Thursday, 26 December 2013 06:15 pm
Book Review: The Left Hand of Darkness
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deckardcanineIn a way, my timing for this Ursula K. Le Guin read was a good choice: I finished it up just before Christmas so I could launch right into a literary gift. But I probably should have chosen a warmer month, because it's set on an ice planet and told mostly from the POV of a visiting human who takes forever to get used to it.
He is Genly Ai, an ethnologist from the Ekumen of Known Worlds hoping to form a culture-sharing pact with the people of Planet Gethen (it's their MO to send just one envoy first so as not to seem threatening). Apart from feeling cold, he must face the difficulty of a people who, despite some 20th-century-Earth-type technology like radios, have no concept of other worlds. In fact, he looks so much like one of them that they can easily believe he's just a native freak of nature, or perhaps from elsewhere on Gethen. No wonder another human, whose notes form an interim chapter, suspects that their entire population resulted from a secret or forgotten science project.
As little as I respect overly humanoid aliens and overly Earth-like planets (364 23-hour days a year, really?), I give kudos to Le Guin for avoiding numerous anticipated cliches. First, the book begins two years into the mission, so the worst culture clash is already over. Second, Genly says that Earth entered a true Space Age only with the help of aliens; I assume that humans aren't the dominant species of the Ekumen. Third, Gethenians have multiple nations, cultures, and individual personalities. Fourth, they are presented as neither better nor worse than us overall.
The one distinctive feature of Gethenians is their reproductive system. They live most of their lives genderless, showing androgynous traits by human standards, but turn temporarily male or female on a cyclical basis. Since a Gethenian may well be male one year and female the next, they have no sexism, unless you count seeing constantly gendered beings as perverts. English speakers use masculine nouns and pronouns for all Gethenians, with some jarring results: "The king was pregnant."
This detail actually doesn't play much of a part in the sequence of events, which may have been Le Guin's point. Genly struggles more with other cultural obstacles, including an untranslatable code of honor, tho I detect parallels to the author's Taoism. The expedition probably covers the most aggravating challenges of Genly's life, especially when he gets in trouble with treacherous authorities. Fortunately, you don't have to understand someone very much to find a friend willing to sacrifice a lot for a good cause.
Like C.S. Lewis, Le Guin doesn't obsess over scientific details as space writers go. Unlike Lewis, she does not preach so much as explore premises, as she insists in the foreword. Still too prone to talking philosophy rather than plot progression for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nefaria -- indeed, a few chapters merely record Gethenian legends irrelevant to the main story -- but after A Wizard of Earthsea, I found it pretty fulfilling. Only the third act, consisting mostly of a three-month two-person trek across snowy wilderness, tried my non-Taoist patience. I still respect that portion for immersion.
It'll be a while before I give Le Guin another go. Presently I'm checking out Ben Schott's short Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition. Gene Weingarten inspired my family to buy that one for me.
He is Genly Ai, an ethnologist from the Ekumen of Known Worlds hoping to form a culture-sharing pact with the people of Planet Gethen (it's their MO to send just one envoy first so as not to seem threatening). Apart from feeling cold, he must face the difficulty of a people who, despite some 20th-century-Earth-type technology like radios, have no concept of other worlds. In fact, he looks so much like one of them that they can easily believe he's just a native freak of nature, or perhaps from elsewhere on Gethen. No wonder another human, whose notes form an interim chapter, suspects that their entire population resulted from a secret or forgotten science project.
As little as I respect overly humanoid aliens and overly Earth-like planets (364 23-hour days a year, really?), I give kudos to Le Guin for avoiding numerous anticipated cliches. First, the book begins two years into the mission, so the worst culture clash is already over. Second, Genly says that Earth entered a true Space Age only with the help of aliens; I assume that humans aren't the dominant species of the Ekumen. Third, Gethenians have multiple nations, cultures, and individual personalities. Fourth, they are presented as neither better nor worse than us overall.
The one distinctive feature of Gethenians is their reproductive system. They live most of their lives genderless, showing androgynous traits by human standards, but turn temporarily male or female on a cyclical basis. Since a Gethenian may well be male one year and female the next, they have no sexism, unless you count seeing constantly gendered beings as perverts. English speakers use masculine nouns and pronouns for all Gethenians, with some jarring results: "The king was pregnant."
This detail actually doesn't play much of a part in the sequence of events, which may have been Le Guin's point. Genly struggles more with other cultural obstacles, including an untranslatable code of honor, tho I detect parallels to the author's Taoism. The expedition probably covers the most aggravating challenges of Genly's life, especially when he gets in trouble with treacherous authorities. Fortunately, you don't have to understand someone very much to find a friend willing to sacrifice a lot for a good cause.
Like C.S. Lewis, Le Guin doesn't obsess over scientific details as space writers go. Unlike Lewis, she does not preach so much as explore premises, as she insists in the foreword. Still too prone to talking philosophy rather than plot progression for
nefaria -- indeed, a few chapters merely record Gethenian legends irrelevant to the main story -- but after A Wizard of Earthsea, I found it pretty fulfilling. Only the third act, consisting mostly of a three-month two-person trek across snowy wilderness, tried my non-Taoist patience. I still respect that portion for immersion.It'll be a while before I give Le Guin another go. Presently I'm checking out Ben Schott's short Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition. Gene Weingarten inspired my family to buy that one for me.