The Left Hand of Darkness

Le Guin giving a reading in 2008

Le Guin's father Alfred Louis Kroeber was an anthropologist, and the experience that this gave Le Guin influenced all of her works.[11] The protagonists of many of Le Guin's novels, such as The Left Hand of Darkness and Rocannon's World, are also anthropologists or social investigators of some kind.[12] Le Guin used the term Ekumen for her fictional alliance of worlds, a term coined by her father, who derived it from the Greek oikoumene to refer to Eurasian cultures that shared a common origin.[13]

Le Guin's interest in Taoism influenced much of her science fiction work. According to academic Douglas Barbour, the fiction of the Hainish universe (the setting for several of Le Guin's works) contain a theme of balance between light and darkness, a central theme of Taoism.[14] She was also influenced by her early interest in mythology, and her exposure to cultural diversity as a child. Her protagonists are frequently interested in the cultures they are investigating, and are motivated to preserve them rather than conquer them.[15] Authors who influenced Le Guin include Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Italo Calvino, and Lao Tzu.[16]

Le Guin identified with feminism, and was interested in non-violence and ecological awareness. She participated in demonstrations against the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons. These sympathies can be seen in several of her works of fiction, including those in the Hainish universe.[16] The novels of the Hainish cycle frequently explore the effects of differing social and political systems, although according to lecturer Suzanne Reid, Le Guin displayed a preference for a "society that governs by consensus, a communal cooperation without external government".[17] Her fiction also frequently challenges accepted depictions of race and gender.[17]

The original 1969 edition of The Left Hand of Darkness did not contain an introduction. After reflecting on her work, Le Guin wrote in the 1976 edition that the genre of science fiction was not as "rationalist and simplistic" as simple extrapolation. Instead, she called it a "thought experiment" which presupposes some changes to the world, and probes their consequences.[18] The purpose of the thought experiment[18] is not to predict the future, but to "describe reality, the present world".[18] In this case, her thought experiment explores a society without men or women, where individuals share the biological and emotional makeup of both sexes.[17] Le Guin has also said that the genre in general allows exploration of the "real" world through metaphors and complex stories, and that science fiction can use imaginary situations to comment on human behaviors and relationships.[16]

In her new introduction to the Library of America reprint in 2017, the author wrote:

Up until 1968 I had no literary agent, submitting all my work myself. I sent The Left Hand of Darkness to Terry Carr, a brilliant editor newly in charge of an upscale Ace paperback line. His (appropriately) androgynous name led me to address him as Dear Miss Carr. He held no grudge about that and bought the book. That startled me. But it gave me the courage to ask the agent Virginia Kidd, who had praised one of my earlier books, if she’d consider trying to place The Left Hand of Darkness as a hardcover. She snapped it up like a cat with a kibble and asked to represent me thenceforth. She also promptly sold the novel in that format. I wondered seriously about their judgment. Left Hand looked to me like a natural flop. Its style is not the journalistic one that was then standard in science fiction, its structure is complex, it moves slowly, and even if everybody in it is called he, it is not about men. That's a big dose of "hard lit," heresy, and chutzpah, for a genre novel by a nobody in 1968.[19]

The Left Hand of Darkness is set in the fictional Hainish universe, which Le Guin introduced in her first novel Rocannon's World, published in 1966. In this fictional history, human beings did not evolve on Earth, but on Hain. The people of Hain colonized many neighboring planetary systems, including Terra (Earth) and Gethen, possibly a million years before the setting of the novels. Some of the groups that "seeded" each planet were the subjects of genetic experiments, including on Gethen.[18] The planets subsequently lost contact with each other, for reasons that Le Guin does not explain.[20] Le Guin does not narrate the entire history of the Hainish universe at once, instead letting readers piece it together from various works.[21]

The novels and other fictional works set in the Hainish universe recount the efforts to re-establish a galactic civilization. Explorers from Hain as well as other planets use interstellar ships traveling nearly as fast as light. These take years to travel between planetary systems, although the journey is shortened for the travelers due to relativistic time dilation, as well as through instantaneous interstellar communication using the ansible, a device invented during the events described in The Dispossessed.[20] This galactic civilization is known as the "League of All Worlds" in works set earlier in the chronology of the series, and has been reconstructed as the "Ekumen" by the time the events in The Left Hand of Darkness take place.[20] During the events of the novel, the Ekumen is a union of 83 worlds, with some common laws.[21] At least two "thought experiments" are used in each novel. The first is the idea that all humanoid species had a common origin; they are all depicted as descendants of the original Hainish colonizers. The second idea is unique to each novel.[18]

The Left Hand of Darkness takes place many centuries in the future—no date is given in the book itself. Reviewers have suggested the year 4870 AD, based on extrapolation of events in other works, and commentary on her writing by Le Guin.[3] The protagonist of the novel, the envoy Genly Ai, is on a planet called Winter ("Gethen" in the language of its own people) to convince the citizens to join the Ekumen. Winter is, as its name indicates, a planet that is always cold.[22]

The inhabitants of Gethen are ambisexual humans; for twenty-four days (a period called somer in Karhidish, a Gethenian language) of each twenty-six-day lunar cycle, they are sexually latent androgynes. They only adopt sexual attributes once a month, during a period of sexual receptiveness and high fertility, called kemmer. During kemmer they become sexually male or female, with no predisposition towards either,[23] although which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships.[6] Throughout the novel Gethenians are described as "he", whatever their role in kemmer. This absence of fixed gender characteristics led Le Guin to portray Gethen as a society without war, and also without sexuality as a continuous factor in social relationships.[23][22] On Gethen, every individual takes part in the "burden and privilege" of raising children, and rape and seduction are almost absent.[22]

The protagonist of the novel is Genly Ai, a male Terran native, who is sent to invite the planet Gethen to join the Ekumen, a coalition of humanoid worlds.[24] Ai travels to the Gethen planetary system on a starship which remains in solar orbit with Ai's companions, who are in stasis; Ai himself is sent to Gethen alone, as the "first mobile" or Envoy. Like all envoys of the Ekumen, he can "mindspeak"—a form of quasi-telepathic speech, which Gethenians are capable of, but of which they are unaware.[25] He lands in the Gethenian kingdom of Karhide, and spends two years attempting to persuade the members of its government of the value of joining the Ekumen. Karhide is one of two major nations on Gethen, the other being Orgoreyn.[lower-alpha 2]

The novel begins the day before an audience that Ai has obtained with Argaven Harge, the king of Karhide. Ai manages this through the help of Estraven, the prime minister, who seems to believe in Ai's mission, but the night before the audience, Estraven tells Ai that he can no longer support Ai's cause with the king. Ai begins to doubt Estraven's loyalty because of his strange mannerisms, which Ai finds effeminate and ambiguous. The behavior of people in Karhide is dictated by shifgrethor, an intricate set of unspoken social rules and formal courtesy. Ai does not understand this system, thus making it difficult for him to understand Estraven's motives, and contributing to his distrust of Estraven.[26] The next day, as he prepares to meet the King, Ai learns that Estraven has been accused of treason, and exiled from the country. The pretext for Estraven's exile was his handling of a border dispute with the neighboring country of Orgoreyn, in which Estraven was seen as being too conciliatory. Ai meets with the king, who rejects his invitation to join the Ekumen.[27] Discouraged, Ai decides to travel through Karhide, as the spring has just begun, rendering the interior of the frozen country accessible.

Ai travels to a Fastness, a dwelling of people of the Handdarata, one of two major Gethenian religions. He pays the fastness for a foretelling, an art practiced to prove the "perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question".[28][29] He asks if Gethen will be a member of the Ekumen in five years, expecting that the Foretellers will give him an ambiguous response, but he is answered "yes". This leads him to muse that the Gethenians have "trained hunch to run in harness".[30] After several months of travelling through Karhide, Ai decides to pursue his mission in Orgoreyn, to which he has received an invitation.

Ai reaches the Orgota capital of Mishnory, where he finds that the Orgota politicians are initially far more direct with him. He is given comfortable quarters, and is allowed to present his invitation to the council that rules Orgoreyn. Three members of the council, Shusgis, Obsle, and Yegey, are particularly supportive of him. These three are members of an "Open Trade" faction, which wants to end the conflict with Karhide. Estraven, who was banished from Karhide, is found working with these council members, and tells Ai that he was responsible for Ai's reception in Orgoreyn.[31] Despite the support, Ai feels uneasy. Estraven warns him not to trust the Orgota leaders, and he hears rumors of the "Sarf", or secret police, that truly control Orgoreyn. He ignores both his feeling and the warning, and is once again blindsided; he is arrested unexpectedly one night, interrogated, and sent to a far-northern labor camp where he suffers harsh cold, is forced into hard labor, and is given debilitating drugs. He becomes ill and his death seems imminent.

His captors expect him to die in the camp, but to Ai's great surprise, Estraven—whom Ai still distrusts—goes to great lengths to save him. Estraven poses as a prison guard and breaks Ai out of the farm, using his training with the Handdarata to induce dothe, or hysterical strength, to aid him in the process. Estraven spends the last of his money on supplies, and then steals more, breaking his own moral code. The pair begin a dangerous 80-day trek across the northern Gobrin ice sheet back to Karhide, because Estraven believes that the reappearance of Ai in Karhide will convince Karhide to accept the Ekumen treaty, knowing that Karhide will want the honor of doing so before Orgoreyn. Over the journey Ai and Estraven learn to trust and accept one another's differences. Ai is eventually successful in teaching Estraven mindspeech; Estraven hears Ai speaking in his mind with the voice of Estraven's dead sibling and lover Arek,[32] demonstrating the close connection that Ai and Estraven have developed. When they reach Karhide, Ai sends a radio transmission to his ship, which lands a few days later. Estraven tries to cross the land border with Orgoreyn, because he is still exiled from Karhide, but is killed by border guards, who capture Ai. Estraven's prediction is borne out when Ai's presence in Karhide triggers the collapse of governments in both Karhide and Orgoreyn—Orgoreyn's because its claim that Ai had died of a disease was shown to be false. Karhide agrees to join the Ekumen, followed shortly by Orgoreyn, completing Ai's mission.[33]

The Left Hand of Darkness has received highly positive critical responses since its publication.[41] In 1970 it won both the Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the Hugo Award, determined by science fiction fans.[22][42][43] In 1987, science fiction news and trade journal Locus ranked it number two among "All-Time Best SF Novels", based on a poll of subscribers.[10][lower-alpha 3] The novel was also a personal milestone for Le Guin, with critics calling it her "first contribution to feminism". It was one of her most popular books for many years after its publication.[22] By 2014, the novel had sold more than a million copies in English.[44]

The book has been widely praised by genre commentators, academic critics, and literary reviewers.[41] Fellow science fiction writer Algis Budrys praised the novel as "a narrative so fully realized, so compellingly told, so masterfully executed". He found the book "a novel written by a magnificent writer, a totally compelling tale of human peril and striving under circumstances in which human love, and a number of other human qualities, can be depicted in a fresh context".[45] Darko Suvin, one of the first academics to study science fiction, wrote that Left Hand was the "most memorable novel of the year",[43] and Charlotte Spivack regards the book as having established Le Guin's status as a major science-fiction writer.[6] In 1987 Harold Bloom described The Left Hand of Darkness as Le Guin's "finest work to date", and argued that critics have generally undervalued it.[8] Bloom followed this up by listing the book in his The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in Western culture.[46] In Bloom's opinion, "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time".[8]

Critics have also commented on the broad influence of the book, with writers such as Budrys citing it as an influence upon their own writing.[47] More generally it has been asserted that the work has been widely influential in the science fiction field, with The Paris Review claiming that "No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions than The Left Hand of Darkness".[47] Donna White, in her study of the critical literature on Le Guin, argued that Left Hand was one of the seminal works of science fiction, as important as Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, which is often described as the very first science fiction novel.[43] Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time the novel was written, Le Guin's ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction, but to literature in general.[22]

Left Hand has been a focus of literary critique of Le Guin's work, along with her Earthsea fiction and utopian fiction.[43] The novel was at the center of a feminist debate when it was published in 1969.[48] Alexei Panshin objected to the use of masculine "he/him/his" gender pronouns to describe its androgynous characters, and called the novel a "flat failure".[43] Other feminists maintained that the novel did not go far enough in its exploration of gender.[43] Criticism was also directed at the portrayal of androgynous characters in the "masculine" roles of politicians and statesmen but not in family roles.[49] Sarah LeFanu, for example, wrote that Le Guin turned her back on an opportunity for experimentation. She stated that "these male heroes with their crises of identity, caught in the stranglehold of liberal individualism, act as a dead weight at the center of the novel".[50] Le Guin, who identifies as a feminist, responded to these criticisms in her essay "Is Gender Necessary?" as well as by switching masculine pronouns for feminine ones in a later reprinting of "Winter's King", an unconnected short story set on Gethen.[49] In her responses, Le Guin admitted to failing to depict androgynes in stereotypically feminine roles, but said that she considered and decided against inventing gender-neutral pronouns, because they would mangle the language of the novel.[43] In the afterword of the 25th anniversary edition of the novel, she stated that her opinion on the matter had changed, and that she was "haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns."[51]

The novel is framed as part of the report that Ai sends back to the Ekumen after his time on Gethen, and as such, suggests that Ai is selecting and ordering the material.[59] Ai narrates ten chapters in the first person; the rest are made up of extracts from Estraven's personal diary and ethnological reports from an earlier observer from the Ekumen, interspersed with Gethenian myths and legends.[59] The novel begins with the following statement from Ai, explaining the need for multiple voices in the novel:[59]

I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real, than pearls are. But both are sensitive. The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact that you like the best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.[60]

The myths and legends serve to explain specific features about Gethenian culture, as well as larger philosophical aspects of society. Many of the tales used in the novel immediately precede chapters describing Ai's experience with a similar situation. For instance, a story about the dangers of foretelling is presented before Ai's own experience witnessing a foretelling.[49] Other stories include a retelling of the legend of the "place inside the storm" (about two lovers whose vow is broken when societal strictures cause one to kill themself[61]); another retelling the roots of the Yomeshta cult; a third is an ancient Orgota creation myth; a fourth is a story of one of Estraven's ancestors, which discusses what a traitor is. The presence of myths and legends has also been cited by reviewers who state that Le Guin's work, particularly Left Hand, is similar to allegory in many ways. These include the presence of a guide (Estraven) for the protagonist (Ai), and the use of myths and legends to provide a backdrop for the story.[11]

The heterogeneous structure of the novel has been described as "distinctly post-modern", and was unusual for the time of its publication,[43] in marked contrast to (primarily male-authored) traditional science fiction, which was straightforward and linear.[62] In 1999, literary scholar Donna White wrote that the unorthodox structure of the novel made it initially confusing to reviewers, before it was interpreted as an attempt to follow the trajectory of Ai's changing views.[12] Also in contrast to what was typical for male authors of the period, Le Guin narrated the action in the novel through the personal relationships she depicted.[12]

Ai's first-person narration reflects his slowly developing view, and the reader's knowledge and understanding of the Gethens evolves with Ai's awareness. He begins in naivety, gradually discovering his profound errors in judgement.[63] In this sense, the novel can be thought of as a Bildungsroman, or coming of age story.[64] Since the novel is presented as Ai's journey of transformation, Ai's position as the narrator increases the credibility of the story.[59] The narration is complemented by Le Guin's writing style, described by Bloom as "precise, dialectical—always evocative in its restrained pathos" which is "exquisitely fitted to her powers of invention".[8]

In December 2004, Phobos Entertainment acquired media rights to the novel and announced plans for a feature film and video game based on it.[65] In 2013, the Portland Playhouse and Hand2Mouth Theatre produced a stage adaptation of The Left Hand of Darkness in Portland, Oregon.[66] On April 12 and 19, 2015, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a two-part adaptation of the novel, starring Kobna Holdbrook-Smith as Genly Ai, Lesley Sharp as Estraven, Toby Jones as Argaven, Ruth Gemmell as Ashe, Louise Brealey as Tibe and Gaum, Stephen Critchlow as Shusgis, and David Acton as Obsle. The radio drama was adapted by Judith Adams and directed by Allegra McIlroy.[67] The adaptation was created and aired as part of a thematic month centered on the life and works of Ursula Le Guin, in honor of her 85th birthday.[68][69] In early 2017, the novel was picked up for production by Critical Content as a television limited series with Le Guin serving as a consulting producer.[70] The first university production of Left Hand of Darkness premiered in the University of Oregon's Robinson Theater on November 3, 2017, with a script adapted by John Schmor.[71] Many works of the transgender artist Tuesday Smillie exhibited at the Rose Art Museum take inspiration from the book.[72][73]

• Biology in fiction
• Postgenderism
• "Coming of Age in Karhide", an unconnected short story about Gethenians.

• Bernardo, Susan M.; Murphy, Graham J. (2006). Ursula K. Le Guin: A Critical Companion (1st ed.). Westport, Connecticut, United States: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-313-33225-8.
• Cadden, Mike (2005). Ursula K. Le Guin Beyond Genre: Fiction for Children and Adults (1st ed.). New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-99527-6.
• Le Guin, Ursula K. (1993). The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (revised ed.). HarperPerennial. ISBN 978-0-06-092412-6.

• Bibliography: The Left Hand of Darkness at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Author's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness Archived January 3, 2022, at the Wayback Machine
• Audio review and discussion of The Left Hand of Darkness at The Science Fiction Book Review Podcast