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A review by mburnamfink
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
5.0
The Left Hand of Darkness is along with The Man in the High Tower and Dune, one of the very few science fiction books that rises to true greatness. Ursula K. Le Guin imagines a meeting of two very different and alien cultures, as revealed in a masterfully and deliberately paced novel.
Genly Ai is the Envoy, a representative of the interplanetary Ekumen. Definitely not a government, and not quite a church, the Ekumen is a loose coordinating and idea sharing group using the instantaneous communication device of the ansible to link the 84 human planets separated by the tyranny of distance at light-speed (by the way, Terra is just one of many human worlds, and not the world of origin). Envoys are sent alone and unarmed, a single representative of greater humanity, with no power and no threats, simply an offer to join communication.
His mission is to Gethen, a harsh world locked in an ice age, and home to the strangest human type yet. Gethenians are perfect hermaphrodites. 26 days of the month they are sexless neuters, but for 4 days they enter an estrus called 'kemmer', and become functionally male or female at random. Anybody can potentially give birth. The sexual unity defines Gethenian culture as totally as sexual dimorphism defines ours, and Le Guin works through the implications beautifully in description of myth, social organization, and patterns of everyday life that make up culture.
The plot, as such, concerns Genly Ai's very lonely mission to the leading nations of Gethen: Karhide, ruled by a mad king; Orgoreyn, ruled by a bureaucratic commission with Stalinist tendencies towards internal exile. The life of an Envoy is fraught with peril. They have no true friends on an alien planet, may be disbelieved and killed, or used by political factions. Genly finds himself exiled to a forced labor camp, and then with the help of another exile and his one true friend, makes a heroic escape over 1000 miles of ice. The escape across the ice is one journey, made with the aid of technology as perfectly adapted as the stillsuits of Dune, if less ostentatious, but the true journey is learning to see the Gethenians as not imperfectly male or female, but truly as themselves.
My copy begins with a great introduction by Le Guin on prediction, description, truth, lies, and the story as metaphor, which is an essay worth reading in and of itself. As a prose stylist, a true fan (she submitted her first SF story at 11) and philosopher inspired by Taoist ideas, Le Guin is a clear cut above.
Genly Ai is the Envoy, a representative of the interplanetary Ekumen. Definitely not a government, and not quite a church, the Ekumen is a loose coordinating and idea sharing group using the instantaneous communication device of the ansible to link the 84 human planets separated by the tyranny of distance at light-speed (by the way, Terra is just one of many human worlds, and not the world of origin). Envoys are sent alone and unarmed, a single representative of greater humanity, with no power and no threats, simply an offer to join communication.
His mission is to Gethen, a harsh world locked in an ice age, and home to the strangest human type yet. Gethenians are perfect hermaphrodites. 26 days of the month they are sexless neuters, but for 4 days they enter an estrus called 'kemmer', and become functionally male or female at random. Anybody can potentially give birth. The sexual unity defines Gethenian culture as totally as sexual dimorphism defines ours, and Le Guin works through the implications beautifully in description of myth, social organization, and patterns of everyday life that make up culture.
The plot, as such, concerns Genly Ai's very lonely mission to the leading nations of Gethen: Karhide, ruled by a mad king; Orgoreyn, ruled by a bureaucratic commission with Stalinist tendencies towards internal exile. The life of an Envoy is fraught with peril. They have no true friends on an alien planet, may be disbelieved and killed, or used by political factions. Genly finds himself exiled to a forced labor camp, and then with the help of another exile and his one true friend, makes a heroic escape over 1000 miles of ice. The escape across the ice is one journey, made with the aid of technology as perfectly adapted as the stillsuits of Dune, if less ostentatious, but the true journey is learning to see the Gethenians as not imperfectly male or female, but truly as themselves.
My copy begins with a great introduction by Le Guin on prediction, description, truth, lies, and the story as metaphor, which is an essay worth reading in and of itself. As a prose stylist, a true fan (she submitted her first SF story at 11) and philosopher inspired by Taoist ideas, Le Guin is a clear cut above.