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Originally Posted by Joebill
But I said 'Word for World' was strange. I felt the arrival of a starship with an interstellar radio on it, was rather deus ex machina. That is what ruined the story for me.
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_The Dispossessed_ was largely about that interstellar radio, and the chap who discovered the principles by which it operated. The Ansible was less of a deus ex machina for me because I was aware it existed.
One of the things of interest about the Hainish universe that LeGuin was writing in was that FTL
wasn't possible, and until the Ansible was developed, communications between the worlds was relativistic. Actual
travel between world remained limited by the speed of light, but at least they could talk to each other in real time.
Memory is foggy, and Id have to reread stuff, but I recall an early novel in the sequence where a means of traveling FTL was used. The problem was that organic life wouldn't survive the journey, so you could transport things, but not people.
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As for the bad guys, I grew up in a small town with people like that as part of the local power structure. They did seem narrow and carboard cutouts, but that simplistic hatred, with no good reason for the hatred to exist, is the 'type' of people they are. So, I rather understood why and whom they were in the story. They were like watching an old 1940s Film Noire movie full of cliches... but it was dangerous to underestimate what kind of evil they were capable of.
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Oh, sure. Folks like that certainly exist. The sticking point is setting. The question becomes "Would this kind of person exist in this setting and behave in this fashion?" In "World", I simply couldn't believe he would.
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Dennis