De linkerhand van het duister (1969)

adult sci-fi (book club selection). I had to skim through parts, and I couldn't keep all of the names/vocab straight at times. Premise was interesting, but just not something I could get into. ( )

Really great, much more fiction than science fiction. But I liked the setting on a world experiencing an ice age, and how that setting determined the plot. ( )

The Left Hand of Darkness is the first full-length novel published in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle. The majority of the book is told from the perspective of Genly Ai, an ambassador by himself on an alien planet called Winter, trying to make contact and forge a connection with its people so that he can bring them into an alliance with the larger, multi-planet organization he’s a part of.

The world-building was interesting. This is a pretty short book, but it felt like a fully-realized world with its own culture and politics. This is conveyed to the reader without much in the way of infodumps. The people on the planet are similar enough to humans that Genly finds himself making bad assumptions and misreading intentions. There’s a lot here about gender assumptions in particular. The people on Winter are neither male nor female. Once a month they go into “kemmer” where the sexual organs on their bodies change more toward those of either a male or a female. The same person may not always change to the same gender when this happens, it depends partly on the influence of others who are close to them who may also be going through kemmer at the same time. If they become female during their cycle, then they might get pregnant and stay in that state until the child is born and weaned.

I imagine this book might have raised some eyebrows when it was first published in the 60’s. In addition to the more obvious theme of gender stereotypes, there are other deeper themes here as well. It’s a short book with a lot of meat to it. For me, however, I found the first half a little slow. Interesting, but slow. It picked up toward the second half when Estraven started to play a larger role in the story. He was the only character from Winter that we really get to know in any depth, so I think that’s why he interested me more. I really liked him. I liked Genly pretty well too, but his naïveté and his prejudices got on my nerves at times, and I often felt like he needed to go back to ambassador school...

I was sad and mildly annoyed when Estraven was killed off. I did expect it though. As soon as the journal entries from Estraven were inserted into the story, I thought, “Oh no, I bet she killed this character off.” It wasn’t the journal entries by themselves, but that combined with his character type and some light foreshadowing made it seem pretty clear we were headed toward tragic sacrifice territory.

I’m rating this at 3.5 stars and rounding down to 3 on Goodreads. I liked it, and it’s an impressive work, but it just didn’t hold my attention that strongly and my ratings are based more on subjective enjoyment than on objective merit. ( )

Ursula K. LeGuin crea mons exòtics, estranys i complexos, però poblats per personatges que ens són propers, versemblants. I allà ens trobem qüestions com la identitat sexual, el rol de gènere o els interessos particulars dels governants d'un territori enfront dels interessos generals de la humanitat. Qüestions que també trobem ben properes.
Com diu l'autora, la Ciència-ficció és metàfora. I potser Gethen/Hivern només és una metàfora del nostre món, de les vivències i històries del nostre propi món.
Aquesta curada edició de Raig Verd Editorial inclou mapes i un apèndix sobre el calendari i el rellotge a Gethenians. La traducció també sembla prou encertada. ( )

Why have I waited 50 years to read this? ( )