The Found and The Lost. This book of novellas was written by Ursula K. Le Guin. An American writer, (probably) everyone knows her by the quality of her writing. She was strongly being influenced by cultural anthropology, feminism, taoism (daoism) and Jungian psychology books. She died in January 2018, but during her life she was nominated with Pulitzer prize for Fiction; National Book Award for Fiction; Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award; Prometheus Award for Best Novel; and many more.
1. Vaster Than Empires and More Slow (1972)
One of the first novellas in the Hainish series. The plot of the novella is about a League of Worlds (Ekumen) crew of volunteers. They research and discover planets outside the galaxy - planets where nobody (in our galaxy) has ever been to. The crew consists of 10 people, 5 of them are from Earth (Terrans) and 1 of them is an empath. Osden can feel the feelings of everything alive around him. They say it is because of the autism treatment he got. His role in the crew is to identify anything alive on the planet. The crew arrives on an unidentified planet. There is nothing in there - just plants. But when Osden goes on an expedition to study the planet, everything is not so harmless...
2. Old Music and the Slave Women (1999)
The novella in the Hainish series. The plot is about Sohikelwenyanmurkeres Esdan, a native of Hain. Esdan serves as a chief of intelligence of Ekumen to Werel. During the civil war the government isolates itself from the rest of the planets. Esdan, getting really bored of isolation, accepts the first opportunity to travel anywhere. But when he crosses the border of the country, he gets caught and put in prison for slaves, where he is tortured a lot. The minister of the government comes to visit him and offers freedom for helping the government in the civil war. I don't know what Le Guin has been hinting at this whole time of the story. But the story is definitely worth reading because it is interesting to see the behaviour of the government in this parallel Hainish Universe.
These were just 2 novellas from the series to just let you have an idea what this all is about. I liked the series because I could always kind of imagine the space and spaceships and this parallel Universe that is ahead of our Universe in technologies. Also, it was kind of nice to see that Le Guin made this a series - it is easier to remember what happened on the planet some time ago or in the future rather than having to remember new settings each time.
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