Ursula Le Guin, Four Paths to Forgiveness

The worlds of Ursula Le Guin's celebrated Haynes series don't so much capture the imagination (though there's plenty of that here) as they compel us to consider the fundamental, sometimes insoluble, challenges posed by evolution and nature to humanity's universal development. In The Dispossessed (winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Lockheed, and Prometheus Awards), we encounter twin planets, Urros and Anarres: on one, society is divided into two irreconcilable halves; on the other, desolate and uninhabitable, settlers are convinced that only by joining forces can the world be improved and humanity brought closer to the future Ecumene union. In Four Paths to Forgiveness, a collection of four novellas, we find ourselves in a world where slavery is the norm and the accepted way of life. One of the novellas, "Forgiving Day," won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Asimov Readers' Choice Award. The novel "The Interpreters" (Locus Prize) takes us to the planet Aka, a living embodiment of the popular phrase that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and not all progress, especially that imposed from outside, benefits the planet's indigenous inhabitants.