Paperback, 304 pages
English language
Published July 10, 2000 by Ace Trade.
"One of my favorite novels is The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin. For more than 40 years I've been recommending this book to people who want to try science fiction for the first time, and it still serves very well for that. One of the things I like about it is how clearly it demonstrates that science fiction can have not only the usual virtues and pleasures of the novel, but also the startling and transformative power of the thought experiment.
"In this case, the thought experiment is quickly revealed: "The king was pregnant," the book tells us early on, and after that we learn more and more about this planet named Winter, stuck in an ice age, where the humans are most of the time neither male nor female, but with the potential to become either. The man from Earth investigating this situation has a …
"One of my favorite novels is The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin. For more than 40 years I've been recommending this book to people who want to try science fiction for the first time, and it still serves very well for that. One of the things I like about it is how clearly it demonstrates that science fiction can have not only the usual virtues and pleasures of the novel, but also the startling and transformative power of the thought experiment.
"In this case, the thought experiment is quickly revealed: "The king was pregnant," the book tells us early on, and after that we learn more and more about this planet named Winter, stuck in an ice age, where the humans are most of the time neither male nor female, but with the potential to become either. The man from Earth investigating this situation has a lot to learn, and so do we; and we learn it in the course of a thrilling adventure story, including a great "crossing of the ice". Le Guin's language is clear and clean, and has within it both the anthropological mindset of her father Alfred Kroeber, and the poetry of stories as magical things that her mother Theodora Kroeber found in native American tales. This worldly wisdom applied to the romance of other planets, and to human nature at its deepest, is Le Guin's particular gift to us, and something science fiction will always be proud of. Try it and see – you will never think about people in quite the same way again."
Kim Stanley Robinson, on The Guardian's website
I am not the biggest reader of fiction, but this book had me fully engaged. It's the first book that's made me feel emotionally attached to characters in a long time. I picked this book up off of my sisters' bookshelf, and it's inspired me to read more of Le Guin's work.
This is more socially-driven than plot or character. What would a society be like if people were not male or female but a sort of neuter except during each period when they became sexually active for a few days during which they became male or female at random? There are other significant differences to the way our "Western" societies work, it is up to the reader to imaging whether these were causally related to the different sexual biology.
In spite of that there are a lot of insights into our political issues, too.
I stopped reading it.
Happy to have finally read something by Le Guin. I enjoyed the pseudo-epistolary structure and concept of a fully gender fluid civilization, but the book's age really shows through in the limits of how far this queerness can go (all relationships "become" heterosexual, for instance, because reproduction I guess).
I think I'm missing some important context for when this was written, as it has both a lot of vaguely anti-communist sentiment and also seems to be pulling from Catholic mission trips to East Asian countries, but I can't quite pinpoint a through line. A bubbling pot of challenging political ideas that are not so much unexplored as they are too large for a 300-page scifi novel. Very curious to check out some of Le Guin's later work, but this seems as good a place as any of, like me, you've been meaning to check her out.
I found this book a bit difficult to follow, perhaps that's because I listened to the audiobook, but loved it nonetheless.
Absolutely loved the world, the story told, the characters, the politics, and the cultural dives.
Three stars because I just found that it was so difficult of a delivery, that it took me way too long to read. I think it's because the first half of the book was so lacking in activity, and heavily focused on abstract descriptions of things by the main narrator. Even the last half of the book which could be seen as action packed (crazy journey over glaciers), felt slow to read.
I can see why this is a well-regarded book. Its strengths, like many classic science fiction novels, is in the setting, in the way alien ideas are presented in a way that reflects modern life today. This is a story of making an alien culture feel more human than our own. I was left wondering if a society like theirs could somehow improve upon the ills of our own world or if it would only make things worse. While I didn't care much for the slow plot and the cast of characters, I was impressed by the philosophical implications of their society and I'm sure it's the sort of thing I will think of for years to come.
See my full review at my blog: strakul.blogspot.com/2018/04/book-review-left-hand-of-darkness-by.html
How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills, rivers, and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plow land in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession. . . . Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, …
How does one hate a country, or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people, I know towns, farms, hills, rivers, and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plow land in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That’s a good thing, but one mustn’t make a virtue of it, or a profession. . . . Insofar as I love life, I love the hills of the Domain of Estre, but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate. And beyond that, I am ignorant, I hope.
Really 3.5 stars for me. This novel is typical Le Guin: amazingly realistic world-building, huge concepts successfully telescoped into fewer than 200 pages, characters that one genuinely cares about...and lengthy passage that are extremely dull (in this case, the seemingly endless journey across the ice). Overall, though, I really enjoyed this and suspect it will stay with me for quite some time.
I love the way Ursula LeGuin builds alternate worlds. She makes them differ from ours in meaningful ways, she changes things we take for granted and explores the consequences of the differences well. I want to read more of her sci-fi work.
The Left Hand of Darkness was a great book, all in all. It tells the story of an envoy of an interplanetary cultural and economic league, called the Ekumen, to the planet called Winter (or Gethen, by the locals), whose inhabitants, though humanoid, don't have a set sex: they go in heat once a month, and then their body temporarily chooses a sex practically arbitrarily. The same person could perform as male one month, and then get pregnant the next. The planet is also much colder than Earth, and thus practically in perpetual winter.
Genly Ai, the envoy, is caught in a very intricate web of intrigue and …
I love the way Ursula LeGuin builds alternate worlds. She makes them differ from ours in meaningful ways, she changes things we take for granted and explores the consequences of the differences well. I want to read more of her sci-fi work.
The Left Hand of Darkness was a great book, all in all. It tells the story of an envoy of an interplanetary cultural and economic league, called the Ekumen, to the planet called Winter (or Gethen, by the locals), whose inhabitants, though humanoid, don't have a set sex: they go in heat once a month, and then their body temporarily chooses a sex practically arbitrarily. The same person could perform as male one month, and then get pregnant the next. The planet is also much colder than Earth, and thus practically in perpetual winter.
Genly Ai, the envoy, is caught in a very intricate web of intrigue and politics, trying to get the rulers he encounters to accept the Ekumen and join it.
LeGuin uses language deftly, mixing English with made up words in precisely the right amounts - for example, she uses "native" Gethenian words for concepts that don't easily translate to English, as they are alien to us, and very central to Gethenian culture.
As I mentioned above, the world building was also great. LeGuin manages to describe more than one Gethenian culture, and manages to separate them from each other, and also make them reasonable and unique.
Finally, I loved how the book tries to explore gender by positing this hypothetical humanoid race and trying to make sense of the different societal structures that could arise from it. My only gripe with this element is that the narrator often comments on the natives using pretty dated and somewhat sexist ideas about the sexes. I guess this can be explained away by an unreliable narrator, or by the fact that the book was first published in 1969. In any case, even though a bit off putting for a book that has such a revolutionary take on gender, this flaw is sparse and I could overlook it.
TXU: PS3562.E42 L4 1980
On rereading this recently, I was struck by two things; one was how well this book has aged. Granted, it has many flaws, most of which LeGuin addresses herself in forwards to some newer additions. It's oddly heteronormative, and takes male for default in a way which is just annoying, and can only partly be attributed to Genly Ai's narrative voice. However, LeGuin acknowledges these faults and in fact has written several short stories trying to address them, so I'm just going to mention them and let them go.
But I think the book has aged well because, although first published in 1969, this book remains one of the most creative re-imaginings of gender in the field of SF. It's still the yardstick by which we measure other books on the topic.
The second thing I was struck by, though, was LeGuin's depiction of cold. Approximately the last third of …
On rereading this recently, I was struck by two things; one was how well this book has aged. Granted, it has many flaws, most of which LeGuin addresses herself in forwards to some newer additions. It's oddly heteronormative, and takes male for default in a way which is just annoying, and can only partly be attributed to Genly Ai's narrative voice. However, LeGuin acknowledges these faults and in fact has written several short stories trying to address them, so I'm just going to mention them and let them go.
But I think the book has aged well because, although first published in 1969, this book remains one of the most creative re-imaginings of gender in the field of SF. It's still the yardstick by which we measure other books on the topic.
The second thing I was struck by, though, was LeGuin's depiction of cold. Approximately the last third of the book is a polar trek, and the whole of the book takes place in conditions not much warmer than a Siberian summer, so it's not too incredible that there would be a lot of cold in it, but LeGuin gets cold in a way that I've seen other writers fail at. She gets that the enemy of warm isn't cold, it's damp, and that the technique for staying warm involves addressing the challenge of trapping the heat the body produces without trapping the moisture. She gets the way everything turns fragile in the cold, and the way you can be warm for only so long as you keep moving. She gets the way that sleeping cold is almost as bad as not sleeping at all, and the calories the body needs to stay warm. I wonder if she's lived somewhere this cold, or if she read polar exploration accounts, or if she is merely very, very smart.
Any time you want to know what cold is like, this book is a good source.
