Rocannon's World

Rocannon's World is a science fiction novel by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, her debut novel. Published in 1966, it appeared as an Ace Double novel alongside Avram Davidson's The Kar-Chee Reign. The novel is one of several of Le Guin's works that take place in the same universe and have relationships among characters and history, works that readers have termed the Hainish Cycle

The novel's protagonist, "League of All Worlds" ethnographer Gaveral Rocannon, returns to the planet Fomalhaut II after its quarantine to lead a further advanced survey of its "higher intelligence life forms" (or "hilfs"). As the novel opens, a rebel faction of the League violently attacks Rocannon's ship, taking the lives of all of his colleagues—and, in foretelling an invasion, endangers the future of the planet's sentient species. Rocannon engages with three of these species, including the following:

• the tall, feudal, aristocratic Angyar
• two shorter, comparably intelligent species:
  • the troglodyte technologists and makers, the Gdemiar
  • the nontechnological, colonially telepathic Fiia.

The purpose is to battle both harsh planetary elements and other sentients to accomplish a quest—to beckon the distant League to block the invasion.

In developing the story, Le Guin introduces the term ansible as a key technology (and plot element) that allows instantaneous communication across vast distances. This term was later used more widely in science fiction, including by novelist Orson Scott Card and others.