The Carrier Bag

  Today we'll be looking at chapters five and six of Le Guin's first published novel, Rocannon's World , from 1966. We begin with Yahan finding Rocannon being burned at the stake in Zgama's fortress. Yahan loosens the chains holding Rocannon and gives him a drink, but there are too many of Zgama's people around, and Rocannon is too weak, for them to make a break for it yet. Rocannon spends the following day preparing himself, then just as Zgama is about to escalate his torture, Rocannon breaks free. He intimidates his captors with his technological superiority and they allow him to walk out. Rocannon is rejoined by Yahan, who explains that after leaving Mogien, he had tried to join Zgama's people, believing them to be a free Olgiyor society. However, he was quickly disillusioned. But having abandoned his master Mogien, he has no way to reintegrate into the Angyar-ruled world either. So Rocannon offers to accept Yahan's pledge of service, giving him a place i

    Today we'll be looking at chapters three and four of Le Guin's first published novel, Rocannon's World , from 1966. Chapter three opens with Rocannon's preparations for departure. Lady Haldre, Semley's daughter and now ruler of the realm of Hallan, gives him five companions -- Mogien and four Olgyior, named Yahan, Raho, Iot, and Bien, with windsteeds for all of them. Kyo the Fiia also comes along. Haldre also bestows on Rocannon the necklace which Semley brought back many years ago, which he hides underneath his clothing. The group flies southward, after several days reaching the town of Tolen where they discover that the ruling Angyar family has been kidnapped and their castle stands empty next to the village of Olgyior they had ruled over. Rocannon's company flies on to Plenot, stronghold of the warlord who is responsible for Tolen's devastation. They succeed in defeating the lord of Plenot and securing the release of prisoners and boats that had been

Today we'll be looking at the first two chapters of Le Guin's first published novel, Rocannon's World . It was published in 1966 as an Ace Double with Avram Davidson's The Kar-Chee Reign . This is a format in which two short novels are arranged back-to-back and upside down, so that you can flip the book around and read the other novel starting from the other cover. The Ace Doubles format is known more generally in the book-binding world as dos-à-dos or tête-bêche. It became a signature style for the publisher Ace Books, which was founded in 1952 as a publisher of mysteries and Westerns, but quickly took up science fiction as well. The format allowed them to easily publish shorter works, as well as leveraging an established author to advertise a newer one. That's what we see with Le Guin, whose first novel was packaged alongside one from Avram Davidson, who was more well-known at the time. Fans of Davidson would buy the Double for his work, and then discover Le Guin

 The story "Semley's Necklace" was first published in 1964 under the name "Dowry of the Angyar" in the magazine Amazing Stories. It was republished as the prologue to her first novel Rocannon's World in 1966, and then again as a standalone story under the current name in The Wind's Twelve Quarters . In the introduction to that collection, she calls it her most characteristic early story. The story opens with an anthropological report on the world of Fomalhaut II and its inhabitants, referred to as HILFs -- High Intelligence Life Forms -- written by representatives of the spacefaring Hainish people. There are three of these -- the subterranean dwarflike Gdemiar, the elfin or fairylike Fiia, and the humanlike Liuar. The story focuses on a woman named Semley, from the ruling Angyar race of the Liuar. She has married another Angyar nobleman, but neither of them brought much wealth to the marriage. So she leaves the palace in hopes of recovering the Eye of