Le Guin: Left Hand of Darkness: 1] Left Hand OD: Chapter 1 to end of chapter 3

[Traveller]

WARNING: SPOILERS: Please only view thread if you have read chapters 1-3. Thanks.

Hi there, fellow readers, since we have already posted an introduction to this book, let us start without more ado.

In these first chapters, we notice that we are reading transcripts from documents out of an archive. So, although Le Guin often uses the present tense in the narrative, we are looking back on the past from the overall point-of view. Quite an interesting narratorial device that is often used by SF writers.

Back story from Wikipedia:

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the people of Hain colonized a large number of worlds, including Earth, known as Terra. Most of these were similar enough that humans from one world can pass as natives of another, but on some the Old Hainish 'Colonisers' used genetic engineering. At least one of the various species of Rokanan are the product of genetic engineering, as are the hilfs of Planet S (whose story has not so far been told), and the androgynes of Gethen in The Left Hand of Darkness. The Ekumen do not know whether the Colonisers sought to adapt humans to varied worlds, were conducting various experiments, or had other reasons.

Hainish civilization subsequently collapsed and the colony planets (including Earth) forgot that other human worlds existed. The Ekumen stories tell of the efforts to re-establish a civilization on a galactic scale through NAFAL (Nearly As Fast As Light) interstellar travel taking years to travel between stars (although only weeks or months from the viewpoint of the traveler because of time dilation), and through instantaneous interstellar communication using the ansible.

This seems to have happened in two phases. First the League of All Worlds was formed, as an alliance of planets, mostly descended from colonization efforts from the planet Hain, uniting the "nine known worlds" - along with colonies, presumably. By the time of Rocannon's World it has grown but is also under threat from a distant enemy. It is destroyed by aliens called the Shing, who have the ability to lie in Mindspeech. After the apparent overthrow of the Shing by Terran descendants from Alterra/Werel, the alliance is eventually reconstructed as the Ekumen. In City of Illusions it is recalled as a league of some 80 worlds.

The second phase begins with The Left Hand of Darkness. The 80-plus planets seem to have reunited as the 'Ekumen' – a name derived from the Greek "oikoumene", meaning "the inhabited world", though characters occasionally refer to it as "the Household", which is in turn a reference to the Greek "oikos", a word which developed from the same root as oikoumene. Unexplained references are made to the 'Age of the Enemy.'

It is obvious, from the first pages, that the narrator, Gently Ai, is an ambassador (the back story tells us for the Ekumen) on a diplomatic mission on a cold planet called Gethen or "Winter".

It starts off with a strange public ritual conducted by their king, which might be explicated later in the novel, but for now, just appears a bit weird.

We already get hints about the Gethen people's bi-gender identity: I tried to, but my efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own. Thus as I sipped my smoking sour beer I thought that at table Estraven's performance had been womanly, all charm and tact and lack of substance, specious and adroit. Was it in fact perhaps this soft supple femininity that I disliked and distrusted in him? For it was impossible to think of him as a woman, that dark, ironic, powerful presence near me in the firelit darkness, and yet whenever I thought of him as a man I felt a sense of falseness, of imposture: in him, or in my own attitude towards him? His voice was soft and rather resonant but not deep, scarcely a man's voice, but scarcely a woman's voice either…


The weather seems extremely cold and the people pretty adapted to that, if beer ices up inside their homes in spring.

Some questions that I would like to hear fellow-readers views on:
Firstly, what did you people make of Estraven? Quite a bit of snake, or is it just the culture, do you think?
And the king?

More in further posts. ..but please, people, do feel free to start posting your impressions up to the end of the chapter titled: "The Mad King". :)

[Joseph]

Estraven definitely seems slimey; i.e. he'd probably sell out his own mother if it'd advance his career.

Winter seems like an almost inhospitable place. Chapter 2 was pretty great! I really like the myth/lore Le Guin's included here. "Going up on the Ice" sounds fraught with peril. I don't imagine many would be so bold. That being said, I've almost no doubt others will make the trek...

[Joseph]

Although the Proclamation was certainly surprising... I get the feeling Estraven will be a very 3-dimensional character once the book gets rolling...

[Traveller]

Joseph wrote: "Estraven definitely seems slimey; i.e. he'd probably sell out his own mother if it'd advance his career.

Winter seems like an almost inhospitable place. Chapter 2 was pretty great! I really like ..."

..but the king actually sounds worse, I think--more paranoid and narrow-minded, wouldn't you say. Also, being a king, I guess he is pretty autocratic. So, one wonders exactly how these people's rules of succession work. By the way the king behaves, it would seem not to be a democracy?

Something which struck me, is how very male everything seems. I had really thought, from preconceptions I had about the novel, that the Gethenians would appear a bit more gender-neutral. There's more of the female side later on the novel, so I suppose we could have another discussion about that in more detail later on, but anyway, these are first impressions for now.

Btw, it took me a little while to figure out that Karhide and Orgoreyn are two countries on the planet Winter/Gethen.

[Joseph]

I only assumed they were because Genly Ai mentions if he goes to Orgoreyn he might not be able to come back to Karhide, so I assumed it was some kind of international/customs type thing.

It's definitely interesting that things seem so male, yet, as I understand the kemmering, the Gethenians are basically androgynous, right? It's like Le Guin was playing with the conceptions of fixed gender roles/norms back in 1969 (which is kind of awesome)!

The Ekumen also reminds me of Asimov's (/Hari Seldon's) Foundation.

I can't wait to see how this plays out!

[Traveller]

Yes, I suspect, from the clues given, that at mating time/kemmering, one of a couple assumes the role of the female, but it irritates me a little that the 'default mode' seems to be male, but we shall see if this is only due to Genly Ai's initial impressions...

I think possibly Le Guin is building in an extra layer by having us see the world through the eyes of Genly Ai, so, of course, we only see what he sees, and his own story is part of the general story.

[Cecily]

Traveller wrote: "Something which struck me, is how very male everything seems. I had really thought, from preconceptions I had about the novel, that the Gethenians would appear a bit more gender-neutral...."

As you say in your other comment, I think that's mainly because Genly Ai doesn't know how else to express himself - there are several passages where he explains the difficulty with pronouns and gender-related words.

Traveller wrote: "Btw, it took me a little while to figure out that Karhide and Orgoreyn are two countries on the planet Winter/Gethen."

I'm glad I'm not the only one!

[Traveller]

Cecily wrote: "As you say in your other comment, I think that's mainly because Genly Ai doesn't know how else to express himself - there are several passages where he explains the difficulty with pronouns and gender-related words.."

..and yet, the picture I have in my mind's eye of them is very male--but that may speak of how we are indoctrinated to interpret the words "man" and "he".

I wonder how much this impression would change if I copied and pasted the text and replaced all of the instances of 'man' and 'he' with 'woman' and 'she'.

[Annie]

Couuld it be that the brutal climate practically requires the additional strength of the male physic. Androgenous does not necessarily mean equal. It does mean that a person can mate as a mother one kemmering and a father the next time around. I was completely baffled by Estevan and Genly Ai's characters and why who was going where at first. I lost concentration repeatedly for the first section. I kept going because I know this was good last time around.

[Cecily]

Annie wrote: "...I was completely baffled by Estevan and Genly Ai's characters and why who was going where at first..."

I do find some of the characterisation a little weak (and I'm now half way through).

I like the social anthropology, but it feels more like a political thriller than sci-fi (starting with rain and a King might be a contributing factor, too).

[Alex]

"but it irritates me a little that the 'default mode' seems to be male"

Is this not because Genly Ai perspective as a 'male' & the narrative is from 'his ' viewpoint ??

Or is it something more .....

[Saski]

I see the Gethenians as more like the people you see nowadays where one does a double take and wonders, "is that a man or a woman, not that it is any of my business", not folk you would have seen very often back when this book first came out. I prefer the variety of our current time, personally.

[Saski]

My gut reaction on the first three chapters:

When I first came across this book some thirty years ago, I couldn't get into it. This was puzzling to me for not only did I never, ever have trouble finishing a book, I had just read The Lathe of Heaven, twice I had enjoyed it so much. A few years later I managed, barely, and thought, "Ok, it's good, but nothing like her other stuff. Wonder why it got so much praise. What am I missing?"

Well, I still don't have the answer to that question, but I think I know why I didn't like the beginning. It's Genly Ai. He strikes me as incompetent. He talks about his years of training, how important his particular position is in bringing Winter/Gethen into the Ekumenical (ecumenical, haha!) Scope. He is The Envoy, as the Gethenians call him, or First Mobile, his job title from Ekumen. Ok, I understand that no person can fully comprehend another culture, especially one so alien as one found on another world, but after all his education, including specific information gathered by previous visitors, and two years living in Karhide, but anger and impatience? Genly Ai says himself that

brought up in the wide-open, free-wheeling socieity of Earth, I would never master the protocol, or the impassivity, so valued by Karhiders. I know what a king was, Earth's won history is full of them, but I had no experiential feel for privilege – no tact (p. 17).

I want to shout at him, "Well, why not? Wasn't that the whole point of your training, to take the information brought from the source and the knowledge of diplomacy from your own history and use it to your advantage as Envoy?" Why was Genly Ai chosen for this position?

No doubt all will become clear. For now I'll just say that Estraven appears to be a much better diplomat that our hero.

[Derek, Miéville fan-boi]

I agree that Ai doesn't seem competent.

I don't think there's really any hint that the "maleness" of characters is anything more than Ai's own prejudice (another example of his lack of competence - a decent diplomat should be able to override such prejudice). In the first scene, he says "the man—man I must say having said he and his...", indicating that it was more lack of suitable pronouns than anything else that had him using male forms. Then, at dinner (supper?) with Estraven, "...at table Estraven's performance had been womanly...Was it in fact perhaps this soft supple femininity that I disliked and distrusted in him? For it was impossible to think of him as a woman...and yet whenever I thought of him as a man, I felt a sense of falseness, of imposture...". So a "man" not in kemmering is not obviously male.

Re Estraven, I don't know if he's a snake - at the moment, I don't think so. I suspect that, even if he really is a snake, he hasn't lied to Ai at all. He's tried to make it clear to Ai that the king is insane - and there's hints that that isn't particular to this king, but that it's somehow either a requirement for, or an effect of, kingship in Karhide. And the king himself has told Ai not to trust anybody, so I'm not prepared to take the king's word that Estraven spoke against Ai's mission while claiming to support it. Anything else Estraven has said so far is either shown to be true, or still unknown.

Everything we're given to indicate his "snakiness" is due to Ai's sense of betrayal, but throughout their discussion, I can't see that Estraven is betraying him so much as warning him. Ai would do well to remember the first rule of diplomacy: never attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance. Estraven's ignorance of Ai's culture should exceed Ai's ignorance of Karhide's.

I'm a bit surprised that anybody had trouble recognizing Karhide and Orgoreyn as two nations - the very first mention of Orgoreyn is "You know that Karhide and Orgoreyn have a dispute concerning a stretch of our border...".

One final point. I make my own beer, and keg it. Having no way to keep my kegs chilled, I have no problem drinking warm beer. But HOT beer? That's revolting. So far, the most despicable thing Estraven has done.

[Traveller]

Ruth wrote: "My gut reaction on the first three chapters:

When I first came across this book some thirty years ago, I couldn't get into it. This was puzzling to me for not only did I never, ever have trouble ..."

Well, perhaps they would have done better to have sent a woman! Ok, that's half-joking, bc I'm really not into gender-bashing towards either side, but yes, Genly does seem a bit dense for an ambassador. I can't help wondering if the way Genly is, is not a subtle dig at a patriarchal outlook by U. Le G?

[Traveller]

Derek wrote: "I'm a bit surprised that anybody had trouble recognizing Karhide and Orgoreyn as two nations - the very first mention of Orgoreyn is "You know that Karhide and Orgoreyn have a dispute concerning a stretch of our border..."

True, true, but so many names to all take in and memorise at the start of the book! I'm excellent at remembering pictures and places, and routes on a map, and facts, but really really bad with names...

Ok, so I guess we're all agreed that we are not trusting Genly's version of things, and that we're given Estraven a chance until more is revealed...

What do you guys think of her concepts of travel and the jumps in time and so forth? Of course this has been done elsewhere, but since this book was written so long ago, I wonder how many SF writers had tried it by the time the Hainish books came out? Also, keep in mind that I don't think at the time it was written, we knew exactly how barren the universe really is out there, and that the closest possible 'aliens' would really be light years away.

I'm getting a sudden urge to brush up on my astrophysics...

[Nataliya]

Traveller wrote: "Something which struck me, is how very male everything seems. I had really thought, from preconceptions I had about the novel, that the Gethenians would appear a bit more gender-neutral. There's more of the female side later on the novel, so I suppose we could have another discussion about that in more detail later on, but anyway, these are first impressions for now."

Joining the party a bit late - stupid week-long cold...

Anyway, with the advantage of having read (and loved immensely) this book only last year, I'll pipe in. To all of those sensing that the emphasis on maleness and even quite a bit of just-beneath-the-surface misogyny is just Ai's skewed perception of the world based on his unease with the strange world and clinging to his presumed superiority as "all man" - you are right.

Because of Ai's less than likeable personality, because of his prejudice, because of his never-ending attempts to restate to himself how much better his machismo is than the androgyny of the others, because of his innate distrust to anything that is 'feminine' and therefore alien to him this book can be a bit difficult to really connect with from the beginning. I was catching myself constantly going - 'Ah, you misogynist pig!' - and then thinking that it's likely exactly the reaction Le Guin was aiming for.

His default 'he' and insisting on seeing Gethenians as males that are inferior by not being wholly male is, as Le Guin says in her amazing introduction, the reflection of the present time society - the society that has not changed that much in the last 30+ years, to be honest. Male was - and is - the default, and this book makes you see it very starkly through Ai's (I assume, unintended as far as he's concern) misogyny and celebration of his manliness.

[Derek, Miéville fan-boi]

Traveller wrote: "Well, perhaps they would have done better to have sent a woman! ... I can't help wondering if the way Genly is, is not a subtle dig at a patriarchal outlook by U. Le G?"

I suspect that's exactly the case.

As for time-jumping - I have a little trouble believing you'd find many people willing to travel 17 light-years and back, just to check in on a society a generation or more later than your first visit, but otoh, once you've made a relativistic space flight once, you have essentially severed all connection to your roots, so subsequent trips are probably easier.

The standard for relativistic travel in SF is surely The Forever War, which is five or six years later than LHOD. The only story I can find that does "time-jumping" before LHOD is To Outlive Eternity, which only predates LHOD by a couple of years, but the best known prior novel involving sub-light space travel would probably be Orphans of the Sky. Wikipedia has a good article about Generation ships, but I can't seem to come up with the right search for time-jumping.

Planets, possibly even habitable planets, are apparently more common than anyone imagined, even a decade ago, but we _always_ knew that any aliens (at least that might have an interest in us) that weren't from either Mars or Venus were going to be light-years away, and Mars was considered an impossibility well before LHOD. Venus was determined to have a temperature of at least 425C by Mariner 2 in 1962, so it too was known not to harbour any life forms that would likely even recognize us as intelligent, let alone interesting.

Nataliya wrote: "Joining the party a bit late - stupid week-long cold..."

Nataliya: the others just joined early - the discussion wasn't scheduled to start until today!

[Nataliya]

Speaking of Karhide and Orgoreyn - I'm so glad Le Guin did not follow the convention (the one I tend to think of as the Star Wars convention, even though this book predates Star Wars) of one planet = one nation = one government. It seems that in sci-fi alien planets are treated almost as little kingdoms and not as complicated mass of countries with all the implications of that. Imagine if someone came to Earth assuming that it was a unified place with a single government - how surprised would they have been?

[Traveller]

Derek wrote: "Nataliya: the others just joined early - the discussion wasn't scheduled to start until today! ."

We were just warming up, just warming up, nothing serious. Plus lots of notices everywhere. Keep in mind, btw, that today is April 29 for the Australasians, and that our April 26, was their April 27... So their weekend will always start a bit ahead of ours.

Nataliya did know, but she had warned me long before the read that the poor thing will be working night-shift this May, and said she'd only be able to pop in in rare spare moments. So what we see of her is lucky!
So, good to see around, Nataliya! I hope your 'flu is feeling better by now.

Thanks for giving that time-travel background, Derek. So this is definitely SF proper--not just fantasy like for instance the Wizard of Earthsea.

[Cecily]

Nataliya wrote: " I'm so glad Le Guin did not follow the convention (the one I tend to think of as the Star Wars convention, even though this book predates Star Wars) of one planet = one nation = one government...."

That's a good point, and one that I agree with. The only slight problem for me, is that in this case the result seems to be primarily a political novel, with a dash of weird but interesting socio/sexuology(!). I'm two thirds of the way through, and that initial impression persists.

[Traveller]

Cecily wrote: "Nataliya wrote: " I'm so glad Le Guin did not follow the convention (the one I tend to think of as the Star Wars convention, even though this book predates Star Wars) of one planet = one nation = o..."

Why do you say a problem? Don't you like political novels?...but maybe we should discuss that in more depth in the next thread. Give me few hours and I'll have it up!

[Cecily]

I only said "slight problem". It's two-fold: firstly a matter of mismatched expectations (it's not at all what I was expecting, and it's now morphed from a political drama into something more like (view spoiler)[Scott's Antarctic diaries (hide spoiler)]) and secondly the fact that I tend not to have much enthusiasm for political fiction. Of its kind, this may be excellent, but I've nearly finished, and although there are areas of interest, I can't say I've found it riveting. I'm sure the ensuing discussion will be, though. ;)

[Traveller]

Sorry that I'm a bit late with the next threads-- had an unexpected hiccup, but they'll hopefully be up soon!

[Ian]

Just popping in to say that I've started reading this on my Kindle.

I have to say that I've been spell-bound right from the beginning. The writing is so economical, conveying both world-building information and plot detail, often in the same sentence, without feeling that you're being lectured to. I feel that I'm in the hands of a total master of the writing craft.

I'm also seeing influences on Mieville, and how in a way he represents a second generation, perhaps a bit more playful and experimental than Le Guin, but building on her achievements.

[Traveller]

Nice to see you popping in, Ian.. :)

Maybe now is a good time to issue a little note which would have been good to have mentioned at the start of the discussion: Please always note at the start of a chapter who the narrator of that specific chapter is.

Sometimes it is Genly Ai, sometimes it is Estraven, and other times, it is 'investigators' who had been sent to study the community on Gethen.

[Allen]

My turn to pop in ... I had gotten to Chapter 6 and then took a break. Traveller - I hadn't caught on to noting who the narrator is, so thanks.

I, too, am finding the feel of it very familiar, in some ways it reads very much like Perdido Street Station (if you took out the majority of the weird creatures.) And Genly Ai did seem a bit unsavvy (is that a word?) for an ambassador ... perhaps, since the time and travel involved mean these enboys are likely a "one person per culture for life" assignment, then they just train on the job. On the other hand, he mentions the purposeful single ambassador with no troops/backup as a way to negate the threat of invasion from the space-savvy Ekumen. (Although my opinion is not decided on what the Ekumen is, exactly, yet.)

On the other other hand, I'm liking Nataliya's reference that I'm not connecting with him "because of his prejudice." I mean, how can someone who signs up to meet and learn from a totally alien race possibly be prejudice. He is curious but in a self-righteous manner. As someone mentioned, I'm sure that's what LeGuin intended as a reference to the times. So how does he relate to our society today? Who does he represent ... thinking of us in the U.S., I at first felt a little McCarthyism deja vu.

[Allen]

I'll have to return to Estraven, but the mad king is my favorite so far. In fact, my first dog-eared page is at the end of Chapter 3, during his the exchange with Ai, "It's a joke, a hoax. Aliens would be here by the thousand... But it doesn't take a thousand men to open a door, my lord... It might to keep it open."

I think a lot is being said there, both in and between the lines. Ai is try to reassure the kind, and the king is shrewdly poking fun, I think, while threatening him - sort of along the lines of you should have rethought your strategy. Philosophically, it made me think that in our decades (centuries even) of social struggles it's always easy to say or find the solution and it often only takes one person to take a stand to make the difference, but it takes everyone with a concerted effort to keep that difference in place.

Then, the next paragraph ... "But, I do fear you, Envoy ... and worst I fear the bitter truth. And so I rule my country well."

Still thinking about that one, and in fact would love to hear what everyone has to say on it. Also, I couldn't help but think of Scile and a few characters from the Bas-Lag world :)

And, was it just me, or did anyone else find it strange the kind kept referring to men as in "only fear rules men." Hmmmm.

[Allen]

Ruth wrote: "I want to shout at him, "Well, why not? Wasn't that the whole point of your training, to take the information brought from the source and the knowledge of diplomacy from your own history and use it to your advantage as Envoy?" Why was Genly Ai chosen for this position? ..."

I knew I had seene a reference to Ai's seeming lack of training in the comments! Thanks Ruth, I really liked the way you characterized that.

You mentioned protocol, too, which I found interesting in the first chapters, but there was something else very similar that made the people of Winter seem so alien. I'll have to find it now.

[Derek, Miéville fan-boi]

Allen wrote: "thinking of us in the U.S., I at first felt a little McCarthyism deja vu...."

I'd thought of that, too, but it's written quite a bit too late for McCarthyism, though Le Guin is certainly old enough to have directly felt McCarthy's effects in the arts.

Le Guin specifically says that she used the masculine pronouns because she refuses to make up words, and I think the same thing probably goes for using the word "men" to refer to all citizens of Karhide. Personally, I think the refusal to create new words for things that need new words is a form of bigotry in itself. I recall a heated exchange I had with someone not so long ago (though I can't recall where other than "on the Internet"). He was incensed at the use of the word "gender" in various ways with respect to transgendered people - as "gender" is a grammatical term and only inferentially related to "sex". But I pointed out that using "sex" to describe aspects of people that are not actually related to chromosomal sex is equally wrong - so we're forced to either create a new word or repurpose an old one. Except for grammarians, people seem to have very little problem repurposing "gender" to do the job.

The same bigotry appears in her descriptions of the Ekumen, and her systems of measurement. By the time this book was written, British Imperial measure was on the way out everywhere (even the US was talking about going metric), but she insisted on using Fahrenheit, Miles, Feet and Inches. I'd slit my wrists before joining a galactic civilization that can't use a logical system of measurement! Meanwhile, if you call that galactic civilization the "Community of Worlds", that's just a translation into the language of the narrator - but calling it the "Ekumen", using a minor Earth language, is to put Earth at the centre of the universe.

[Cecily]

Forgive a brief comment, based on partial reading of the above, but I'm on hols and using my phone. Anyway, I also quite liked the "mad" king - except that he didn't seem particularly mad. Or did I miss something?

[Cecily]

Derek, wow, you reall hate Imperial measurement! Metric makes far more sense, but hard as I try, I think in Imperial, even though only metric was taught at school. Imperial is pernicious and persistent - but please don't slit your wrists.

[Traveller]

Allen wrote: "You mentioned protocol, too, which I found interesting in the first chapters, but there was something else very similar that made the people of Winter seem so alien. I'll have to find it now.
..."
So very nice to see you joining in, Allen!:))) I was starting to feel a bit lonely up here in these discussion threads...

Are you talking about shifgrethor, Allen? We get to touch on that more a bit later on in the book. In fact, the next thread I'll be posting will be more concerned with general politics and less with the gender thing.
Derek wrote: "Except for grammarians, people seem to have very little problem repurposing "gender" to do the job.

The same bigotry appears in her descriptions of the Ekumen, and her systems of measurement. By the time this book was written, British Imperial measure was on the way out everywhere (even the US was talking about going metric), but she insisted on using Fahrenheit, Miles, Feet and Inches. I'd slit my wrists before joining a galactic civilization that can't use a logical system of measurement! ."
Yaye! A comrade in arms! I too, much prefer the word 'gender', because sex always makes me think of the actual sexual act, you know, coitus, and here I see a Bill Clinton joke coming up...

Cecily wrote: "Derek, wow, you reall hate Imperial measurement! Metric makes far more sense, but hard as I try, I think in Imperial, even though only metric was taught at school. Imperial is pernicious and persi..."

I'm with Derek. Metric is simply just logical. ..and why hold out clinging onto an antiquated system when the rest of the globe is using a sensible, practical, easy-to-use standardised system?

[Traveller]

Cecily wrote: "Forgive a brief comment, based on partial reading of the above, but I'm on hols and using my phone. Anyway, I also quite liked the "mad" king - except that he didn't seem particularly mad. Or did I..."

To me he sounded mad enough, as in "paranoid" to be called mad. (As in just a little bit crazy) I suppose it depends if you would have called Hitler and Stalin 'mad'. Just a bit deranged, rather? Over-zealous? Over-sensitive? Xenophobic? Narrow-minded to an astounding degree?

It would be interesting to discuss, in later threads, if and how we find a contrast to Ai's reception in Karhide, in Orgoreyn. But let's keep that for the thread where we see Orgoreyn from closer up...

[Ian]

I can't find the reference now, but somebody mentioned the symbol in front of the temperature. In my copy, it looks like the symbol for "plus or minus".

[Derek, Miéville fan-boi]

Cecily wrote: "Derek, wow, you reall hate Imperial measurement! Metric makes far more sense, but hard as I try, I think in Imperial, even though only metric was taught at school.

I confess, I think in feet & inches, but kilometres. My weight is still in pounds but food comes in kilograms. Liquid measure is always litres, except that beer comes in 12 oz bottles. That's typically Canadian - while our legal measures of trade are metric, so much is sourced from the US that I have a kitchen full of 946ml tetra-paks.

If I ever have to do a calculation in Imperial, I tend to convert to metric, calculate, and convert back.

But it's not actually having to use Imperial measure that would make me slit my wrists, it's the sense that there's something very wrong if you set such a silly standard for a galactic civilization. As Arthur Dent said when (knowing that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything was 42) he learned that the Question was "What is 6 x 9": "I always knew there was something profoundly wrong with the universe."

It was engineers holding on to silly measurement systems that caused the crash of one of the Mars landers...

[Saski]

All this discussion of types of measurement makes me smile, and I was especially glad to see Derek in dual mode. I am similar, having left the States in 1992 and been in Europe ever since. My weight is in kilos (feels smaller that way) but my height is still in inches. As for food, as my cook books are from all over, I have to think in both for measurements.

[Allen]

Traveller wrote: "Allen wrote: "You mentioned protocol, too, which I found interesting in the first chapters, but there was something else very similar that made the people of Winter seem so alien. I'll have to find..."

That's it! Shifgrethor ... that thread should be fun.

And I'll side with Derek's Dentism on measurement. Imperial is very impractical, and having a little physics background I'm very comfortable with metric (or SI as we used to call it). Alas, where I live in the U.S. it's looked down upon as either weird or elitist - literally mocked simply because it's different, even though I'm sure most would agree it's more practical in application. (The worst part, though, is trying to cook Indian food with an American cookbook listing ingredients in ounces while those same ingredients are packaged in mls and grams.)

Wouldn't that be an interesting plot for a book - galactic social and political upheaval over a planet's measurement system? :)

[Traveller]

...and little do Americans know, that for most people in every other single country in the world except for some African country (only one--can't remember which one), metric seems natural and imperial seems sooo old-fashioned. (Honestly, you'll even find that a lot of Canadians agree with this).

Americans have really created a little 'pocket' in time as far as some language and customs are concerned; though admittedly, so has the UK with spelling of words such as theatre, colour, armour, etc.
Although personally reared with British spelling, these days I tend to use American spelling, which mostly seems more economical, but I dislike the American clinging to imperial measurements.

I personally like it when usage flows and adapts to whatever is more apt and economical. Metric, given our decimal number system, simply is more sensible and practical. And easier to use!

[Traveller]

Ah, Liberia, apparently. The US and Liberia are the only countries in the world who still uses imperial measurements.
Ok, and Burma. Bah. Still...

But yeah, still some usage in UK. To me things like tablespoons and cups and tsp. etc. seems old-fashioned though. So imprecise!

And the pounds and stone thing. The 'stone' has always fascinated me... in my mind's eye, I see a person standing on one of those old-fashioned scales, and the other side is stacked with these huge rocks.

Damn. I have to admit to something. I am 5 foot 5".

But...also more or less 1.65 m.. or is it 1.66? Argh...

[Derek, Miéville fan-boi]

Traveller wrote: "... I am 5 foot 5 "

I know _I_ am 178cm - but I've been that tall for almost 40 years. But nobody ever tells me how tall they are in centimeters, so everybody else is in feet and inches. otoh, I have no idea what I weigh in kilograms, because it changes too often, and the scale reads in pounds.

[Traveller]

Derek wrote: "Traveller wrote: "... I am 5 foot 5 "

I know _I_ am 178cm - but I've been that tall for almost 40 years. But nobody ever tells me how tall they are in centimeters, so everybody else is in feet and..."

Hmm, sounds pretty tall, but Bigmouth yours truly, actually -does- still visualise everyone in feet and inches. For instance, I know my mother is 5'7", quite a bit taller than myself, and my father was 6', and so are my brother and uncles. But coughcoughcough, Ms Bigmouth here, am actually lost when it comes to metres and cm regarding people's height. Blushblushblush. So, I actually have not the faintest how tall you are, Derek. (Yeah, I know, don't say it. :P)

Though, funnily enough, most of my rulers are in cm (some dual) and my measuring tapes are dual imperial and metric. So I do have a good idea of how long 30cm is. Also, 6". @_@

EDIT: I checked: 178cm seems to be 5.83989501 feet ..ok, so more or less 5'8" no, 5'10" ? That, I can compute in my mind's eye...(facepalm on self)

[Joseph]

That makes me ~190.5cm [6'3] according to my quick math!

[Cecily]

A literal tablespoon would be imprecise, but all UK spoon measures have precise values - in millilitres! You can buy a collection of measuring spoons to be sure. So it's much the same as US cups.

[Traveller]

Cecily wrote: "A literal tablespoon would be imprecise, but all UK spoon measures have precise values - in millilitres! You can buy a collection of measuring spoons to be sure. So it's much the same as US cups."

Yes, I know, I have collections of little measuring spoons and cups in both and either, so I can use all the cookbooks available, but still, milligrams to grams and millilitres to litres for instance, are just so much easier to convert to one another than the imperial measurements are.

Re everybody's height: suddenly I feel quite small! :)

[Saski]

If you feel short, Traveller, think how I feel... 5'2 3/4" Sigh. That's what I loved about living in Cyprus, no one making comments about my height (or lack thereof) -- I was normal. None of this: If your dad 6' and your mother is 5' 8", are you adopted?

[Traveller]

Ruth wrote: "If you feel short, Traveller, think how I feel... 5'2 3/4" Sigh. That's what I loved about living in Cyprus, no one making comments about my height (or lack thereof) -- I was normal. None of thi..."

Nah, I don't really think we're that short, Ruth. It's just that Americans put fertilizer in their food. ;)

..but seriously, I read somewhere that the growth hormone they give cattle;- some of it gets carried over in the meat and that is one reason why Americans tend to have become pretty tall in the last two or three generations. I might be wrong, but I think Japanese -Americans also tend to be taller than ones born and raised in Japan.
Here's one take on the phenomenon. http://www.scientificamerican.com/art...

..and some more perspectives http://abcnews.go.com/Health/growth-h...

http://www.med.nyu.edu/content?ChunkI...

The FDA maintains it's fine, but there are still those that aren't fully convinced: http://www.weightwatchers.com/util/ar...

[Saski]

haha! I have always thought that Americans are taller compared to elsewhere because of diet, but I hadn't considered growth hormones. It makes sense... will check out the article, thanks.

Here in Sweden people just assume I'm short because I am a foreigner. Sigh!

[Saski]

Cool, Traveller (please hear sarcastic intonation). I guess I will continue with only eating red meat when local elk is available. We know what they have been eating... berries, bark, berries, leaves, berries....Did I mention berries?

[Traveller]

Ruth wrote: "Cool, Traveller (please hear sarcastic intonation). I guess I will continue with only eating red meat when local elk is available. We know what they have been eating... berries, bark, berries, le..."

Now see, then you can't complain of a relative lack of tallness. ;) I'd love to taste their meat, btw.

Totally off topic, how do you find summer temperatures in Sweden compared to where you have lived before? Is summer also colder?