Rocannon's World, part 1
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