Published in 1972 as a novella/extended short story, it unfolds on a planet situated 27 years away from Earth/Terra. Part of Le Guin’s Hainish novels, I find it an interesting take on the tendency of ecological destruction that seems ingrained in many of us present day Terrans. After having destroyed the ecology of their own planet with only some wild rats left as the sole animals and all forests destroyed, the Terrans are colonizing what they call New Tahiti but which the natives of the planet call Athshe which means forest and, hence, the title (which wasn’t actually the author’s idea it seems. Who knows?)
I like the contrasting ecological depictions in her fantasy and SF works. In her Fantasy works, we find a society harmonized with nature. The fantastic world values the nature and its magic to a certain extent. It doesn’t seek to dominate it. (There may be other pressing concerns in their lives I guess.) The economy of nature foregrounds the events, may it be the Uplands depicted in Gifts or the Marsh People of Gavir’s village found in Powers. In Earthsea, the dependence on nature is much more apparent.
In her SF works, as the novels proceed, so does the technology move apace with time. The ansible arrives in New Tahiti and with it comes a change in the policy of the mindless ecological destruction that the current regime in New Tahiti had let loose. The colonization of Athshe brings to mind the colonization of Australia way back when. Australia, an island cut off from the invading colonisers of Europe for so long, had flourished with most species endemic to that piece of land alone. Marsupials did not originate in Australia but flourished there more than anywhere else.
However, with the colonizers arrived their own animals which wreaked havoc on the delicate ecological balance of that island. The hunter-gatherer stage was an important event in the so called progress of human civilization but hunting was for satisfying hunger not for recreation. Over time and with more ‘progress’, hunting metamorphosed from an activity for survival to a sport for recreation. The colonizers brought their own game from their native lands into Australia since such game was lacking there. With new plant and animal species introduced into a land where they were immune to the native diseases, these flourished, slowly devouring the natives. (Australia is just an example, it happened elsewhere as well.)
Moving from the hunter gatherer economy into an agricultural economy, we were no longer dependent directly on forests for our survival. Quite the contrary, I guess. We hunted animals in the forests where they thrived and as a consequence didn’t harm the forests but with agriculture that dependence dissolved. Even today, we have tribals subsisting in the hunter gatherer stage where studies have shown that they follow a system of restraints which ensures that the forests are replenished through various restrictions that the hunters impose upon hunting and gathering activities.
Coming to our own recent history on earth, the colonizers were simply invading New Lands and bringing civilization to the uncivilized in their eyes. On Athshe, it was a whole planet getting a crash course in civilization. Le Guin gives a new meaning to racism, where on Athshe all Terrans (irrespective of race) come together to wipe out another species. In spite of scientific proof that these native inhabitants are humans, the Terrans(at least the majority) refuse to acknowledge it treating them as animals. (But they don’t mind raping animals.) The size and the fur add to their outlook of creechies being animals.
Athshe was being depleted of its forests for the lumber which was needed on Terra. Doesn’t this deforestation bring back memories of the large scale deforestation undertaken by the colonizers in the colonies? It was the colonized timber that built their invading ships.
It is the blinding sense of their own superiority that leads to the Terran downfall. You cannot really expect animals to revolt now, can you? Here is where the history of Athshe diverges from that of Earth in the last century. The Athsheians successfully revolted and led civilization back into spaceships bound for home, never to return for a long time to come. They did leave knowledge of violence on the peaceful planet. It was an irrevocable knowledge which Selver regretted to have acquired. He was the one who dreamt of war and it ate into him bit by bit. But the Athsheians are left alone to their own way of life more or less.
The colonies on earth weren’t so successful. Even after the colonizers withdrew, they left behind their mindset. In settler colonies, the natives were more or less destroyed. The Aborigines of Australia, the Indians of North America…
Athshe seems to be the fulfilment of a history that could have been ours.
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