The Left Hand of Darkness (Ace Science Fiction)

I really struggled with the names and foreign/fabricated words. It was very distracting, making it difficult to maintain the continuity of the story. When I have to keep rereading pages, I know I’m struggling. I did become engaged with the main characters, so that is a positive. I do appreciate how challenging it would be to write such a novel.

Excellent book.. Even it encapsulates you from the foreword (Best one I have ever read from the author).. The world is really interesting. It will basically try to find how would be the world if everyone is a bit male and a bit female, and the outcome is quiet interesting. The story and the way it is presented is excellent too.. I would strongly recommend this book.

While the beginning takes the reader through the new landscape and most of the action is at the end, I didn't find this book slow at all. This would be great for anyone who wanted more complex first contact stories from Star Trek. The author goes into amazing depth and finds a way to explore the characters in a way that makes you feel like you're getting to know a friend, not reading a book.

This is my favorite story by LeGuin. Gets you thinking about the meaning of sexuality; the characters, and our own.
In case you're interested in this book, get Leguin's book of short stories called The Birthday of the World which includes more about the world Gethen which was written about in the Left Hand of Darkness.

A classic of feminist science fiction, where questions of gender and duality are revisited over and over via different symbols and events. Worth a read, then a read of the academic literature it generated, then another read. Well ahead of its time.

The power of blood sacrifice and arch symbolism permeates and supports the novel throughout..

Agamemnon kills his daughter, Iphigenia, in a blood sacrifice before his army to appease Artemis. He also sets an example to his troops and the people of Troy proving that he would not ask them to sacrifice themselves and their children without being willing to do so himself. (1)

Christianity sees the Eucharist as God sacrificing his son for the sake of humanity and its rescue from damnation. (2)

All who attend the opening ceremonial parade in Darkness sacrifice comfort in extreme heat while they anticipate, expect, witness and celebrate the King's laying of the arch keystone.

A greater sacrifice occurs when the king sacrifices his time, energy and regal position by troweling the pink mortar for the keystone.. The mortar is pink from the addition of sacrificial animal blood. The ritual evolved or devolved from using, human bones and blood. (3)

An arch is a compression form that spans an area. The fixed arch is subject to internal stress caused by thermal expansion and contraction.( 4) It's a metaphor for the needed political bridge to span the differing political aspects of the story. "Without the blood bond the arch would fall." The political arch must expand to include all the planets.

The King, refuses to accept the existence of Ekumen. He refuses to allow his world to become one among many and subject to a power and authority higher than his own. He refuses to sacrifice power to create an arch keystone for a new planetary political system.

A greater blood sacrifice is needed to bring the Ekumen to Gthen and unite his world in peace, something King Argaven does not understand, despite his pink mortar troweling.

Joanna Poppink, MFT
Los Angeles psychotherapist
author: Healing Your Hungry Heart: recovering from your eating disorder

This is one of the best Science Fiction novels ever written. It offers unique insight on the role of gender and the role technology plays in cultureshock. It's not full of gizmos and unrealistic FTL drives like Star Trek, but it's great sci-fi despite that, well, perhaps because of it.

A race of humans that regularly changes gender every 26 days...The book delivers on that fascinating promise of behavioural fiction. Some of the politics is certainly cold-war era stuff. But that's a very small part of the book. The frozen landscape of the planet Gethen is one that has stayed with me, much like the Mars of the Barsoom Series.

This is a classic novel with a ground-breaking premise, and despite my love of science fiction, I had managed to avoid reading it for decades. So ... when I did finally read the novel, I desperately wanted it to be a five-star best-I-ever-read blew-my-mind type of novel. With expectations that high, I could only be disappointed, and I was. A little, anyway. The concept of a genderless people was mind blowing. The way Ms. LeGuin presented their alienness was nothing short of brilliant. What may have disappointed me was the portion of the novel dedicated to political intrigue that often seemed a bit pointless. In other words, I couldn't easily determine the trajectory of the novel for the first two-thirds of it.

And then ... and then ... the last third lived up to my expectations. The journey of the two protagonists across the ice was a riveting study in the will of humans to survive, and the power that relationship plays in shaping that will.

Definitely happy I finally read The Left Hand of Darkness. Highly recommended.

Tries to postulate a society based on people that express gender only while in estrus ("kemmer" in the book). Also contrasts a feudal society against something like the USSR. Mix of hard and soft sci-fi: uses FTL communications (ansible), but relativistic travel (the protagonist has outlived his family via space travel).

Some may argue with me about my ratings regarding sex and violence in the novel, but there is nothing graphic, blatant, or--one would hope--offensive in any of it. I've used the novel in my Intro to Literature classes for decades, and students are at first bewildered, then fascinated by the questions about gender and gender roles that are raised by the narrative. Thematically, there are other rich veins to explore as well. Le Guin is one of the great American authors, living or dead, in any field. Don't read this as "science fiction." Read it as literature, because that's what it is. Le Guin's style is elegant, lyrical, profoundly moving. The narrative arc builds slowly--there is a lot of necessary context to build before the "adventure" gets going--but real readers will find even the creation of context beautifully handled. Harold Bloom says that “Le Guin seems never to have written a wrong or bad sentence”: that's putting it mildly. She is a master artist, and this novel is rightly deemed one of her two best (the other being The Dispossessed). Even before I started teaching the novel, I re-read it approximately once a year since I first encountered it in the 1970s--and it never gets old.

This is a classic novel with a ground-breaking premise, and despite my love of science fiction, I had managed to avoid reading it for decades. So ... when I did finally read the novel, I desperately wanted it to be a five-star best-I-ever-read blew-my-mind type of novel. With expectations that high, I could only be disappointed, and I was. A little, anyway. The concept of a genderless people was mind blowing. The way Ms. LeGuin presented their alienness was nothing short of brilliant. What may have disappointed me was the portion of the novel dedicated to political intrigue that often seemed a bit pointless. In other words, I couldn't easily determine the trajectory of the novel for the first two-thirds of it.

And then ... and then ... the last third lived up to my expectations. The journey of the two protagonists across the ice was a riveting study in the will of humans to survive, and the power that relationship plays in shaping that will.

Definitely happy I finally read The Left Hand of Darkness. Highly recommended.

Tries to postulate a society based on people that express gender only while in estrus ("kemmer" in the book). Also contrasts a feudal society against something like the USSR. Mix of hard and soft sci-fi: uses FTL communications (ansible), but relativistic travel (the protagonist has outlived his family via space travel).

Some may argue with me about my ratings regarding sex and violence in the novel, but there is nothing graphic, blatant, or--one would hope--offensive in any of it. I've used the novel in my Intro to Literature classes for decades, and students are at first bewildered, then fascinated by the questions about gender and gender roles that are raised by the narrative. Thematically, there are other rich veins to explore as well. Le Guin is one of the great American authors, living or dead, in any field. Don't read this as "science fiction." Read it as literature, because that's what it is. Le Guin's style is elegant, lyrical, profoundly moving. The narrative arc builds slowly--there is a lot of necessary context to build before the "adventure" gets going--but real readers will find even the creation of context beautifully handled. Harold Bloom says that “Le Guin seems never to have written a wrong or bad sentence”: that's putting it mildly. She is a master artist, and this novel is rightly deemed one of her two best (the other being The Dispossessed). Even before I started teaching the novel, I re-read it approximately once a year since I first encountered it in the 1970s--and it never gets old.

I'll synthesize some thoughts I share with other reviewers, rather than discuss the plot or premise, which you can easily determine from the other reviews.

This book is cold, cerebral, and clinical. Like the world it is set in, locked in perpetual winter, the pace is glacial, the characters are cool and detached. So much contemporary science fiction features the bling of the genre: technology, battles, space ships, laser guns, that type of thing. This book has absolutely none of that. Once I became accustomed to the nature of the book, I settled in and found a very deeply thought out, provocative, and, at the end, profoundly moving experience.

It is certainly not for everyone. The characters are essentially unsympathetic and difficult to relate to. The plot is secondary to real point of the book: the reader must decipher the world and the characters through their own subjective narratives. One is left to one's own devices to create allegorical and other connections to our own social and political realities.

One of the beauties of the work is the moving aesthetic experience that the author creates through the world, Winter, that the book is set in: the description of this world and the character's journey through it can draw the reader into a visceral and hypnotic mental state.

The critical review reprinted under the listing is an excellent one: "science fiction for the thinking reader." Adventurous and serious readers (be they science fiction fans or simply fans of great literature), will find a unique and challenging book here. Others may just be bored.

While a good read with many sound principles for life embedded in another worldly POV, the book was slow to progress for me. There are lessons to be learned in this book for people of all ages and walks of life.

I recently decided to upgrade my reading selections by focusing on more widely acclaimed classics and award winning literature. Through this effort, I identified Ursula Le Guin's "The Left Hand of Darkness". I was surprised to see that it was a Hugo and Nebula Award winner, as I was not familiar with it.

I am an avid science fiction fan and am familiar with Le Guin. As a young reader of LotR, I opted against reading Le Guin's Earthsea novels, thinking them to be among the cheap ripoffs of Tolkien. I was unaware that she had written science fiction, and award winning science fiction at that.

This is a very good novel, though as some have pointed out, not heavily into the science aspect of "science fiction". It is, however, very well written from the standpoint of the interpersonal relationships contained therein. The story revolves around a loose trade confederation of worlds called the Ekumen. An emissary from the Ekumen is sent to a planet for the purpose of recruiting the inhabitants into the confederation. The world consists of two primary nation-states, locked in a battle for supremacy. The interplay between the Ekumenical emissary and representatives from the two nation states are the underpinnings of the work.

The World created by Le Guin is fascinating and believable. The personal and political conflicts are believable and complex. There are many intricacies contained in the book that add greatly to its enjoyment. I've seen it labeled "political science fiction" and the tag fits nicely.

There is depth and philosophy to be considered, though not to the extent you might find in some of the works of Frank Herbert or Philip Dick. It was very worthwhile read and one that gave me a new appreciation for Le Guin.

Because I'm writing this, and because I like Ursula Le Guin's writing, I'm choosing four stars. My physicist husband, a serious science fiction reader, would go for three stars. He says it's good but it could be better, and it's certainly not the best. We both thought the effective dream sequences intriguing. I asked my family therapist daughter who also read the book what she thought of the psychiatrist, and she said definitely a serious ego problem there. All three of us got caught up in the story and stayed with it to the end.

Watched a tv special on SCI FI channel. History of SCI FI. This book was mentioned several times and the author was interviewed. The book is a bit tedious to read but still interesting. TV made it sound more interesting.

Great book. Great writer. Came in two days.
I love Le Guin and this book was more than just about gender issues and ambiguity and if its a needed concept.
I don't want to give spoilers. But it's well-readable and it's very, very good

Ursula Le Guin truly outdid herself with this book. From the complex but brilliant plot-line, to the depth and intensity built into her characters; This book is hard to put down once started. Le Guin uses this book to explore the impact of sexual tension, and how it affects our entire social structure. To do so, she takes us to the planet Winter, where all the citizens are hermaphroditic. On this planet, the reader follows the struggles of an 'emissary'; a man sent to Winter in order to try and get the citizens of the planet to join an intergalactic 'family'. On this trip, the main character, Genly Ai gets to experience both the best Winter has to offer, and the worst. Le Guin carries the reader through this book with a constant sense of curiosity and wonder, ever leading to a magnificent ending; leaving the reader feeling breathless and lost when the book finally does end. If you read and enjoyed Isaac Asimov's Foundation, you'll be sure to love this one too.