Rediscover: Worlds of Exile and Illusion

Worlds of Exile and Illusion by Ursula K. Le Guin (Orb Books, 9780312862114) collects three of the author's short science fiction novels in one volume. Originally written in the late 1960s, Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile and City of Illusions are all set in the same fictional universe as some of her best-known books, including The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed. And while many of Le Guin's Hainish novels are often only tangentially related, the three stories making up Worlds of Exile and Illusion form a fascinating, compelling trilogy.

In Rocannon's World, the leader of an ethnographic research team is stranded on an alien world after a rebel faction within the galaxy-spanning League of All Worlds attacks his research ship. As the sole survivor of the expedition, he must partner with several of the world's natives, who live in a quasi-Medieval feudal society, and undertake a dangerous journey to sabotage the rebels and warn the League of All Worlds.

In Planet of Exile, a League of All Worlds colony has been abandoned on a distant planet. There has been no contact with other planets for generations, ever since the League sent out an urgent call for aid to help fight a fearsome, new enemy known as the Shing. As the colony's descendants grapple with being stuck there forever, they have no choice but to join the world's inhabitants in a desperate fight for survival.

And in City of Illusions, set centuries after Planet of Exile, the Shing have obliterated the League of All Worlds and rule over its core planets, including Earth. Falk, a man with no knowledge of his past, travels across the ruins of North America, heading for the Shing city of Es Toch. --Alex Mutter

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