Comment by Kim Stanley Robinson, on The Guardian's website: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin (1969)
One of my favorite novels is The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin. For more than 40 years I've been recommending this book to …
Comment by Kim Stanley Robinson, on The Guardian's website: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin (1969)
One of my favorite novels is The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin. For more than 40 years I've been recommending this book to people who want to try science fiction for the first time, and it still serves very well for that. One of the things I like about it is how clearly it demonstrates that science fiction can have not only the usual virtues and pleasures of the novel, but also the startling and transformative power of the thought experiment.
In this case, the thought experiment is quickly revealed: "The king was pregnant," the book tells us early on, and after that we learn more and more about this planet named Winter, stuck in an ice age, where the humans are most of the time neither male nor female, but with the potential to become either. The man from Earth investigating this situation has a lot to learn, and so do we; and we learn it in the course of a thrilling adventure story, including a great "crossing of the ice". Le Guin's language is clear and clean, and has within it both the anthropological mindset of her father Alfred Kroeber, and the poetry of stories as magical things that her mother Theodora Kroeber found in native American tales. This worldly wisdom applied to the romance of other planets, and to human nature at its deepest, is Le Guin's particular gift to us, and something science fiction will always be proud of. Try it and see – you will never think about people in quite the same way again.
296 pages
Portuguese language
Published Dec. 19, 2008 by Editora Aleph.
256 pages
English language
Published July 30, 1981 by Macdonald Futura.
mass market paperback
Published Oct. 11, 1975 by Ace Books.
mass market paperback
Published July 26, 1974 by Ace.
336 pages
Spanish language
Published Dec. 28, 2021 by Minotauro.
Paperback
Portuguese language
Published Sept. 26, 2014 by Editora Aleph.
English language
Published Aug. 5, 1986 by Ace Books.
paperback, 312 pages
Français language
Published July 18, 1971 by Robert Laffont.
269 pages
Italian language
Published May 14, 2003
German language
Published Jan. 25, 2023
Unknown Binding
English language
Published July 30, 2000 by Turtleback Books Distributed by Demco Media.
eBook
English language
Published 2017 by Orion Publishing Group.
English language
Published March 20, 2017 by Gollancz.
304 pages
Published March 11, 1976 by Ace Books.
304 pages
Published June 28, 1982 by Ace Books.
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