The Word for World is Forest

The Word for World is Forest (1972) is a novella set on Athshe, a densely forested planet being stripped of its trees and its people by an Earth logging colony. The Athsheans, small and green-furred, are enslaved as labor, dismissed as “creechies” by the Terrans, and regarded as something less than human by the soldiers and loggers running the operation. The novella alternates largely between two opposing figures: Captain Davidson, a colonial officer whose brutality is matched only by his absolute certainty in the righteousness of human expansion, and Selver, an Athshean whose wife is killed by Davidson and who becomes, at great personal cost, the first of his people to organize violence against their oppressors. The Athsheans had no word for murder before the colonists arrived. Written during the Vietnam era, the novella’s parallels to that conflict remain unmistakable, though its critique of colonialism and ecological destruction has hardly diminished in force. First appeared in Harlan Ellison’s Again, Dangerous Visions anthology in 1972. Winner of the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Novella. This is the first standalone edition published.

Hardcover. First Hardcover Edition, First Printing. Octavo, bound in half cloth with pale green boards. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Hugo Award winner (1973). Pringle, Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels (74). ISBN: 0060125632. #11460.
Near fine in dust jacket.