More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
The Word for World is Forest is a reflection on invasion, exploitation and oppression, and on the necessity and cost of resistance.
notably anthropology, anarchism, feminism and Taoism.
If we read the tale at too literal a level, as some critics have done, this makes no economic sense. It is almost inconceivable that interstellar extractive exploitation across all those decades of light-years could be profitable. Such nit-picking can sensibly and safely be ignored. In the first place, we have no textual evidence that it’s even meant to make economic sense.
long-term investment.
Musk.bezos
The author’s sympathy is entirely with the enemy. The invaders from Earth are indisputably the bad guys and the rebellious natives are entirely in the right. But the novel’s revolutionary defeatism doesn’t fall into the trap of romanticising the revolt of the oppressed. The Athsheans are changed by the very act of fighting, new and strange to them; the world they win back is not the same as the world that was taken from them; and their fight is not fair, or discriminating, or by the rules. It is dirty and brutal and shocking.
1968 was a bitter year for those who opposed the war. The lies and hypocrisies redoubled; so did the killing. Moreover, it was becoming clear that the ethic which approved the defoliation of forests and grainlands and the murder of non-combatants in the name of “peace” was only a corollary of the ethic which permits the despoliation of natural resources for private profit or the GNP, and the murder of the creatures of the Earth in the name of “man”. The victory of the ethic of exploitation, in all societies, seemed as inevitable as it was disastrous.
twenty-seven lightyears from Earth by NAFAL and four hours from Smith Camp by hopper, the second batch of breeding females for the New Tahiti Colony, all sound and clean, 212 head of prime human stock.
Dump Island of crop failures, massive erosion, a wipe-out.
The line of 212 buxom beddable breasty little figures faded from Davidson’s mind as he saw rain pouring down onto ploughed dirt, churning it to mud, thinning the mud to a red broth that ran down rocks into the rain-beaten sea. The erosion had begun before he left Dump Island to run Smith Camp, and being gifted with an exceptional visual memory, the kind they called eidetic, he could recall it now all too clearly. It looked like that bigdome Kees was right and you had to leave a lot of trees standing where you planned to put farms. But he still couldn’t see why a soybean farm needed to waste a
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Ben was about a metre high and his back fur was more white than green; he was old, and dumb even for a creechie, but Davidson knew how to handle him. A lot of men couldn’t handle creechies worth a damn, but Davidson had never had trouble with them; he could tame any of them, if it was worth the effort. It wasn’t, though. Get enough humans here, build machines and robots, make farms and cities, and nobody would need the creechies any more. And a good thing too. For this world, New Tahiti, was literally made for men. Cleaned up and cleaned out, the dark forests cut down for open fields of grain,
...more
“Don,” Kees said without greeting, “the loggers have been hunting red deer in the Strips again. There are eighteen pair of antlers in the back room of the Lounge.” “Nobody ever stopped poachers from poaching, Kees.” “You can stop them. That’s why we live under martial law, that’s why the Army runs this colony. To keep the laws.” A frontal attack from Fatty Bigdome! It was almost funny. “All right,” Davidson said reasonably, “I could stop ’em. But look, it’s the men I’m looking after; that’s my job, like you said. And it’s the men that count. Not the animals. If a little extra-legal hunting
...more
You want to make this world into Earth’s image, eh? A desert of cement?” “When I say Earth, Kees, I mean people. Men. You worry about deer and trees and fibreweed, fine, that’s your thing. But I like to see things in perspective, from the top down, and the top, so far, is humans. We’re here, now; and so this world’s going to go our way.
Smith Camp: a couple of big corruplast geodesics, forty timber huts built by creechie-labour, the sawmill, the burner trailing a blue plume over acres of logs and cut lumber; uphill, the airfield and the big prefab hangar for helicopters and heavy machinery. That was all. But when they came here there had been nothing. Trees. A dark huddle and jumble and tangle of trees, endless, meaningless. A sluggish river overhung and choked by trees, a few creechie-warrens hidden among the trees, some red deer, hairy monkeys, birds. And trees. Roots, boles, branches, twigs, leaves, leaves overhead and
...more
But men were here now to end the darkness, and turn the tree-jumble into clean sawn planks, more prized on Earth than gold. Literally, because gold could be got from seawater and from under the Antarctic ice, but wood could not; wood came only from trees. And it was a really necessary luxury on Earth.
They were based on careful study of the planet. We’ve succeeded, here on Central, by following the Plan: erosion is minimal, and the cleared soil is highly arable. To log off a forest doesn’t, after all, mean to make a desert—except perhaps from the point of view of a squirrel. We can’t forecast precisely how the native forest life-systems will adapt to the new woodland-prairie-ploughland ambiance foreseen in the Development Plan, but we know the chances are good for a large percentage of adaptation and survival.”
Eco fascism, replacement of native fauna as seen in the Caribbeans on earth, destruction of native life systems and cultures
A forest ecology is a delicate one. If the forest perishes, its fauna may go with it. The Athshean word for world is also the word for forest.
Caught off guard by his own outburst, Lyubov apologised and tried to look calm. If only he didn’t lose his temper, if his voice didn’t go weak and husky, if he had poise.
Feminisation of emotions, feeling emotions is irrational / hysterical, in this hyper masculinised colony-inspiration from earth's leadership, no doubt
And he was to blame; he had been wrong. To hell with my self-respect so long as the forest people get a chance, Lyubov thought, and so strong a sense of his own humiliation and self-sacrifice came over him that tears rose to his eyes. He was aware that Davidson was watching him.
More feminisation of lyubov
that psycho Lyubov raving and crying, and Colonel Dongh letting him do it, letting him insult Davidson and HQ staff and the whole Colony; and all the time the two aliens sitting and grinning, the little grey ape and the big white fairy, sneering at humans.
raid had been a breach of discipline and he had to reprimand Davidson. All right, rules of the game.
Game talk
Employment of volunteer labour is not advised; employment of forced labour is forbidden. More of same. How the hell were they supposed to get the work done? Did Earth want this wood or didn’t it? They were still sending the robot cargo ships to New Tahiti, weren’t they, four a year, each carrying about 30 million new-dollars’ worth of prime lumber back to Mother Earth. Sure the Development people wanted those millions. They were businessmen.
Switching between earth humans are best and can do anything, to reliance on athseans justifying slavery
hoppers had full armament. But they wouldn’t need the big stuff. Just take up a hopper over one of the deforested areas and catch a mess of creechies there, with their damned bows and arrows, and start dropping firejelly cans and watch them run around and burn. It would be all right. It made his belly churn a little to imagine it, just like when he thought about making a woman, or whenever he remembered about when that Sam creechie had attacked him and he had smashed in his whole face with four blows one right after the other.
Le guins quote-pure evil. Fetishising violence.
The fact is, the only time a man is really and entirely a man is when he’s just had a woman or just killed another man. That wasn’t original, he’d read it in some old books; but it was true. That was why he liked to imagine scenes like that. Even if the creechies weren’t actually men.
His unusual memory held on to such things, and he could recall for instance that Muhamed’s IQ was 107. Whereas his own happened to be 118. There was a difference of 11 points; but of course he couldn’t say that to old Moo, and Moo couldn’t see it, and so there was no way to get him to listen. He thought he knew better than Davidson, and that was that.
Western rationalism-insanity
When he had enough of them he could really trust, a squad of ten lifted a few items from old Moo’s locked-up room in the Rec House basement full of war toys, and then went off one Sunday into the woods to play. Davidson had located the creechie town some weeks ago, and had saved up the treat for his men. He could have done it singlehanded, but it was better
God knows how many of the women were still alive in the creechie warrens, tied down underground in one of those stinking holes, being touched and felt and crawled over and defiled by the filthy, hairy little monkeymen. It was unthinkable.
Doesn't understand why the Athseans killed the women
