The Telling by Ursula Le Guin, Gollancz, £16.99, ISBN 0575072571
URSULA LE GUIN’s science fiction leans towards soft rather than hard
sciences, but her name for one imaginary gadget has been widely adopted by
fellow authors. A long-range instant communicator is an ansible.
Ansibles link the far-flung worlds of Le Guin’s loosely knit Hainish series
of fictions. The culture, or Ekumen, of Hain, three million years old, tries to
help relatively barbaric planets like ours. As The Telling opens, the
Unist coalition of religious fundamentalists controls much of Earth and soon
inflicts saturation bombing on the godless Library of Congress……
