of the World mentions "the tree-cities of
Huthu", which is near Eleven-Soro.
In "Forgiveness Day" which appears in Four
Ways to Forgiveness, a planet called Kheakh
is mentioned as having destroyed itself some
time ago, as Orint had earlier.
In "A Man of the People" which appears in
Four Ways to Forgiveness (and also in "The
Shobies' Story"), Ve is described as the next
planet out from Hain. It has mostly been a
satellite or partner of Hainish civilisations
and is at that time inhabited entirely by
historians and Aliens. This is told from the
viewpoint of a Hainish man, so non-Hainish
peoples must be meant.
In The Word for World is Forest, Prestno is
mentioned as a world close to Athshe. It is
also called 'World 88'.
In "Vaster than Empires and More Slow" which
appears in The Wind's Twelve Quarters, one
crew member comes from "Beldene, the Garden
Planet", which "never discovered chastity,
or the wheel".
In "Rocannon's World", Centaurus is mentioned,
in that it was Centaurans who had travelled
to Rokanan and given dwarf-like Gdemiar higher
technologies.
In The Shobies Story, M-60-340-nolo is a brown
desolate world inhabited only by bacteria,
as well as the destination of their experimental
flight and only 17 light years from Hain
