The Word for World is Forest

Dune 2 is just Avatar with sand. Avatar is just Pocahontas in space. Pocahontas is just Dance with Wolves animated. Dance with Wolves is just Lawrence of Arabia in the United States. Lawrence of Arabia sucks

• /u/Kogashinreno

Some time after seeing James Cameron’s Avatar (which I really liked, fight me), I realized how much it had in common with one of my favorite games of all time: Albion. Years later, with the Dos Game Club, I got the opportunity to ask Albion’s developers Jurie Horneman and Erik Simon what they though about it.

Their answer was simple: they drawn inspiration from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel “The Word for World is Forest”. James Cameron probably read it, and also got inspired.

The book is fairly shot so go read it!

The gist of it is that Earth invades another planet, to start a wood logging operation there, since wood has become a rare commodity on earth. The humans find an extremely peaceful indigenous race, which they promptly beat into submission and enslave. Eventually the locals discover violence for violences sake, and use their numbers to subjugate the human opressors. Part of which they allow to leave, should they wish so.

The economics of the story are highly dubious, invading another planet to log wood just makes no sense with regards to energy expenditure. Just build a self-sustaining habitat for growing trees in space (assuming there is any reason why building a biosphere on Earth is not possible).

Nevertheless, I found the book thoroughly enjoyable. The local people fend for themselves, which Avatar changed by inserting a “good” human soldier. The one good human in the story just get killed, in an aftermath of a revenge attack.

The main takeaway is that once you introduce violence to a culture, it cannot be taken back.