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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 :)
Aw geez... now I want to pull all of those old SF novels out of storage and read them again. So much for learning C++ this week.
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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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I really enjoyed "Left Hand of Darkness." She is a terrific writer.
The sequel is "Appendage of Antimatter" and is very hard to find.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
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
I find much Le Guin to have a very Taoist philosophy underneath it all. _The Left Hand of Darkness_ is no exception. Read it. Enjoy it.
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes
...upon reading the title, thought this was Bill Gate's newest autobiography?
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Flame flame go away, post again some other day...
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
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.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
not just "feminist" issues are covered in LHOD, she takes a pretty good swipe at sexual and racial indentification and sterotyping, too
i ?U rsula_K._Le_Guin
remember, the book was written in 1968/1969
here's a pretty good bio/biblio page
http://www.sfsite.com/isfdb-bin/exact_author.cg
she was way ahead of her time, as Heinlein was with "I Will Fear No Evil", when Heinlein's protagonist "he" becomes a "she" and has "her" first orgasm, many reviewers had strokes over the "smut"...In LHOD, LeGuin's approaches the subject much more subtlely and makes her points very effectively, just as Varley did with Scirocco Jones in the Demon Trilogy
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Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
... is Connie Willis. Reputed to have won the greatest number of Nebulas and Hugos, though who knows how one counts these things. Much of the SF is 'soft', but the characters are exceptionally well defined, she knows her history, and she can do tragedy and comedy equally well.
Doomsday Book is her most famous piece, and deserves its distinction. To Say Nothing of the Dog is set in the same circumstances, but a comic riff on things Victorian, including Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in A Boat .
I just remember this sea of slack-jawed, wide-eyed faces, wondering what planet I'd come from. Here I am, talking about this really great book, throwing out terms like 'latent hermaphrodite'. Is it any wonder I had no real friends there? Or that I didn't have any dates with any of my classmates?
Ahh, high school. Anyone know how to excise 4 years of memories from my brain?
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.
Her favorite novel of mine, is of course: The Dispossessed, a distopian sci-fi novel of twin planets with completely opposite societies - the fertile, rich planet believing in stratified, hierarchical society, and the dry, barren planet populated by 12th generation (or so) anarchists. A traveller goes from the latter planet to the former, and what starts out as a fish-out-of-water story turns into a pretty damning political/ethical quandry. Read it!
[pink beam of light]
Probably the most influential sf work on gender, just because it came before most everything else and was so uncompromising, was Theodore Sturgeon's VenusPlusX. The sad thing is that its peeks into the "real world," the comic and disturbing gender roles of the 1950s, are not dated, fifty years later.
I live in Portland, Oregon, home of LeGuin. I'm working on NW Raleigh St, just a few blocks from her house on NW Thurman. I've seen LeGuin speak, been to book-signings at Powell's, and seen her guest-lecture at PSU.
:). It's in her collection of essays, Dancing at the Edge of the World .
.)
She's brilliant, and her contribution to science fiction is immeasurable. I'm a man, and I don't want to bash male SF writers unduely, but until LeGuin started writing much SF was pretty dull.
LeGuin herself has said that for years she wrote SF as a man, because she had no idea how a woman would or could write it. Her main characters were male, they did manly things (conquered, explored, solved problems). After she wrote The Dispossessed she realized she was doing a disservice to herself, and to the world, and started to consciously write as she would - not as she thought others wanted her to. Her success is proof that many people agreed with her.
If you want to read more LeGuin, read two essays. A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be is beautiful social criticism, and interesting for other reasons: about half-way through she consulted the I Ching, casting the yarrows asking it to describe for her "a yin utopia." "Yang" being bright, masculine; "yin" being dark, feminine. A "yang utopia" would be, for instance, the highly-mechanized, clean, bright future cities of much of the male-dominated SF of the early century. A "yin utopia" would be, well, read the essay
Also, her introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction is a deep and thoughtful introduction to SF. The book is one of the best SF collections ever, and worth it for that essay alone.
(She's also written a beautiful poetic translation of the Tao Te Ching
On another note, for those who don't know, Philip K Dick also used the I Ching extensively when writing The Man in the High Castle. He said he threw the yarrow thousands of times, consulting the book at every plot point and decision. Circularly, the book's characters use it, too.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Not strictly on topic, but having stumbled across this oeuvre in my parent's bottomless pit of a library a couple of months ago, and since then, having badgered all my friends (well, the litarate ones) about them _having_ to read this great book, I'm "jumping with glee" (as it were) to see this actilce on /. and add my two cents:
... maybe if you have your head frozen ... but I digress) which is fascinating, i.e. "a real trip, man", but also tells us much about the world we can/do experience in the flesh. In times to come, books such as these will not be sidelined into "science fiction", but rather will be up there with the rest of literature, albeit of a perhaps more consciousness-expanding type (maybe when spaceships become commonplace). It tells of things which could not fit into a non-science fiction piece - or at least, give a new and vastly different perspective on the state of being human.
this is what SF is about, or rather, for.
It paints a vivid picture of a world none of us will ever see in the flesh (well
Heh. Where was I? Oh yeah - I liked it and recommend it.
yes, we have no bananas
On this planet, the founders wanted to both eliminate man's violence to women (and everything else in general), and to create a very stable society where change is possible, but frowned on. So they created a society consisting of 95% clones (all female), 4% 'vars', and 1% males. The 'vars' and males are produced by normal sexual means, but only very rarely. The clones are seen as normal, and each clone dynasty provides a specialized product or service to society. The vars are turned out into the world at adolesence to try to find their way, and if successful will create their own clone clan. The men are relegated to sailing ships and other minor tasks, are only used once a year to stimulate the cloning.
The story is about one var's coming of age in this society. And although it is not central to the story line, this planet has also been recently rediscovered by the main stellar society, which has sent a lone ambassador to attempt to initiate relations with the outside world.
Brin makes it plausible, and the storyline keeps the pages turning. I know most s.f. readers probably know him by his Uplift universe series, but this one is also a keeper.
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
About half of John Varley's stories contain the idea of safe, reversible sex-change operations. At least three or four contain the idea that this kind of sexual exploration is for the young. I can't narrow it down any more than that, I'm afraid.
His work is very interesting because, while it contains many elements that reflect what feminism should be about, he shows some pretty strong impatience about what feminism is.
The Hand of Fate? More specifically, Manos, the Hand of Fate?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
It's a quote from the planet's scripture, and an indirect reference to common duality here (male = right = strong = bright = yin, female = left = weak = dark = yang.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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.
I don't know the name of that book, but it actually echoes human sexuality in many earth cultures. Young men have wild sex at the drop of a hat... with other young men, taking both roles. When they go through the final rite of passage to join the tribe as an adult, they take a wife and never (publicly) sleep with another guy.
The benefits to the tribe are strong emotional bonds between the men, and a low (or nonexistent) teen pregnancy problem. It also totally freaks out our culture where even "teenage experimentation" is considered codeword for "flaming homosexuals in our midsts!" by a lot of people.
The point to all of this? No matter how weird an alien culture seems, there's probably an analogue somewhere on on Earth. Unfortunately most people dismiss these cultures as "primitive" (and worse), but science fiction settings can remove that stigma. Winter is one of the few exceptions where there is no terrestial analogue.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Beyond the Si-fi she also has several series of childrens books, including one about flying cats (very cute).
The only political statement I've heard is that she strongly supports copyright laws and is angrily opposed to information trading and "napster" like things.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
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.
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
As good as "Barbie Murders" is, I think Varley's best work with gender overtones is his novel "Steel Beach." The entire book is told from the first-person point of view of a protagonist who changes gender halfway through.
Even though the gender-bending isn't a big plot point, merely incidental, it's thought provoking. But not in a homework kind of way.
One of my favorite books, actually.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
I must agree. Read everything for yourself before rendering judgement.
But I read that fish story and boy! I felt really gyped. I'd been looking forward to reading that book for a couple of years, (it wasn't part of my highschool curriculum), and when I finally got through my enormous In-Pile, I cracked the spine on Melville's work, it took me several chapters before I could believe my eyes.
While I don't subscribe to many 'rules' of writing, there are certain things which do irritate me.
Aside from the fact that it's a boring, bleak and grey story. . .
I can't STAND works filled with laborious, thudding metaphor, ESPECIALLY laborious, thudding, religious metaphor. (Particularly, when it was used, as it seemed in Moby Dick, to trick people into thinking that Melville was deep and thoughtful when really he was just as, if not more confused than his readership concerning life the universe and everything.) The characters were dull, the setting moody, the ultimate purpose behind this tragedy of a book was barely even there. ("Don't Obsess".)
Thanks, Melville! "Don't Obsess" Yeah, I'll make a note of that. --In fact, next time I'm writing a massive technical manual about the whaling industry, I'll think, "Oh yeah! I shouldn't obsess over obscure details the reader didn't sign up for and which could be found in a reference guide if they really wanted to know all this crap, and I'll get back to the actual story I set out to write, which only I can write, and which can't be found in a reference manual."
Moron.
The fact of the matter is that when the American government was charged with coming up with an education curriculum, they had to look around and find some out-standing American writers to pump at their children. And unlike the Europeans, (with their centuries of published writers), America was a young nation with very little literature to choose from.
Melville had, up until that time, been popular for writing pulpy high-seas adventure stories, (entirely unlike his whale bullshit). Then, at the height of his fame, he changed his tack and wrote his 'Oscar' nomination; His let's-get-serious-now "Schindler's-List" book, and everybody who read the damned thing, (and everybody DID read it, because that's what they did back before T.V.), had to turn in his or her best, 'seriously now', manner to his or her neighbor and say, "Yes, Yes. Brilliant work. Quite." --Compound that reaction with the heavy religious metaphoric overtones, (popular at the time for some stupid reason, and which you couldn't easily question because it made you not-a-good-Christian). . .
With all those bullshit, "See! I'm a smart, deep writer," buttons being pushed shamelessly, the wool was predictably pulled, and the damned book has until this day remained on a ridiculous pedestal.
What a joke!
Of course, this is just my opinion. I know some people like writing of H.M.'s style, and more power to them. I don't like to read goth fiction either, and that doesn't make people who wear black any less valid in their search for truth.
And I'm not being facetious
-Fantastic Lad