Second paragraph of third chapter (not at all representative of the book, whose paragraphs are generally very long):

What had he failed to see?

A reread of course, but a timely and sobering story from more than half a century ago. It has been widely interpreted, both at the time and since, as a reaction to and fictionalisation of the Vietnam War; but in fact the circumstances are much closer to the wars waged against indigenous people in Africa, Asia and the Americas, with the explicit agendas of the destruction and replacement of the original population – a pattern from seventeenth-century Ireland to today’s Gaza. There’s not much grey here – even the humans who try for better relations with the Creechie natives of the planet are fatally compromised by their participation in the project of conquest and domination.

Le Guin was familiar with the conquest and oppression of Native Americans, and the attempted counter-resistance by the earth soldiers is reminiscent of Rhodesia’s UDI in 1965. The part that perhaps does speak to Vietnam is the impact of new information technology, just as media coverage in the 1960s had an effect on the dynamic of support for the war in America. Reporting on atrocity was not new – it goes back at least to Bartolomé de las Casas – but there is a good point about the impact on a conflict when long-suppressed truth starts to leak out.

Anyway, a brief, tough, important read. You can get it here.

This was both my top unread book by a woman, and my top unread science fiction book. Next on those piles are The Light We Carry, by Michelle Obama, and I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman.