What planet am I on???

[Basil]

The first several pages of this left me very confused about what planet I was on. I'm still not 100% sure. Ai seems to be from off-planet. That much is clear. But I had thought that Ai was from Winter, and she(he?) was visiting a planet that was much hotter. But then suddenly it starts to snow and the narrator seems to make it more clear that we're on Winter, and Ai is from somewhere else.

Did anybody else get confused by this? I think it was right at the beginning when Ai talks about how hot it is and that he(she?) is dressed too warmly. We get a description of temperatures on Winter, and I think maybe I assumed that Ai had just come from Winter, and was dressed for weather there. Probably just careless reading on my part.

[Brendan]

Possibly the issue you're having is that Winter is also known as Gethen, one is its common name, the other is its proper name (similar to earth vs Terra). Ai is Terran and an envoy from the Ekumen (think Star Trek's Federation). Winter itself is divided into all sort of factions with different names and cultures.

[Basil]

Yeah. I'm so used to my sci-fi having planets with unified governments that I found myself very lost with all the different names to describe exactly WHERE Ai was.

[Brendan]

I'm reading Good Omens at the moment but when I've finished with that I'll give Left Hand a re-read, I read it a few years ago so it isn't the freshest.

[Basil]

**I don't think this setting detail is a spoiler, because it's revealed early on, but just in case, SPOILER WARNING**

This is my first jaunt in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle. I found it interesting to learn that in this universe, humankind didn't originate on Earth. This is another one of those world-building nits I like to pick. I wonder if she ever explains how humankind propagated throughout the galaxy, and how she reconciles evolution on Earth.

[Brendan]

It's never really relevant to any stories in the Hainish cycle, but the background is that the Hain, a super-advanced alien species seeded humanity throughout habitable planets in the galaxy, and then either let evolution take over or performed genetic experiments.

The "super-advanced aliens spread humanity" trope is really heavily used in space operas, I think because it is one of the only ways to semi-plausibly explain the presence of humans/humanoids on planets that earthlings had never contacted before.

The drawback, that it is incompatible with what we know of evolution (despite the mountains of evidence showing otherwise, humans are not related to apes?), only seems relevant if you're particularly concerned with making sure your science fiction is "hard". Le Guin's never claimed to write hard sci-fi so this trope doesn't bother me in her books. For someone like Larry Niven on the other hand, who uses the same trope yet he's marketed as being hard sci-fi, it bothers me quite a bit more.

[Basil]

You could make a case for the common seed possessing some kind of underlying code (beneath the DNA) that made sure evolution culminated in something very similar to human.

[Serendi]

That's what Picard discovered on Star Trek: TNG.

[Basil]

Serendi wrote: "That's what Picard discovered on Star Trek: TNG."

That's probably why it popped into my head :P

I'd love for someone to go through ST and pick out all the little plot points like that, working out the ultimate implications. Trying to marry it all together might be a challenge. There's an interesting tension between cohesive world building and awesome plot in ST.