This is primarily a novel about friendship -- one that crosses barriers of race and stars as Genly Ai, in the process of observing the people of the planet Gethen, a world perpetually in Winter, and encountering their sexual andogyny, is drawn into a relationship with this strange world and some of the people in that world. The story is moving, no less because it is beautifully written by an author who would win awards for her writing no matter in what genre she wrote. One of my favorite of the truly great science fiction novels of the twentieth century. ( )

A human amassador named Genly Ai comes to the planet of Winter, where gender is nonexistent.

I want to start off by saying that I’m glad I read this book. I got a lot out of it, and I found Le Guin’s writing as lovely as always. However, the book made me think rather than feel, so I fear my review may seem rather critical. I don't intend to nitpick; this is just me engaging with the text.

THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS isn't really about the plot or the characters; rather, Le Guin takes an idea and runs with it. She uses the entire book to explore notions of gender as a social construct, and I don’t think she does a bad job of it. I did, however, find her conception of gender a bit dated. The Gethenians are supposedly both male and female, with no predisposition towards behaviors we consider either masculine or feminine, but Le Guin still treats male as the default. Everyone is ‘he.’ There are Lords and Kings and brothers and sons. Furthermore, Ai attributes stereotypically masculine behaviors to almost everyone he comes across. When he does recognize stereotypical femininity in his acquaintances, he treats it as a negative because he views these people as male, above all else.

I was willing to overlook this, given that Ai is a foreigner who comes from a culture that holds particular views on masculinity and femininity. He can’t help but impose his own worldview on everything he encounters, and his views do evolve as the book progresses. The terminology is all in translation, too, within the context of the novel; Ai may say King and son and he, but those are just his (loaded) translations of the terms the Gethenians use.

But a couple of chapters in in, Le Guin begins showing us events from a local's perspective… and ‘he’ seems to hold similar views. Estraven (the local) is certainly not as extreme as Ai, but ‘he’ still displays many of the same attitudes. ‘He’ attributes many stereotypically masculine behaviors to ‘his’ fellows, and ‘he’ describes them using the same masculine terminology (which we’ve already established is in translation, if still heavily loaded towards the masculine norm).

Hmmm.

Now, I’ve only read this book once, and I don't hold it near and dear to my heart. I know many of you do. That said, my one-timer’s opinion is that THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS isn’t so much about a society divorced from gender-based behavioral patterns as it is about a society in which male individuals are in no way penalized or looked down upon for embracing female sexuality.

It does make for some interesting reading, and Le Guin’s writing is just beautiful. But, as is almost always the case with her work, I felt too distanced from it to really commit to the ideas. I rarely feel strongly about books where the characters are just a vehicle for a concept. I want to believe in these people. I want to get caught up in their struggles. I want to bawl my eyes out when things go badly for them.

I couldn’t do so here. I didn’t really care about either Ai or Estraven. The ideas in play are interesting, yes. I got a lot out of them, and out of this book. I enjoyed it. But I was never really engaged; I never felt the story.

I’m glad I read this, but I don't think I'll feel the need to revisit it.

(A slightly different version of this review originally appeared on my blog, Stella Matutina). ( )

One-sentence plot summary: a human emissary arrives on the ice planet Gethen, populated by a people who are neither male, nor female, but both, and neither.I struggled through the beginning. Le Guin gets so enthralled with her own world-building that she neglects to provide her audience with a primer... the result is that the first few chapters read like Science Fiction Mad Libs, for example: "He {verb?}ed across {place?} in {month? continent? weather? vehicle?}. After I reached the end, I re-read some earlier passages and found them much easier -- like sledging during kroxet in Thern.Ultimately, what I found most interesting wasn't the ambisexual nature of Gethenians, but the contrast between the two primary states: Karhide and Orgoreyn. The former is "not a nation, but a family quarrel," while the latter is most definitely a nation, with all its attendant bureaucracy and xenophobia. As the primary narrator, the human Envoy, says: "I wondered, not for the first time, what patriotism is, what the love of country truly consists of... and how so real a love can become, too often, so foolish and vile a bigotry. Where does it go wrong?" ( )

The role of great science fiction is to tell us about ourselves--not to make predictions about what may come, but to draw illustrating contrasts to what is, and thereby show us something new about ourselves. _The Left Hand of Darkness_ explores gender and sexuality, but not only those; those are a backdrop to the main thread of the story. There are also political structure and struggle on the grand scale, and a very human-scale journey through interdependence and the formation of friendships. ( )

Since it's one in a series, I at first was a little sceptical but now I read it, I liked it for its emotional scope and contrast. Nevertheless it's been written a while ago reflecting a certain vageness in expressing gender (non-)correlations it still has this groundbreaking feeling to it of what humankind can be up to be (including all the implications of potential negative effects which can, however, be avoided given a little more foresight).It's really worth a read! ( )

Le Guin is an author who grows as you grow. You can read and admire her at thirteen, and you can read and admire her at forty-three. As I have done. Because I think it must be around thirty years since I last read The Left Hand of Darkness. I'd never really felt the need to reread it because I knew the story. It's one of those novels whose plot and characters have entered science fiction common knowledge - we all know about it even if we've not read it.

Which is a shame. Because it's definitely worth reading, and certainly stands up to rereading.

The book is set in Le Guin's Ekumen, a loose mystical/economic interstellar polity of eighty-odd human planets with the world of Hain at its centre. Earth was seeded by the Hainish. The Left Hand of Darkness is set on Gethen, also known as Winter, which has just been invited to join.

For the rest of the review see http://justhastobeplausible.blogspot.... ( )

D-This is such an atmospheric and thought-provoking book. Over the years the actual plot has washed away from my memories, and all that is left is the world that Le Guin imagined. ( )

Wonderful novel and a timeless classic.
This work has the potential to open the mind of the reader to other ways of approaching life and considering the role of men and women in society.
The story is deceptively simple and a familiar format for science fiction but Le Guin creates a world so believable you will be convinced it must exist somewhere in the universe.
Themes of love, friendship, compassion and sacrifice are subtly drawn to give the reader an experience at once satisfying and uplifting.
James Pope ( )

Una ressenya que coincideix amb la fascinació que em va provocar la novel·la: http://www.elkraken.com/R-ma%20esquer... ( )

Wonderful idea but poor execution. Too schematic, rational, predictable. No real exploration of how it would feel, no nuances, no small and mysterious shades of interaction.

Het idee is hartstikke leuk: hoe zou het zijn - mensachtige wezens zonder de gender dichotomie. Hoe zouden ze ons zien, hoe wij hen. Maar de uitvoering laat te wensen over. Te rationeel, niet genoeg kleine details en interactietjes die verbeelden hoe je het aan den lijve zou ervaren. Te schematisch. Ook, de invulling op een manier die allerlei onrealistische cliché's incorporeert, bv, in het gedeelte over de treinreis, dat "eenvoudige" mensen vanzelf ook "goed" zijn. Het geheel heeft iets voorspelbaars en iets oppervlakkigs. ( )

What a fantastic novel! Just finished reading it and while it started slowly, it built up and really ended up grabbing me by the end. Such an interesting world she creates here, as seen through the eyes of both an inhabitant and an outsider (an earthling). It tackles issues of gender and society in such a unique way; very thought provoking. ( )

One of the best books ever written. ( )

Ursula Le Guin is a great story teller: the plot, characters, and premises are all very engaging. Although not an "action" tale I could not put this book down -- I really wanted to know what would happen to Ai and Estraven. This is a deep, entertaining piece of classic science fiction. ( )

A rereading of this science fiction classic proved to be even more rewarding the second time around.

The Left Hand of Darkness is set in the future on a distant planet called Gethen, or Winter, which is in the midst of an Ice Age. The inhabitants of Winter are human, but with a twist — they do not have two genders. Instead, they are androgynous most of the time, except when they go into kemmer, or become sexually active, at which time they may become either female or male. This simple difference has given rise to a vastly different culture than ours; the politics, social mores, folklore and day-to-day life of Winter are all disclosed through the observations of a Terran diplomatic visitor on a mission to persuade the Gethenians to join the cooperative of human-inhabited planets.

But underneath all this is a rather simple story, really, of the development of a friendship between two men who at first are literally aliens to each other, but who come to discover that their similarities are much greater than their differences. Their trek across Gethen’s Ice Sheet should be counted among the best written examples of the journey in all of literature. ( )

This science fiction classic is beautifully written and beautifully constructed. It's world-driven and character-driven, so the experience of the book builds up over time as you get to know both. It took me a little while to feel at home in the narrative as it switched from the visiting Terran's report to the native Gethenian's diary, but once I got my bearings I enjoyed it a great deal, especially the bright, hard-edged folk tales that are larded throughout.

The Terran narrator's gender essentialism -- his need to define himself by traditional masculinity, his rather stereotyped descriptions of Terran women -- was jarring to me, especially in the context of a far future narrative. However, the book is forty years old, and in Le Guin's words "the rather naive male narrator is a deliberate authorial outreach to male readers" [interview with Guernica magazine]. Perhaps I took him too literally.

The Gethenian cultures are fascinating, not only for the androgyny of the people, but the societal results of living in such a bleak environment, with so few animals and so many hardships. The world has been carefully thought out, and the results are fascinating.

The book is moving and thought-provoking, and succeeds in creating a powerful sense of place and landscape. Not only do I guess that the spaces visited in the book will linger in my mind, but I find that many of the cover illustrations I've seen look familiar -- the artist and I have both been to Karhide. ( )

This is one of the few books I feel comfortable placing among my "favorite books" - at this point I have read it several times, and it has not lost any of the depth of the first reading. I find something new in it each time I come back to it.

It is rare to find a novel that is both a well-crafted story and a well-crafted piece of science fiction. The Left Hand of Darkness is both. The society, culture, and physiology of the Gethenians is well-planned, and the detail that comes from that kind of planning is what brings them to life on the page. The story itself is also well-crafted in the English-class sense of the word - there is a depth to it, pieces you have to put together yourself, several ways to read things, and yet it all comes together in the end.

The larger social implications of the story are also interesting to ponder. Not just the concept of a society without gender - as fascinating and meaningful as that is - but also the meaning of friendship, the meaning of trust, the importance of the journey vs. the importance of the end, and of course "the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question." ( )

I bought the special 25th anniversary edition when it first came out in 1994 fully intending to read it then. But that was the year of the big “upheaval” when after living 25 years in Savannah hubby was transferred to California. Somehow I never got around to reading it until I saw so many people on LT talking about it the last few months so I searched among the mess that my library has become recently and finally tackled it.

I had a difficult time getting into the story so I had a slow beginning. I’m not sure why, but I just couldn’t seem to get into a flow with the story. Like Genly Ai I found the inhabitants of Winter to be difficult to understand and the strange words from that world really slowed me down. I did enjoy the interspersed chapters that gave myths and history of this strange world and Genly Ai’s visit to the foretellers I found interesting. About 2/3 of the way through, after reading it for nearly a week, I finally put the book aside in order to finish reading Battle Cry of Freedom and a couple of lighter reads for relaxation.

Last Sunday I finally decided I wanted to finish it so I could move on. The last third went very quickly for me and I finished it in an afternoon (those of you who know me realize that is fast reading for me!). Suddenly I seemed to connect with the two main characters and I really enjoyed the rest of the book. I’m not sure if this part of the book was just more interesting or if my attitude had changed allowing me to appreciate the story. Perhaps, because I gave the story “a rest,” subconsciously I processed what I had read previously and the world didn’t seem as strange to me any more. In the end, it was a satisfying read. Recommended ( )

I would happily have read a collection of the Gethenian folk tales which Le Guin sprinkles through The Left Hand of Darkness, but the book itself left me rather underwhelmed. Perhaps it was simply that I was expecting too much from a book that has been hailed as a classic for the last 40 years, but I was never engaged by either the characters or the story line. I was also very frustrated by the way the novel dealt with gender: I don't think that Le Guin succeeded in balancing the (rather essentialist sexist) viewpoint of the main narrator, Genly Ai, with what she was trying to say about what is considered 'male' and 'female' behaviour.

The use of the 'he' pronoun for people who are asexual for most of their lives is too much of a framing device, and though we are told that the Gethenian characters are 'female' as well as 'male', we don't get to see that. The Left Hand of Darkness seems to posit that gender=sexuality (and oh boy, is there ever a host of Freudian thinking in here about how bisexuality and/or a lack of sexual drive creates passivity and a lack of conflict), and that the Gethenians don't have 'gender'—when of course they do, just not as we know it. My eyebrows also rose at Ai's assertion that gender is always and irrefutably the single biggest constraint and formative influence on a person—never trumped by race, ethnicity, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, physical disabilities, apparently—and at how heteronormative it was. So written by a second-wave feminist. For 1969, I'm sure it was ground-breaking. In 2009, however, it reads as dated, simplistic, and occasionally infuriating. ( )

This book is sci-fi the way I like it. Sure there are aliens, but we aren't at war with them. This is a quintessential novel about a strange alien and what their strangeness tells us about ourselves. ( )

This book is a testament to why I should never go to a bookstore by myself.

I went to B&N, wishlist in hand, with the intent of purchasing one or two volumes contained therein. Couldn't find what I wanted, but I found this (and two others not on my list) instead. Sigh.

By the way, I left my wishlist sitting on the checkout counter.

Cover blurb: On the planet Winter, there is no gender. The Gethenians can become male or female during each mating cycle, and this is something that other cultures find incomprehensible.

The Ekumen of Known Worlds has sent an ethnologist to study the inhabitants of this forbidding, ice-bound world. At first he finds his subjects difficult and off-putting, with their elaborate social systems and alien minds. But in the course of a long journey across the ice he reaches an understanding with one of the Gethenians -- it might even be a kind of love...

I understand the purpose of cover blurbs is to tease and tempt and lure the reader into purchasing the book. And the blurb quoted above is accurate as far as it goes, but overall it presents a distorted view of the nature of the storyline.

Genly Ai is First Envoy of the Ekumen, sent as a preliminary ambassador of sorts to the Gethen, to introduce them to the idea that other worlds exist, and to invite them to join the Ekumen, a loose economic alliance of industrialized worlds. He is championed by Therem Harth of Estraven, a Gethenian of prominent position who believes in Ai's purpose and promotes his cause. But politics, regional rivalries, and a mad king come into play, and soon both Ai and Estraven are outcasts whose lives are at risk.

Le Guin paints a believable picture of an alien world, harsh and relentlessly cold, but full of the beauty of ice and the joy of its people. The story is told from multiple perspectives, first Genly Ai's, then Estraven's, with occasional forays into third person omniscient accounts of Gethenian mythology and folklore. It's a wonderful, moving and clear-eyed look at humanity, including but not exclusively focusing on how sexuality shapes culture and custom and politics.

Amazingly, in all the years I had been reading science fiction, I had never read this novel before purchasing it in 2004 (and actually reading it in 2006) nor have I read anything else by Ursula LeGuin. I'm sorry I waited so long!

Upon finding The Left Hand of Darkness, I was thrilled to see an award winning, female author in Sci Fi. A rare thing. My first disappointment came when I discovered that she was using a male as the main lead. From there it has been downhill ever since.

This book is said to be a science fiction masterpiece, so far, 55 pages into it, I don't get it. For me it is nothing more than a very long, sometimes very dry, descriptive book with no real plot to sink my teeth into. My husband, who is also reading this book is now 130 pages along, and everytime I ask him if a plot is developing yet, his answer is always "no".

Not at all sure that I will pick this one up again. ( )

Genly Ai is a representative of the Ekumen, an alliance of many planets (think of the Federation from Star Trek). He is on the ice world, Gethen, in order to convince its leaders to join the Ekumen. Gethen is a unique planet, with unique individuals. Except for a small ring around the equator where it is warm enough, Gethen is completely uninhabitable. The people are completely androgynous until they are in their monthly period of “kemmer” in which they become male or female sexual beings for a few days. I look at the summary I just wrote and realize, “This is not even 10% of what the book is really about… people really need to read it to understand how complex it is”.

This book has been lauded as the first New Wave science fiction book to be critically recognized as it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards. Le Guin explores societal and interpersonal relationships within the science fiction framework and it is amazing how many concepts and philosophies she can make you think about. Her main theme is an exploration of the “Other”. What makes the Other? When do we emphasize or why do we reject the Other? Gender, religion, tradition, communcation, Eastern/Western, communism, feudalsim, tribal/nation… all this and more gets play within the book. For me, the gender question was not the most eye-opening, but the subtle criticism of patriotism and nationalism. Obviously in the 1960s, when this was written, it was a reflection of the Cold War era. However, I found it still extremely relevant to the present. I have always been proud of my patriotism, but this book forced me to think about whether it is a virtuous idea for the future harmony of our global world.

Lastly, what struck a personal chord with me, were the beautiful descriptions of snow, of glaciers, of ice. I live in Canada, and I live with similar a landscapes for about, oh… four to eight months out of the year. I love the beauty of winter and was pleased how Le Guin was able to capture it on Gethen. The harshness of the cold and the bleakness yet the pristine white nature of untouched snow and ice…

I strongly recommend this book for others, even if it is just to see how a talented author can cram so many thought-provoking ideas in one (not even long) book. I am just disappointed in myself for not having read this sooner, for I love great science fiction. ( )

I haven't read scifi in a long time, but Michael Chabon recommended this at a book signing. It's a landmark of feminist sci-fi, and far better than that description suggests. ( )

http://tinyurl.com/d7xas4

I found it fascinating to re-read this for book club, probably twenty years after I read it the first time.

I suggested the book because I find it appalling that more people-- and by people I mean women-- don't read good science fiction. Why is this genre ignored and other genres are not? Women devour mysteries and romance, and yet good science fiction has all the elements of fantasy that these others do. I would suspect that it is because of the hard sci-fi aspect of most examples of the genre: endless noodling about the Fardles' new gamma ray thruster and how it works, with no regard to how that fits into an actual story.

Le Guin is a rare example of all that works. First, she's a girl. Second, she can write. Third, she's smart as hell but doesn't noodle.

I had forgotten how erudite she actually is and she can sound far too academic for her fantasy audience. It's understandable-- the world of Gethen with its ambisexual/bi-sexual beings is so alien to us in terms of basic functioning, much less culture, that she needs to warm us up to the idea of it first. But by the time she has reunited her main characters-- Genly and Therem-- and even though her setting is a seemingly endless trek across a glacier, the pace feels far quicker.

The subtle discussions into feminism, sexual identity, communication and political science are left as an exercise for the reader. ( )

"Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is non-existent here.(...) There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protected/protective. One is respected and judged only as a human being. You cannot cast a Gethenian into the role of Man or Woman, while adopting towards "him" a corresponding role dependent on your expectations of the interactions between persons of the same or opposite sex. It is an appalling experience for a Terran..."

Genry is sent to the planet called Gethen as an envoy, his mission being to further the cause of the Ekumen - an alliance of various planets, including Earth, that would like to count Gethen amongst its members. He is sent there alone so as to prevent Gethenians from seeing him as a threat, and so he can explain to them the benefits they would experience if they were to be part of the Union: benefits economic, scientific, medicinal, political and, of course, cultural. His mission, however, is complicated by many factors. For one thing, Genry is considered a "pervert" because he is not androgynous and because his sexual potency is not limited to a few days per month - he is in constant "kemmer". For another, while his reproductive system is considered abnormal, such cases have been known to exist on Gethen and so many do not believe that he comes from another planet, having never seen an "alien" before. In fact, no birds or any sort of winged animals exist on Gethen and therefore, not only do they not believe it is possible to build spaceships, but they think it impossible to fly at all. "How could it ever occur to a sane man that he could fly?", asks one Gethenian. Further complications arise when political considerations get in the way of the mission; when leaders that are suppose to care for the general good of all mankind, are too blinded by personal interests and territorial disputes to see the bigger picture.

Because of the ambiguous sexuality of the Gethenians, who are potentially both Man and Woman, the novel is often seen as a study on gender and sexuality. It is true that by using an alienating device (no pun intended) to great effect, Le Guin makes us reconsider gender roles. She manages to explore the way in which such a trivial factor as sex can determine our entire roles in society and shape out behaviour patterns that we follow through life. But The Left Hand of Darkness amounts to so much more than gender study. There are so many layers of meaning! Le Guin creates a whole world filled with the myths, legends, religions, popular beliefs and traditions of a rich and complex society. Many of these are interspersed throughout the book not necessarily to advance the story but, it seems, for the single purpose of enriching our experience. The ideologies and unspoken rules of behaviour that surface through the Gethenians' speech and through their actions make it possible for us to see their true nature. We recognize that the inhabitants of this cold planet (nicknamed "Winter" by Earthlings) are so very different, yet at the same time so similar to us; that they are unmistakably human. Le Guin does not only teach us about gender, but also about friendship and trust, about politics, about tradition, about respect, about patriotism and about bigotry, about lies and truth, about ambiguity, about the acceptance of the Other, whether that Other is of a different gender, or of a different colour; whether that Other is merely an inhabitant of a different country, or whether he is a strange black alien who is considered a pervert because he "must carry always his sexual organ outside himself" . The truth is I haven't read many science-fiction novels, but it doesn't take an expert to tell that this is one of the best. ( )