Rating: 4.5
Description: Earth has run out of its natural wood resources and so colonies have been formed on a number of heavily wooded planets for the sake of taking their lumber and terra-forming the planet into a prairie more suitable for further human colonization. One of these worlds that humanity is logging has a form of humanoid life just a few bars under modern mankind in its technological evolution. The "creechies", as the humans have taken to calling them, are very efficient workers and so are pressed into relative slave labor. At some point though, every race will break, and this happens. The once peaceful race, who had never thought of the concept of murder or hate or war discovers these ideas and makes war on the human colonists, scarring both species for long times to come.
Review: This book was written by Ursula Le Guin, who is considered by many to be one of the best female sci-fi writers in the world, and this book is an example of that. There is no super-advanced technology in this book, and maybe a whole four sentences with "techno-babble", yet it is a thought-provoking story of another planet many years from today. Le Guin raises some excellent societal issues with this book; logging and mass deforestation is one, but the more powerful one is the breaking of the "creechies'" spirits. Humanity teaches this race how to hate and stirs the urge to murder. This is a very light-weight science fiction novel, as well as a quick read, and I think it’s well worth your time.