Ursula K. Le Guin on The Left Hand of Darkness

Science fiction in 1968 was male-dominated, Ursula K. Le Guin ruminates in a new interview with The New Yorker, and as such she was taking a huge risk with her gender-bending book The Left Hand of Darkness.

The book, often described as one of the first major works of feminist science fiction, is about a relatively normal human male, Genly Ai, who visits Gethen, a world where people are normally of no sex, but switch to either male or female during certain times. Ai’s non-sexual relationship with a character named Estraven comes to be the main theme of the book, and the lens through which the reader views the alien sexuality of the planet’s inhabitants.

Says Le Guin:

In 1968, I don’t think anybody could have imagined an Earthman feeling at home with and welcoming the alien gender situation of Gethen. I did think about sending an Earthwoman there—and she would have reacted very differently from Genly …

But science fiction in 1968 wasn’t about women. It was about men. It was a man’s world. I felt I was taking a huge risk as it was, presenting a largely male readership with these weirdly re-gendered people. I thought the guys would hate it.

I was wrong. They liked it fine. It was the feminists who gave me a hard time about it for years. They wanted me to have been braver. I guess I wish I had been. But I did the best I knew how to do. And Genly does learn a lot!

The Left Hand of Darkness was one of the few titles to win both the Hugo and Nebula awards. There are quite a few resources online devoted to analysing it; for example this study guide. A solid review is here.

Commentary
A typical Le Guin interview, The New Yorker‘s piece displays what at first appears to be the deceptive simplicity of the author’s thought processes and writing style.

The genius of Le Guin’s writing is that it is so comfortably easy to read that before you know it, you’re thoroughly engrossed in her characters and invested in their worlds.

But the truth is that all of this master storyteller’s books operate at a much deeper than surface level. As Le Guin says in the interview about the Taoist or Zen traditions, explaining things intellectually is not where it’s at. Her books, like life itself, need to be understood at a more emotional level. In my experience, you generally of absorb them quickly, without over-analysing them at the time.

It’s only later, that you really realise what life lessons and insights into our existence the wise Le Guin has seeped into your mind through the back door.

Alongside Frank Herbert (author of the Dune series), I would place Le Guin amongst my favourite all-time science fiction authors. I particularly love her book The Dispossessed, which I consider to be the pinnacle of her work, but The Left Hand of Darkness also affected me greatly.

During periods of great turmoil in my life, I often carry around a copy of The Dispossessed as a talisman and a needed reference that I can seek inspiration from at need. That’s how important Le Guin’s writing has become to me!

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