Talk:The Word for World Is Forest

message: I removed this section from the main article. Since it's a significant cut, I wanted to add to talk page for the time being in case there is dispute. Explanations below.
A copy of The Word for World Is Forest is visible at the bedside of the character Joker in a scene set in Vietnam in Stanley Kubrick's film Full Metal Jacket (this is an anachronism as the movie takes place in and around 1968, while The Word for World Is Forest was published in 1976). However, given the movie's focus on the Vietnam War (as well as Kubrick's infamous attention to detail), this is likely a purposeful allusion. (The novel's appearance in the movie is factual but essentially trivia. The novel's significance in the movie is unclear and this paragraph seems to contain original research (see for instance the un-sourced phrase "likely a purposeful allusion"). If the novel's appearance were in fact notable or illuminating, I think that would belong in the article for Full Metal Jacket anyway, not this article.)
In chapter 43 of the expanded version of Stephen King's 1978 novel The Stand, dialogue between the characters Nick Andros (who is characterized as an avid science fiction reader) and Tom Cullen alludes to The Word for World Is Forest as they enter Woods County, Oklahoma: "'The world is the place I mean,' Tom said. 'Are we going into the world, mister?' Tom hesitated and then asked with hesitant gravity: 'Is Woods the word for world?' Slowly, Nick nodded his head." (This already had the OR warning dating from 2011. While possibly true—it certainly sounds like an allusion—this would just be trivia even with a source.)
Discussing James Cameron's movie Avatar, SF critic Gary Westfahl said that "the science fiction story that most closely resembles Avatar has to be Ursula K. Le Guin's novella The Word for World Is Forest." (This paragraph is misleading since it suggests this comparison is significant—either Avatar was inspired in some way by this novel, or this critic's opinion represents a commonly-held belief. Neither is supported by the sources listed. As it stands, this critic is drawing an illustrative comparison but does not state that either work has directly impacted the other.)
Geethree (talk)
Personally, I found this section to be far more informative and useful than the current "Resemblance to Avatar" section which, frankly, looks like it belongs in a review or opinion piece. Psychonautical1 (talk) 15:23, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: In popular culture (removed from main article)

message: The article needs a spoiler alert. (oops)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.119.15.23 (talk) 00:10, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It had the automatic warning up to 9th June, when it was removed on the grounds that plot summaries should be assumed to be spoilers.  Not something I'd have done, but that seems to be the consensus.--GwydionM 17:29, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Spoiler alert

message: The article should be corrected to reflect that Raj Lyubov's rank is Captain, not Corporal as the article states.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.198.146.30 (talk) 11:40, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corrections 

message: The link to the essay on _The Lathe of Heaven_ should be moved to the page for that book.  They essay only tangentially mentions _The Word for World is Forest_.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.161.244.253 (talk) 22:39, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Irrelevant External Link

message: There's a broken link in the External links section:
http://wwwscience.murdoch.edu.au/teaching/a108/essay3.html
Can someone find where the article has moved to?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.166.140 (talk) 21:44, 28 February 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I looked at it via the Internet Archive, where I found a copy of it from 2007, when it was added as an external link. It was a student essay which a college had posted anonymously as an example. It is thus not a reliable source, and it does not seem appropriate to link even to an archived copy, any more than I would link to some paper I wrote as a college student. I also removed another dead external link to an anonymous fan site. Edison (talk) 17:24, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken link 

message: The author specifies that the novel's antagonist is a black man from, if memory serves, Cincinnati, Ohio, on the earth, which is, at the time of the story, a slum- or a ghetto-planet inhabited primarily, if not entirely, by blacks, peoples of other races having long since departed. Since he is black, it should be clear that he is not the leader. There is racist irony in the fact that it is the nigger who has come up with a term of opprobrium for the local humans. Ms. Le Guin also notes that the woman raped has suffered internal damage because of the large size of Davidson's penis. That black men possess unnaturally-large penises is a stereotypically-racist stereotype. In other work, this author has also shown a negative attitude toward Affirmative Action in higher education. E.g., in a short story, a brilliant white mathematics major is denied access in favor of an undeserving black student who uses Affirmative Action to game the asmissions process.
Hwgray (talk) 20:16, 15 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: She has a distinctly positive black hero in Earthsea (and complained when the television version made it almost all white).  Also a confused but well-meaning black character from Earth in The Left Hand of Darkness.  Also The Word for World Is Forest draws inspiration from the Vietnam War, in which most Afro-Americans did identify with the US cause and some committed atrocities.--GwydionM (talk) 12:23, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

text: Davidson is indeed a "euraf" in the book, but while the book makes clear he likes to rape, absolutely no mention is made of him or anyone else having any particular size of penis. Hwgray appears to be wrong about this, unless he/she can provide a page number and edition where LeGuin says such a thing in the book. No mention is made in my copy of the book of the native female having suffered "internal injuries," just that she died while or shortly after he raped her. Since she was only 3 feet (or one meter) tall, he could have  smothered her inadvertently, crushed her under his weight, or beaten her to death. Edison (talk) 17:49, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Racism 

message: I am planning to write or rewrite parts of this article using books as sources. Using sfn formatting would make this much easier; so I am going to go ahead and change the formatting. If anybody has any objections, however, I am quite willing to self-revert and discuss. Regards, Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:17, 22 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference formatting 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on The Word for World Is Forest. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive http://www.webcitation.org/5yVVBdci0?url=http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1973-hugo-awards/ to http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/1973-hugo-awards/
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Nebula1973.html
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on The Word for World Is Forest. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110605231429/http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Nebula1973.html to http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/Nebula1973.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 22:20, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified