City of Illusions

by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Man Without Memory

The story starts as a man is found by a small community (housed in one building) in a forest area in eastern North America. He is naked except for a gold ring on one finger, has no memory except of motor skills at a level equivalent to that of a one-year-old and has bizarre, amber, cat-like eyes. The villagers choose to welcome and nurture him, naming him Falk (Yellow). They teach him to speak, educate him about the Earth, and teach him from a book they consider holy, which is Le Guin's "long-translated" version of the Tao Te Ching. Also they teach him about the nature of the never-seen Shing.

The Journey

After six years, Falk is told by the leader of the community that he needs to understand his origins, and therefore sets off alone for Es Toch, the city of the Shing in the mountains of western North America. He encounters many obstacles to learning the truth about himself and about the Shing, along with evidence of the barbarism of current human society. Along the way, it is sometimes put to him that the image he holds of the Shing is a distorted one; that they respect the idea of 'reverence for life' and are essentially benevolent and non-alien rulers. This suggestion comes from Estrel, a young woman whom Falk meets after being captured by the Basnasska tribe in the great plains. Falk escapes this violent community with Estrel, to reach the city under her guidance. In the course of his journey Falk also encounters Shing-bred talking birds and animals who plead reverence for life in self-defense.

The Shing

Originating in a distant region of the galaxy, the Shing infiltrate and destroy the League of All Worlds twelve hundred years before City of Illusions begins. The League has received prior warning of alien conquerors subduing distant worlds and for generations have worked to prepare defensive alliances and weaponry. However when the Shing finally arrive they are able to speedily subdue the eighty League planets, apparently without encountering effective opposition. The main weapon enabling this rapid and confused occupation is the Shing's ability to lie in Mindspeech. The Shing closely resemble humans though they seem to be unable to interbreed with them. Coming to Earth as "exiles or pirates or empire builders from some distant star" the Shing, who are not numerous, establish themselves in a single fantastical city Es Toch. Under their rule the remainder of Earth declines into a thinly populated collection of backward and often mutually hostile tribal societies.

When Falk reaches Es Toch, Estrel betrays him into the hands of the Shing and laughs as she does so. He is told that he is part of the crew of a starship of alien/human hybrids from a planet called Werel. He meets a young man, Orry, who came with him in the ship. At this point it becomes clear that Estrel is a human collaborator working for the Shing, and that she had been sent to retrieve him from the wilds of the so-called Continent 1.

The Shing tell Falk that * they are in fact humans; * the conflict between the League and an alien invader never occurred: on the contrary, the League self-destructed through civil war and exploitation; * the "enemy" is an invention of the Shing rulers themselves to try to ensure through fear that world peace endures under their benevolent, if misunderstood, rule; * Falk's expedition was attacked by rebels who then erased Falk's memory of his previous self; and * The Shing, who managed to save only Orry from the rebel attack, now want to restore Falk's previous identity.

Falk however believes that the Shing are non-human liars and that their true intent is to determine for their own purposes the location of his home planet. Ruling through "toolmen" - human collaborators who are either computer controlled or who have been raised to accept the Shing as benign human lords, the only truth that the Shing seem to accept is the law of preservation of life. They appear as pathological liars, though Falk, comes to conclude that "the essence of their lying was a profound, irremediable lack of understanding" of the peoples that they have conquered. Shing character, culture, architecture and even clothing are ambiguous and illusory.

The Shing also appear to keep vegan lifestyle. Their "elaborately disguised foods were all vegetable" and their Law of Reverence for Life is often expressed by the animals it is meant to protect. Throughout City of Illusions, Falk encounters speaking beasts, birds and rodents who mechanically tell him that he must not take life. Falk, however, believes this law is nothing more than an extreme fear of death.

In her introduction to the 1978 hardback edition of City of Illusions, Le Guin regrets the improbable and flawed depiction of the villains, the Shing, as not convincingly evil.

Restored Memories

Seeing no other way forward, Falk consents to have his memory erased. The mind of the original Werelian, Agad Ramarren, is restored and the Falk personality is apparently destroyed. He emerges as a new person with pre-Falk memories and vastly greater scientific knowledge. Ramarren's first name, Agad, recalls Jakob Agat, one of the chief protagonists of Planet of Exile, of whom he is a descendant. However, thanks to a memory triggering mnemonic device that Falk had left for himself (an instruction, through young Orry, to read the beginning of the book he travels with, his translation of the Tao Te Ching), the Falk personality is revived. After some instability Falk's and Ramarren's minds come to coexist. By comparing the knowledge given to them before and after Ramarren's re-emergence, the joint minds are able to detect the essential dishonesty of the Shing's rule and the fact that the alien conquerors can lie telepathically. It was this power that had enabled the not very numerous Shing: "exiles or pirates or empire-builders from some distant star", to overthrow the League of All Worlds twelve centuries before.

The Werelians' mental powers are significantly greater than those of their human ancestors; thus they are capable of recognizing the Shing mindlie, and cannot be overthrown in the same manner as the League. The Shing are inhibited by a cultural dread of killing or being killed and would have no effective defense against any expedition that came armed and forewarned. Still ignorant of the survival of the Falk persona, the Shing hope to send Ramarren back to Werel to present their version of Earth as a happy garden-planet prospering under their benign guidance and in no need of outside help. Falk / Ramarren, now fully aware of the brutalized and misruled reality, pretends to accept this, postponing the return journey.

Eventually, while on a pleasure trip to view another part of the Earth, his Shing escort (Ken Kenyek) takes telepathic control of Ramarren but is then overcome by Falk, operating as a separate person. Now controlling Ken Kenyek, Falk/Ramarren makes his escape, manipulating his prisoner to find a light-speed ship that can take him home, and how to program it. (He discovers here that the Shing use a totally alien system of mathematics, quite different from the Cetian mathematics used by all human worlds.) Falk / Ramarren leaves for his planet of origin, taking Orry and the captive Ken Kenyek with him so that each can present their perception of Shing rule over Terra. The strong military culture and advanced technology of the Werelian colonists mean that Earth can probably be liberated "at a blow". However the light-years of travel required mean that Falk's forest friends will be long dead when he returns.

While City of Illusions concludes at this point, Falk / Ramarren's mission apparently succeeds in bringing freedom to the home world of Terra. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Genly Ai comes from Earth and remembers the 'Age of the Enemy' as something dreadful that is now past. He also knows of the Werelians, now called Alterrans. The fate of the Shing is not mentioned, either there or in any later book.