Welcome

 Welcome to The Carrier Bag, a podcast about the life, work, and influence of Ursula K. Le Guin, hosted by Stentor Danielson. Stay tuned for our first episode!

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Rocannon's World, Part III

  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...
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Rocannon's World, Part IV

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/AXH8FtkJaHb Today we'll be looking at chapters seven, eight, and nine and the epilogue of Le Guin's first published novel, Rocannon's World , from 1966. Last time, we left Rocannon and his companions in the city of the Winged Ones, a previously unknown humanoid species that turns out to eat people. Raho has been killed. Rocannon runs away from the building where he saw them feeding, trying to figure out how he will rescue his friends. He runs into a small fuzzy creature that turns out to be capable of speech, which calls itself a Kiemhrir. The Kiemhrir help Rocannon find his remaining companions, summon their windsteeds, and escape from the city. The group retrieves their gear from their campsite and resumes their trek southward. Kyo reveals that the Fiia have stories about the Kiemhrir, but not the Winged Ones. He describes his own race as "half-people" who remember the good and forget the bad. Crossing the mountains, the grou...
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Semley's Necklace

 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 ...
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