Hainish Cycle Timelines: Reading Order and Chronology

from the end papers to LOA vol. 2, by Donna G. Brown

This page presents two potential ways of reading Ursula K. Le Guin's so-called "Hainish cycle," which I recently reread in its new Library of America edition. (See reviews here and here if you want a lot of thoughts.)

The first order is almost strict publication order, with some allowances for ease of reading. (For example, reading all five constituent stories in Five Ways to Forgiveness when the original collection of four was published, instead of reading each individual part when it was released.) It also includes whatever relevant essays were included in the Library of America editions (indented to the right, so you can easily skip if not interested); I placed the introductions to books before them, even if they were written later. (I placed "A Response, by Ansible" immediately after Left Hand, the novel it comments on.) The page numbers in brackets refer to the LOA editions.

The second is a rough internal chronological order, based on various dating clues provided in the stories. (Some consultation of Ian Watson's "Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven and the Role of Dick: The False Reality as Mediator" in SFS, vol. 2, no. 1 helped. I also looked at Peter Brigg's "A Hainish Chronology" in SFRA Review, no. 223, but I wasn't very compelled by his dating of Le Guin's 1990s work. He seems very confused.)

All that said, the stories have only slight connective references between them, and you can pretty much read them in any order, with three exceptions: the three original novels are best read in sequence, the three churten stories ("Shobies' Story," "Dancing to Ganam," "Another Story") work best in publication order, and the stories in Five Ways to Forgiveness are best read in one go.

Publication Order

• introduction to LOA vol. 1 (Sept. 2017) [1: xi-xviii] 
• introduction to Rocannon's World (May 1977) [1: 1011-14]
  
• Rocannon's World (1964-66) [1: 1-116]
• introduction to Planet of Exile (Feb. 1978) [1: 1015-19]
• Planet of Exile (Oct. 1966) [1: 117-222]
• introduction to City of Illusions (June 1978) [1: 1020-2]
• City of Illusions (1967) [1: 223-383]
• introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness (July 1976) [1: 1023-7]
• The Left Hand of Darkness (Mar. 1969) [1: 385-611]
• "Winter's King" original text (Sept. 1969*) [1: 1044-64]
• "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" (1971) [1: 944-74]
• introduction to The Word for World Is Forest (1977) [2: 753-7]
  
• The Word for World Is Forest (1972) [2: 1-104]
• The Dispossessed (May 1974) [1: 613-919]
• "A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti" (2005) [1: 1028-32] 
• "The Day Before the Revolution" (Aug. 1974) [1: 975-89]
• "Winter's King" revised text (1975) [1: 923-43]
• "Is Gender Necessary? Redux" (1989) [1: 1033-43]
• introduction to LOA vol. 2 (Sept. 2017) [2: xii-xix]
• "On Not Reading Science Fiction" (Nov. 1994) [2: 758-62]
• "The Shobies' Story" (1990) [2: 107-33] 
• "Dancing to Ganam" (Sept. 1993) [2: 134-67]
• "The Matter of Seggri" (Spring 1994) [2: 250-89]
• "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" (Aug. 1994) [2: 168-206]
• "Unchosen Love" (Fall 1994) [2: 207-25]
• "Solitude" (Dec. 1994) [2: 290-318]
• "Coming of Age in Karhide" (May 1995) [1: 990-1008]
• Five Ways to Forgiveness (Sept. 1995) [2: 319-588]
• "Mountain Ways" (Aug. 1996) [2: 226-49]
• The Telling (Sept. 2000) [2: 589-750]

* This was written before Left Hand but published after, so there's an argument for reading it first. Its events follow those of Left Hand, though, so there's an argument for reading it after, too!

Chronological Order

Before the League

• "The Day Before the Revolution" [centuries before The Dispossessed]
• The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia [ends shortly before the foundation of the League]

The League of All Worlds

• The Word for World Is Forest [eighteen years after the foundation of the League and the invention of the ansible]
• The League grows as it recruits more and more planets in preparation for a massive war.
• Rocannon's World [a couple generations after League Year 254]
  
• "Vaster Than Empires and More Slow" [set during the earliest decades of the League but after Rocannon's World]

The Age of the Enemy

• The Terran colony on Alterra (Werel) is established; unbeknownst to the colonists, the League collapses shortly after they depart Terra due to the invasion of the Shing. [about six centuries before Planet of Exile]
  
• Planet of Exile [LY 1405] 
• City of Illusions [about twelve centuries after the Shing invasion]

The Ekumen

• The Hainish colonies reunite as the Ekumen, a more decentralized and philanthropic union.
• The Left Hand of Darkness [Hainish Cycle 93, Ekumenical Years 1491-2]
• "Winter's King" [at least a generation after Left Hand, but still within six centuries of the Age of the Enemy, and before the churten sequence]
• "Coming of Age in Karhide" [the protagonist is born the same year "Winter's King" ends] 
• The Telling [the protagonist comes from Earth during the time of the Unists, who by "Dancing to Ganam" are long out of power; on the other hand, Yeowe-Werel is mentioned as a place an Ekumenical Observer could go, and according to Five Ways contact wasn't made until EY 1724]
  
• "The Matter of Seggri" [spans several centuries; the first part is during the time of the League, and later ones are set EYs 93/1334, 1569, 1586, 1662]
• "Unchosen Love"*
  
• The Churten Effect† [the first of these leads into the second, the third overlaps with both and spans many years including EY 93/1645]
• "The Shobies' Story"
• "Dancing to Ganam"
• "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea"
• "Solitude"*
• Five Ways to Forgiveness [Werel joins the Ekumen in EY 93/2083; most of the stories collected here take place in the decade leading up to that event]
• "Mountain Ways"*

As Le Guin has said, things don't entirely add up in the Hainish continuity-- she pointed out herself that "mindspeech" is a key factor in several of the early novels, but isn't mentioned in later ones. Rocannon's World contains a lot of technology that doesn't exist in later stories (such as unmanned FTL); the level of change to Terra in City of Illusions doesn't seem consistent with the more familiar planet we see in The Telling; the discussion of Hainish history in Five Ways doesn't really allow for a massive war; as noted in the entry for The Telling, it mentions Yeowe-Werel far too early (we have to disregard dates given in either Five Ways or "Another Story").

Of course, Le Guin also said:

No human mind could encompass the history of Hain: three million years of it. [...] [T]here had been uncountable kings, empires, inventions, billions of lives lived in millions of countries, monarchies, democracies, oligarchies, anarchies, ages of chaos and ages of order, pantheon upon pantheon of gods, infinite wars and times of peace, incessant discoveries and forgettings, innumerable horrors and triumphs, an endless repetition of unceasing novelty. What is the use of trying to describe the flowing of a river at any one moment, and then at the next moment, and then at the next, and the next? You wear out. You say: There is a great river, and it flows through this land, and we have named it History. (2: 421-2)

* These stories take place during the time of the Ekumen but are otherwise undateable; I've semi-arbitrarily placed them where I think they would read well. 

† In France, these three novelettes were released as a single volume entitled L'effet Churten.