The novel “The Word for World Is Forest” by Ursula Le Guin was published for the first time in 1972. It won the Hugo Award for the Best Novella of the year.

An Earth expedition is on the planet called Athshe by the native humanoids and New Tahiti by the aspiring colonists who want to exploit the resources offered by the forest that covers it. The natives’ peaceful nature, oriented towards introspection and harmony with nature, made them easy to enslave.

Captain Davidson is the leader of a logging camp that exploits many natives. He goes to the Earth colony headquarters in the hope of having a meeting with one of the newly arrived women and when he returns to the camp, he finds that it was devastated and the humans were killed. He’s attacked by the natives but is spared by Selver, the native leader who instructs him to tell the Earthlings what has happened.