The Left Hand of Darkness in Queereaders

Feb 03, 2009 Sarah rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, sf, gender

When I finished reading it last night I put it down for five minutes, then reread the first chapter. I had missed so much, and so much is set up early in the book that I could see why someone might read this multiple times to get all of the implications. What an incredible book. I can't believe I put it off for this long.
I had always imagined that the gender stuff was going to be the all-important theme, but I really found it to be secondary to a lot of other topics: patriotism, alienness & ali ...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Rick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: awards-nebula, awards-hugo, gender-variations, xenobiology, hainish, bookclub

Like Le Guin's other sci-fi novels the focus here is not on future history or scientific developments or even playing around with how people interact with almost magical technologies, the focus here is about humanity. Some people have called Le Guin's approach to sci-fi as if it is "soft" sci-fi. I suppose this means that they see "hard" sci-fi as the stuff of laser beams, black holes, FTL space travel and alien species with a taste for human flesh. Except it seems that these typical tropes and Like Le Guin's other sci-fi novels the focus here is not on future history or scientific developments or even playing around with how people interact with almost magical technologies, the focus here is about humanity. Some people have called Le Guin's approach to sci-fi as if it is "soft" sci-fi. I suppose this means that they see "hard" sci-fi as the stuff of laser beams, black holes, FTL space travel and alien species with a taste for human flesh. Except it seems that these typical tropes and conventions of sci-fi as a genre are just window dressing for a lot of masculine adolescent fantasies. Clearly the high adventure style sci-fi, or Space Operas, like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, John Carter of Mars and David Starr, Space Ranger are not "hard" sci-fi at all but merely easy sci-fi. What Le Guin does best is approach situations from a different focal point in order to examine the human condition. In this novel that is exactly what she's doing. She's not looking at how weapons of mass destruction could be used to conquer an alien species, but she recognizes that the most devastatingly effective weapons of mass destruction are ignorance and intolerance. That's the focus of this book. Here is a culture that is so exquisitely realized that the reader could be forgiven in suddenly finding our own culture alien. This is world building on the grandest scale but, once again, the focus is not on the nuts and bolts but on the motivations, the expectations and the interactions. This is the stuff that fiction in general strives desperately to become: relevant regarding the human condition. Le Guin lures the reader into a densely realized world of complex social structure and even more complex human interactions, but she does so with an envious degree of simplicity. The descriptions of social structure and human relationships are offered in an almost casual manner. Le Guin effectively shows us the differences and thus never has a need to tell us anything. Le Guin is truly one of the greatest American storytellers. ...more

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Jan 01, 2009 Jamie rated it liked it

I should state from the outset that I'm not much of a sci-fi junkie; I stumbled across Le Guin (and this novel in particular) on a list of "books that every feminist should read"--from jezebel.com, I think. I can sort of see where they were going with this categorization; of course, Le Guin's imagining of a world in which identifiable physical sex is more or less null, and where gender as an identity category is practically unknown, is a pretty fascinating 'alternate reality' to tackle for any f I should state from the outset that I'm not much of a sci-fi junkie; I stumbled across Le Guin (and this novel in particular) on a list of "books that every feminist should read"--from jezebel.com, I think. I can sort of see where they were going with this categorization; of course, Le Guin's imagining of a world in which identifiable physical sex is more or less null, and where gender as an identity category is practically unknown, is a pretty fascinating 'alternate reality' to tackle for any feminist. But I wonder: did Le Guin go far enough? If I were compiling a syllabus for a course on so-termed feminist fiction, I don't think this novel would climb the ranks of my list. It's an interesting idea, but I can't say that Le Guin expounds upon it to the extent that it truly challenges our conventions. Genly Ai must cope with the genderless world, a world with which he is not familiar, but I don't know that it becomes a political or ideological venture. It sort of sits there.

That aside (since that was sort of my 'purpose' in reading the novel), I admire Le Guin's vision. As a work of fiction, it's decent. Neither great nor mediocre, it sort of...sits there. I tend to agree with another reviewer here on goodreads that the novel felt a bit like a big Information Dump. There was less interior development than I would have liked; the themes are there, but not explored to the degree that I really connected with. The action felt almost subdued, which is a bit surprising in a sci-fi novel--at least for me, with little experience in the genre. Even in moments that could have been epic, it seems Le Guin settled for something far subtler--perhaps too subtle for my taste. Everything was dealt with as something that happened *to* the characters; I often felt that they (and in turn, I) weren't fully engaged with the things going on around them. The writing, however, is strong, and she certainly thought things out, creating a really interesting universe. I think I just wanted *more*--more human connection, more explicit action, more feminism, more...epicness? I'm not writing her off--in fact, I'm hoping to read either The Dispossessed or The Lathe of Heaven later this summer. My expectations may, quite simply, have been too high. She's a competent writer and offers so many fascinating ideas--I just wish that they hadn't been left at the idea stage, had been taken a step further. Interested to see my reaction to further Le Guin, though. ...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Donna rated it it was amazing

One of the best books ever written

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Feb 21, 2009 Theresia rated it really liked it

Shelves: fantasy, f-english

(Reread) Different reading experience this time. Still undecided whether my takeout from the Hainish folks was to destroy gender roles and not gender identities, or both, or merely reconsider them.

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