Editing Hainish Cycle (section)

===Backstory===

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the people of Hain colonized a large number of worlds, including [[Earth]], known as Terra, meaning that human beings did not evolve on Earth. Most of these were similar enough that humans from one world can pass as natives of another, but on some the old Hainish 'colonisers' used [[genetic engineering]]. At least one of the various species of ''Rocannon's World'' are the product of genetic engineering, as are the "hilfs" ("highly intelligent life forms")<ref name=hilf>{{cite web |title='Hilf' (a generic acronym for "highly intelligent life form") |website=Hainish Encyclopedia |url=http://hem.passagen.se/peson42/lgw/hain.html |access-date=April 10, 2013 |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120829024909/http://hem.passagen.se/peson42/lgw/hain.html |archive-date=August 29, 2012}}</ref> of Planet&nbsp;S<ref>{{citation| title=The Left Hand of Darkness |last=Le Guin |first=Ursula K. |date=2004 |publisher=Barnes & Noble}} ch. 7, p. 89.</ref>(whose story has not been told), and probably the androgynous humans of Gethen in ''The Left Hand of Darkness''. The Ekumen do not know whether the colonisers sought to adapt humans to varied worlds, were conducting various experiments, or had other reasons.

Hainish civilization subsequently collapsed, and the colony planets (including Earth) forgot that other human worlds existed. The Ekumen stories tell of the efforts to re-establish a civilization on a galactic scale through NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light) [[interstellar travel]] taking years to travel between stars (although only weeks or months from the viewpoint of the traveler because of [[time dilation]]), and through instantaneous interstellar communication using the [[ansible]].

This seems to have happened in two phases: First, the League of All Worlds was formed, as an alliance of planets, mostly descended from colonization efforts from the planet Hain, uniting the "nine known worlds"<ref>''The Dispossessed''</ref> — presumably along with new colonies. By the time of ''Rocannon's World'' it has grown but is also under threat from a distant enemy. In ''City of Illusions'' it is recalled as having been a league of some 80&nbsp;worlds at the time it was destroyed by aliens called the Shing, who are uniquely able to lie in mindspeech. After the apparent overthrow of the Shing by the descendants of marooned Terrans and the inhabitants of Alterra / Werel who have succeeded in interbreeding (as related in ''Planet of Exile'') and are capable of detecting Shing lies, the alliance is eventually reconstructed.

A second phase begins with ''The Left Hand of Darkness''. The 80&nbsp;plus planets seem to have reunited as the ''Ekumen'' – a name derived from the [[Greek language|Greek]] "[[oikoumene]]", meaning "the inhabited world", although characters occasionally refer to it as "the Household",<ref name="left-hand">{{citation| title=The Left Hand of Darkness |last=Le Guin |first=Ursula K. |date=2004 |publisher=Barnes & Noble}}, ch. 10, p. 133.</ref> which is in turn a reference to the Greek "[[oikos]]", a word which developed from the same root as "oikoumene". Unexplained references are made by the protagonist from Terra in ''The Left Hand of Darkness'' to a long-past "Age of the Enemy", which presumably refers to the time that the Shing controlled Terra, portrayed in ''City of Illusions''.