Reading Le Guin’s novella “The Word for World is Forest” in 2010, it’s hard not to draw the parallels with James Cameron’s “Avatar”: an exploitative colonial force of humans encounters a technologically primitive but psychologically advanced people on a paradisiacal world, and the encounter forces the peaceful natives to take up arms against the invaders. Le Guin’s Athsheans differ from Cameron’s Na’vi in more than appearance, though (the Na’vi are tall, blue, and lithe; the Athseans are short, green, and hairy): they don’t require a savior from the human world to goad them to action, and remain thoroughly alien to the end.full review
