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The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin is probably the best known woman in science fiction. She made her reputation in the late 1960s and early 1970s and is certainly one of the few working 30 years ago to still be an active and instantly recognised name today. The Hainish novels she wrote in the late 1960s and early 1970s brought her early renown and awards. The science fiction universe she created is sometimes buried by the success of her Earthsea books and the different directions of her later years but Le Guin has recently revisited and extended this family of books. In the course of her career she has written over 30 novels and short story collections which have, between them, earned her every significant award that SF has to offer, often more than once. Yet, some commentators have become uncomfortable with Le Guin's ideology, allowing their view of her best science fiction to be clouded by her subsequent academic reputation
The Left Hand of Darkness was the first great book written by Le Guin, winning both the Hugo and Nebula awards. It built on her journeyman novels set in the same Hainish universe but they pale beside this book, in which Le Guin fully found both her voice and her subject. The plot is, in barest outline, a standard trope of science fiction -- a visitor from an advanced civilisation brings a message to a non-space-age people. The essential twist seems simple in hindsight but it is an indicator of the new winds blowing through science fiction at the time. The people of the planet Winter are a variant human population, neuter five sixths of the time but who become either male or female when they become sexually active in the remaining part of the month. Every normal adult can -- and most do -- both bear and sire children. The result is a society where sexual inequality is simply impossible. This thought experiment is fascinating reading yet the book does not preach. These people have much in common with the wider community of humanity and the framework of the plot is strong enough for the discursive elements of the text.
Most of the story is told from the perspective of Genly Ai, the solo Earth visitor who holds the role of "First Mobile" to Winter from the League of Worlds. His mission is to bring news of the existence of other inhabited worlds and to encourage Winter's peoples to allow contact. He is, intentionally, a virtually unsupported ambassador, bringing a message of peace and technology; attempting to convince through his words and the presence of his space ship. They seem to find it difficult to believe (or acknowledge) that he is from another planet and consider his fixed sexuality a perversion. Despite his training, it is almost impossible for Ai to understand the personal or political values of the people he deals with. As a result, he is caught up in intrigue within and between governments. The neighbouring nations with which Ai is involved are broadly painted as a stratified, feudal country and a modern but bureaucratised nation. Given the different nature of these humans, the way such societies actually work is interesting through both the similarities and the contrasts with the expectations of first impressions.
Alongside Ai's reminisences, the book includes myths and stories as well as extracts from the journal of one of the inhabitants (which reads very much like an Antarctic sledging diary from a century ago, with its distance travelled and descriptions of ice and weather conditions). These give the book greater depth as an artifact and provide further explanation of the culture without filtering through Ai's understanding. Ai himself undergoes considerable physical and emotional suffering in the course of his mission; the book's ending tells as much about how he has changed as it does of the fate of his mission.
Le Guin's explanation of how Winter and its inhabitants came about is not hard science but the development of her ideas is fascinating. She builds up Winter's human and natural environments without falling into a lecturing style, offering plenty of food for thought by leaving as many questions open as she answers. The book also packs an emotional punch. Throw away any preconceptions and enjoy The Left Hand of Darkness.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain. You may also be interested in checking out a Le Guin site that Duncan recommends. Would you like to see you review in this space? Check out our book review submission guidelines first :)
It's also a great piece of feminist literature (and no, not the man-bashing sort of feminism). If you've got any friends who are into Women's Studies or whatnot and who haven't read this book, recommend it to them.
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I read this book a long time ago as part of a still ongoing study of gender in Science Fiction literature. Specifically "strange" gender. The Left Hand of Darkness certainly contained one of the more well designed systems of gender.
It is a good choice for anyone doing gender-studies into Science Fiction writing.
Another book that I read at almost the same time I believe was "Half-way Human" that was about a society that included three fixed genders, male, female, and neuter - where the neuters became the servants to the others. Also a brilliant book, but I do not recall the author.
Amerist.
Mill Avenue Vexations
My favorite aspect of the book was LeGuinn's attempt at blending stereotypically male and female characteristics into those of uni/multisexual beings. While reading the book, I alternated my gender perception of characters, and noticed different characteristics emerge from them as a result.
Consider the complex political situation of Winter. If you read the interactions between politicos, viewing them as female, they appear remarkably petty and intriguant. When presumed to be male, they suddenly seem ruthless strategists.
The opportunity to choose and change the gender of characters at will gave me the opportunity to discover some of my own gender-based prejudices - one's I was not aware I had - and to confront and correct for them.
The book was a real eye-openner for me in this respect.
When read from a different perspective entirely, it is a brilliant treatise on the meaning of "Statesmanship" and "Patriotism". The exploration of what it means to do the right thing for one's people, versus the recognition of this, and the consequences, is something that is as poingiant in today's terrorist age as it was during the times of the Vietnam and Cold Wars.
The World of Winter is a great creation in itself. The detailed and lifelike descriptions of the land, it's people, and their lifestyle and culture, all leave the reader awestruck and familiar with the planet.
The relationship that develops between Genly and his liaison on the glacier, was a remarkably beautiful and touching motif.
The tribal, almost mind-altering Seer experience, simply oozed sexuality, and cleverly melded the pagan "sexual divinity" with LeGuinn's own Taoist leanings.
Definitelly a worthwhile read, especially given how accessible U.K. LeGuinn's writing style is.
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I personally despise _The Disposessed_; it was the first of her novels in which I felt her didacticism overrode her story.
There's a really interesting appendix to the reissue -- LeGuin rewrites the first chapter of the book using three different pronouns for the King: male (as it appeared in 1969), female, and a created neuter pronoun. I happen to prefer the male version, but it's a fascinating comparison.
It's curious that today this fine novel is under attack as being a "sell out." LeGuin, the critics argue, was unable to be bold enough in her depiction of Winter and so the novel fails because it does not go far enough.
I find these criticisms, coming long after "The Left Hand of Darkness" was written, to be a crock. This was an earthquake of a novel. It changed the way many of us viewed gender when we first read it.
I took this novel, along with the later "Dispossessed" to sea with me and it made its way around a good part of the submarine's crew. We argued about it for much of the patrol. It had REAL impact in 1975. It has real impact in 2001.
Just don't let the radical feminists tell you it's a cop-out.
I truly believe Le Guin is one of the great sci fi writers of this time. I fell in love with her writing and the hainish universe when I first read LHoD and have never stopped reading her since. People who like her stuff are highly encouraged to read the reissue of "Worlds of Exile & Illusion"... which contains three novellas set in the hainish universe. Of course one can never overlook her *other* hugo AND nebula award winning book "The Disposessed" (which I think every geek needs to read). Even her works that are vehicles of feminist thought such as Four Ways to forgiveness still manage to convey meaning and dialogue without sounding preachy or resorting to condescension. A highly reccommended author, and if you like her you should check out Gene Wolfe (Fifth head of Cerebrus, New Sun tetrology, Long Sun tetrology) .. and some of Samuel R. Delany (NOT Dhalgren.. but the Neveryona series is pretty cool, and Triton is also pretty nice... his early pulp stuff is also a fun read)...
- Naru Sundar
http://asmodean.shayolghul.org
I am a big fan of Connie Willis. She is excellent and writes with good emotion, usually humorous, but sometimes quite grim (The Doomsday Book).
However, there is a not-so-subtle difference. LeGuin is definitely a woman writer, except perhaps for The Lathe of Heaven. Willis is a writer who is a woman.
In the same sense, Woody Allen is a Jewish comedian. Groucho Marx was a comedian who was Jewish. Richard Pryor started off as a Black comedian but later became a comedian who was black. Bill Cosby did it the other way around. Octavia Butler is a Black Woman Writer. Samuel Delaney started off as a writer who was gay and black, became a Gay Writer who was black and then, unfortunately, stopped writing SF right after that cliffhanger in Stars in my Pocket like Grains of Sand.
There are a couple other notable science fiction works that address gender and society. Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time takes an oppressed underclass woman from mid-1970s America and projects her into a future utopia in which differences in gender and sexuality have been erased. Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale imagines an America dominated by Reagan-era patriarchy.
In both these novels, gender difference is seen as the central problem in society. In The Handmaid's Tale, rigidly-defined gender roles form the basis of everyone's oppression. The utopia of Woman on the Edge of Time depends on the complete eradication of gender roles, even using technology to allow men to breast-feed.
In LeGuin's fictional world, however, genderless societies prove to be just as oppressive and intolerant as the real world. Militarism dominates one society, political repression the other, and in both, deviating from sexual and gender norms makes you a pervert.
The Left Hand of Darkness is more of a thought experiment on the subject of gender than it is a political argument. It achieves a sophistication lacking in the other two novels. Both The Handmaid's Tale and Woman on the Edge of Time based their fictional societies on contemporary feminist political theory. Piercy gives us an unintentionally insufferable utopia dominated by feminized (not necessarily feminist) forms of social interaction and 1970s commune culture. Atwood creates a cartoonish distopia dominated by masculine militarism and 1980s conservative ideology. LeGuin's fictional world is equally rooted in the political context of its times; its cold war themes make it read, in parts, like a John LeCarre spy novel. However, The Left Hand of Darkness seems more plausible and less dated than the other two novels because it draws on a broad view of society rather than one focused on gender as a single issue.
This is a very good book, but is far from her best. I found it a touch depressing, so I put it down for a while before finishing. I was glad when I finally did, but it took a little effort.
:)
is also a true classic. It's one of those fantasy tales that has that spark of quality you don't find often.
Of LeGuin's sci-fi, nothing compares to "The Lathe of Heaven", which stands as a true classic. I would suggest that anyone thinking of reading LeGuin for the first time read this book first.
If you're more into fantasy, her "Wizard of Earthsea" trilogy (which is now up to 6 books
I recently met LeGuin at a book reading, which was, for me, almost like meeting Tolkien. (Not quite on the same scale, of course, more like meeting a demigod.) When asked about what inspired her to write the Earthsea books, she said her publisher asked her to write a fantasy book. Lord of the Rings had just become very popular about that time in the 60's, and her publisher wanted to capitalize on the Tolkien fans' hunger. She said she always wondered what Gandalf must have been like when he was a boy (though us diehard LOTR fans know he never actually was a boy), so she created Ged, the main character in the Earthsea novels, as her interpretation of a young Gandalf.
In the end, I think Ged ends up being quite different from Gandalf, which is probably for the better because the books don't feel like LOTR rehashed. They are quite creative and original, with an amazing quality all their own.
I truly believe the boy could have presented the book in such a way that his audience would have been given something new to consider (even if they didn't agree with it). Instead, he presented it in a way that failed completely. Slamming their minds even tighter against the idea.
Take two different approaches to presenting this book.
Do you think using approach #1 would be a sell out? Part of my annoyance (and I tried to make this clear in my original AC post), is with people who absolutely refuse to gauge their audience and present appropriately. These people present their ideas in a blunt-force method that shows total disrespect for their audiences' view. If the speaker doesn't respect the audiences' view, then what chance does he have for altering that view.You don't always lead a person to a new idea in one fell swoop. Does it make me a sell-out to try and change a person's mind in bite-size increments? I don't think so.
Like I said before. There's a lot of whining about not being accepted here on /. (I suppose most of it was after Katz' Hellmouth articles). My peeve is that the whiners often cause their own problem. I didn't say they had to sell out. I'm saying they need to look for different ways to present their ideas.
Is Left Hand, by any chance, part of the highschool curriculum in anybody's neck of the woods?
Wouldn't surprise me.
One of my long fostered conspiracy theories is that they give kids lame & dull books to read in school just to discourage their further intellectual growth by making reading seem like a soul draining pile of hard work which is best avoided. (See kids? Drinking is much more fun! Don't think. Thinking is bad. Let us think for you. Buy our hamburgers, electric garage door openers and DVD players. What? You want to read? Fuck you! Here. Read, Moby Dick, and the Scarlet Letter, you little puke! What? You want more? Have some Bronte Sisters, you little shit! Now, stop thinking, damn it!)
I'm not saying that every book should spark the spirit to life. --And not just because most of the stories out there which try to be uplifting fail miserably because they're also insipidly stupid, surface-only, retarded crap, (Shrek. Charlie's Angels. Jay & Silent Bob. Monster's Inc. Etc.), but I am saying that while I give LeGuin a nod for her intellectual prowess, I nonetheless thought Left Hand of Darkness was needlessly cold. Somebody as together as her should know better!
Smart writing doesn't have to be depressing writing. I don't get why so many people buy into that concept.
-Fantastic Lad