Hain is a fictional planet that plays an important background role in the science fiction novels of Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Kroeber Le Guin is an American author. She has written novels, poetry, children's books, essays, and short stories, notably in fantasy and science fiction...

's Hainish Cycle. It is described more closely in some later short stories. It is the oldest culture in both the League of Worlds and later the Ekumen and is about 140 Light Years from Terra/Earth. Observers like Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness

The Left Hand of Darkness is a 1969 science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is part of the Hainish Cycle, a series of books by Le Guin all set in the fictional Hainish universe....

are trained on Hain.

History

Hain is also known as Davenant or Hain-Davenant. Its people cannot readily be distinguished from Earth-humans, but they have evolved differences, including the ability not to conceive children or father them without a conscious decision to do so. It once had a high-technology culture, and also seeded humans or humanoids on various planets, including Earth and other worlds now in the Ekumen. Exact details are no longer known, but the history of the people of Hain goes back three million years. Knowledge has mostly not been lost, but is used more wisely.

The 'Ekumen' is very loosely knit, with Hain at the centre but not ruling. The Hainish attitude was different during the "vast Hainish expansion of the Fore-Eras". It is mentioned in The Left Hand of Darkness that the original Hainish culture probably created the Gethen

Gethen

Gethen is a fictional planet in Ursula K. Le Guin's Ekumen universe. It is the setting for her science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness.-The planet:...

ians as an experiment.

From the older high-tech culture there was a crash and a re-building on a wiser basis. Evidence of the former high-tech life is all around, along with proof of the current indifference to it:

Stse is an almost-island, separated from the mainland of the great south continent by marshes and tidal bogs, where millions of wading birds gather to mate and nest. Ruins of an enormous bridge are visible on the landward side, and another half-sunk fragment of ruin is the basis of the town's boat pier and breakwater. Vast works of other ages encumber all Hain, and are no more and no less venerable or interesting to the Hainish than the rest of the landscape.

Tales about Hain

Three of the short stories in A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

A Fisherman of the Inland Sea

A Fisherman of the Inland Sea is a 1994 collection of short stories and novellas by Ursula K. Le Guin. The collection was second in the 1995 Locus Award poll in the collection category.-Contents:The stories in the collection are:...

include details of life on Hain. More is seen in the first half of A Man of the People in Four Ways to Forgiveness

Four Ways to Forgiveness

Four Ways to Forgiveness is a collection of four short stories or novellas by Ursula K. Le Guin. All four stories are set in the future and deal with the planets Yeowe and Werel, both members of the Ekumen, a collective of planets used by Le Guin as part of the background for many novels and short...

. Havzhiva is a man who grows up on Hain, though he ends up working for the Hainish embassy on Yeowe. We see the ruins of past technology and learn of the highly localised social order that exists on some parts of the planet.

Third-party mentions

• Entry on Le Guin from UXL Newsmakers in 2005 (from findarticles.com) "The Hainish were a race of beings from the planet Hain who have colonized all planets of the Universe that will sustain them."
• Cadden, Michael Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction For Children And Adults, 2004; ISBN 0415972183 " "The pattern is typical: he begins on Hain (or another long-time planet of the Ekumen)" p. 64