Without a doubt Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the best-known names in Science Fiction, right up there with Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. She's written a multitude of books, including the Earthsea novels and the Catwings books, which were some of my favorites in elementary school. But I keep coming back to The Left Hand of Darkness whenever I revisit SciFi books that have really changed my perspective on my life and culture, the future of humanity.
The Left Hand of Darkness was first published in 1969, and has been reprinted more times than I can easily keep track of. It relates the story of Genly Ai, the first alien envoy from a collective of cooperative planets to the planet Gethen, also called Winter. Ai is an ethnologist representing the Ekumen of Known Worlds, which aims to unite the worlds of men for the greater good of all mankind, sharing knowledge and technology across the light-years. But suddenly confronted by the realization that they're not alone in the world, the Gethenians fall back on fear and suspicion to protect themselves from the unknown.
Lost and uncertain, Ai travels the harsh landscape visiting different countries and factions, looking for some part of the planet that might be ready for the more enlightened, mutually supportive opportunities that he represents. But he goes from Envoy to curiosity to political threat to prisoner to escapee, all without fulfilling his mission to bring Gethen into the Ekumenical fold. His only ally appears to be Estraven, a former prime minister labeled a traitor and an outcast while trying to help Ai with his cause. He alone seems to grasp the significance of what Ai represents, of what he could mean for the world of Gethen, and so united by their common hope they struggle together to convince Gethen that the Ekumen is the doorway to a brighter future.
The world that Le Guin builds in this novel is unlike anything else I've ever read. There are enough similarities to our world, like electricity and basic vehicles, that it's easily recognizable as a structured, evolving society. But their entire way of life is centered around the weather on Gethen: cold. The planet stays frozen throughout most of the year, with a brief and rainy respite in the middle of summer, which means that food and shelter are the main concerns for the Gethenian people. Le Guin keeps this in mind in everything that she describes on the planet, from the architecture of their cities to their forest management to the types of food that are eaten and what animals available for use by the Gethenians. The result is something completely alien, but entirely understandable and imaginable. It helps that Ai is a complete stranger to the planet, and his struggles to understand reflect the reader's sense of curiosity and confusion.
One of the key points of difference between Ai and the Gethenians is the fact that on Winter, there is no gender. Each Gethenian becomes either male or female at the peak of their fertility cycle, and then returns to an androgynous state after the cycle is completed. Those that become pregnant bear a child, lactate as a female, and then return to their genderless norm after the child is weaned. The Gethenian way of life is impacted just as strongly by fertility cycles as it is by the harsh winter climate, and Ai is seen as something of a pervert since he remains permanently male. The depiction of this culture without gender is at once complex and beautifully simple in its execution, and yet Ai struggles to leave his binary thinking behind as he becomes more and more immersed in Gethenian ways of life. Often he describes a Gethenian in terms of being either masculine or feminine, handsome or matronly. At the same time though, he consciously acknowledges that he is viewing these other beings through the eyes of a man who has never questioned the fluidity of gender and to me that made his observations more of a journey of personal discovery for him as opposed to an attempt at classification.
This is not a story of laser guns and space battles. There are no alien invasions or crash landings or chase scenes in fusion-powered ships. Instead what unfolds is the slower, more intellectually challenging concept of not just international but interspecies politics between groups of people that didn't even know there was anything else out there among the stars, with Ai and Estraven the only ones on Gethen capable of looking beyond the implications for a single country or political faction. This is a story of the hard, heartbreaking work of bringing an idea to a group of people who are not yet ready for the bigger picture of an event, of a possibility, and it is at once both tragic and hopeful.
If you're looking to be immersed in another world that is at once drastically different from and incredibly similar to our own, want characters that you will care for and a story that will both drag you down and drive you on, pick up this classic SciFi masterpiece. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is available down the street at your local independent bookstore.
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