Paradises Lost

Paradises Lost is a science fiction novella by American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. It originally appeared in 2002 within the collection *The Birthday of the World*. The story takes place on a multigenerational spaceship traveling from Earth to a world that might support human life. Its main characters, Liu Hsing and Nova Luis, belong to the fifth generation born aboard the vessel. They must contend with a religious group that insists the ship should not stop at its target, and they also face an emergency triggered by a major alteration to the voyage’s timetable. The novella has since been included in anthologies and turned into an opera bearing the same title.

The work examines the sense of isolation that space travel creates, along with themes of religion and the idea of a perfect society. It also incorporates ecocriticism, questioning the notion that humans exist separately from their natural surroundings. Critics praised both the novella and the collections it appeared in. Commentators compared its generation-ship premise and utopian exploration to other Le Guin works like “Newton’s Sleep” and *The Telling*, as well as to writings by Gene Wolfe and Molly Gloss. Scholar Max Haiven called the novella “a chastening lesson in both the potential and the perils of freedom,” while author Margaret Atwood remarked that it “shows us our own natural world as a freshly discovered Paradise Regained, a realm of wonder.”

The setting is a ship called *Discovery* traveling from Earth—referred to as “Ti Chiu” or, in children’s speech, “Dichew”—to a planet named “Hsin Ti Chiu” (meaning “New Earth,” or “Shindychew”). In her 2002 introduction, Le Guin described this universe as a common science fiction backdrop: “the generic, shared, science fiction ‘future.’” She noted that in this version, Earth launches ships at speeds that are “more or less realistic, at least potentially attainable.” She pointed to Molly Gloss’s *The Dazzle of Day* and Harry Martinson’s poem “Aniara” as examples of this type of future. Although sometimes mistaken for part of the Hainish Cycle, the story is not connected to it. The title alludes to John Milton’s epic poem *Paradise Lost*.

The protagonists, 5-Liu Hsing and 5-Nova Luis (called Hsing and Luis), are identified by the “5” indicating their generation. The ship’s environment is strictly managed.