Review: The Word for World is Forest

The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book shows one of the strengths of Science-Fiction has as genre, which is to drive technology and human behavior to extremes to high-light the strengths and weaknesses with said technology and/or human behavior. This is what this book does very well.

The Word for World is Forest was written in the late 60s and is therefore a little too heavily influenced by the Vietnam war, but even despite that it's still one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time.
The story in the book is that mankind has scourged Earth and left it pretty much barren. In search of wood man has started to colonize the planet Athshea, where the small landmass is covered by a vast forest.
However the logging company isn't too concerned with the native Athsheans.

The book covers subjects such as environmentalist, human disregard of how we affect the world around us, human exploit of animals and/or natives during colonization. However what got to me was the exploration of human evil and its origins.



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