The Left Hand of Darkness

I loved this book because it was something I read a long time ago but returned to at a different time in my life with a fresh perspective.

A science fiction classic first published in 1969, so many of the themes in this book feel especially relevant today. It involves political intrigue, gender politics, and learning a new culture, but through the lens of a relationship between two people from entirely different planets.

LeGuin manages to create an alien world that is very, very human. N. K. Jemisin, in her introduction to the 2018 volume of The Best American Science… show more.

If you’re like me, you are a sucker for stories about an outsider finding themselves in a new society and having to struggle and adapt to circumstances they don’t fully understand.

Genly Ai is a man who is sent to the planet Gethen to convince the people there to join a planetary alliance. The problem is Genly is so fixated on his manhood and personal identity that he can’t adapt culturally in a world where everyone is genderfluid.

Genly’s political mistakes get him into a lot of trouble that his lone ally Estraven tries to save him from, and it… show more.

Ursula K. LeGuin was a writer before her time.

In The Left Hand of Darkness, LeGuin tackles gender issues creating a people who are at times sexually neutral but can change to either feminine or masculine during mating season. Humans are seen as freaks because they are trapped to one gender.

It was a mind-blowing book back in 1976, when it came out, winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best science fiction. The Left Hand of Darkness is worthy reading for its story and for its audacity, being penned almost fifty years ago. A great read!

Of course, any list wouldn't be complete without mentioning Le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the most well-known works of queer speculation, and for good reason: reprinted dozens of times over the decades since it was originally published in 1969, the story centres around the ‘ambisexual’ inhabitants of Gethen, the androgynous population of a planet settled many centuries into the future. Yet it’s not just the social setting that makes The Left Hand of Darkness a compelling read, but the central relationship between the native Estraven and ambassador Ai – whose bond carries the novel’s central… show more.

Ursula K. Le Guin taught me how powerful science fiction could be. Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness, tells the story of a human observer who arrives on an alien planet and discovers that the humanoid inhabitants change their gender in response to external stimuli. One of the aliens helps the human observer escape from a perilous situation, and the relationship between the two explores gender stereotypes and sexual orientation. 

I’ve often wondered whether the Left Hand of Darkness influenced The Crying Game, a movie that came out in 1992, over twenty years later. Then and… show more.

Science fiction, for those who don’t read it regularly, can seem decadent and superfluous. What’s with all these ridiculous names and funny descriptions? Why do we need all this? But the good stuff (and Le Guin is possibly the best there was) uses all that unrestricted fiction to make a bigger point. The Left Hand of Darkness is a book about two worlds on the same planet, a sort of cold war analogy, complete with gulags and secret police. But the heart of this story is a very modern meditation on gender. In this world, gender is a very fluid… show more.

Le Guin focuses on an alien, non-gender-binary world by writing from the perspective of a foreigner who comes not without his own prejudices. The point of view work in this novel forces readers to confront their own possible biases, though uncomfortable, in a vivid and visceral way. I found myself questioning many of the meaningless divisions humans make and emerging a more thoughtful person after reading this book.

Ursula was an amazing person and writer. I met her at WisCon, and she was still going strong in her 80s. She was a force of nature, just like her writing. The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the first fantasy novels to explore gender identity and fluidity in new ways. It’s a classic of feminist fantasy and presents a compelling and original view of how different cultures interact when they regard sexuality and gender in different ways. It portrays gender as a continuum, rather than a binary thing, which makes a lot of sense to me. 

This story is a masterclass in worldbuilding, it has an intricate plot, it’s science fiction that also talks about hate and fear and the differences in culture, and oh yeah, it features a whole entire gender-fluid species. The book is both about gender and not about gender, and the main character of Genly goes through a period of self-reflection and realizing his shortcomings. If you haven’t read it, you should. It’s Ursula K. Le Guin, what more do I need to say?

I first read The Left Hand of Darkness in high school, and it blew me away. It was my first encounter with the kind of world building that focuses on challenging readers to think about received notions. In the novel, Le Guin develops a single-sex society, playing with ideas of how such a world could work—and playing with reader expectations as well. It does a masterful job of forcing the reader to reexamine her own assumptions regarding sex, gender, and society.