The Word for Human is Violence

Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest (1972) examines whether violence is human nature or not.

Humans and killing go together like Subarus and Colorado. We kill one another with such frequency that we’ve developed cute little names for all the different kinds—genocide, xenocide, fratricide, regicide, etc. And of course there’s war—for resources, conquest, religion, independence, glory—which is so synonymous with human history that it seems no fantasy or sci-fi story can exist without it.