A novelist’s business is lying. I sent The Left Hand of Darkness to Terry Carr, a brilliant editor newly in charge of an upscale Ace paperback line. I am telling the truth. In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. [34] Rescued by Estraven, the deposed Prime Minister of Karhide, Genly realizes that cultural differences—specifically shifgrethor, gender roles and Gethenian sexuality—had kept him from understanding their relationship previously. “If this goes on, this is what will happen.” A prediction is made. Many of the tales used in the novel immediately precede chapters describing Ai's experience with a similar situation. Ai's mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen, but he is stymied by a lack of understanding of their culture. Estraven believes that by preventing war he was saving Karhidish lives and being loyal to his country, while King Argaven sees it as a betrayal. Her protagonists are frequently interested in the cultures they are investigating, and are motivated to preserve them rather than conquer them. Douglas Barbour said that the fiction of the Hainish Universe contains a theme of balance between light and darkness, a central theme of Taoism. Le Guin's interest in Taoism influenced much of her science fiction work. They may describe the Marshalsea Prison, which was a real place, or the battle of Borodino, which really was fought, or the process of cloning, which really takes place in laboratories, or the deterioration of a personality, which is described in real textbooks of psychology, and so on. Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists? She snapped it up like a cat with a kibble and asked to represent me thenceforth. [41] Fellow science fiction writer Algis Budrys praised the novel as "a narrative so fully realized, so compellingly told, so masterfully executed". Not only is the bookshelf incomplete without owning it, so is the reader without having read it. That startled me. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the writer’s or the reader’s. The only native who believes the Ekumen can save Gethen is Estraven, a native whom Ai regards with suspicion. [23], These conflicts are demonstrated by the varying loyalties of the main characters. I wonder how different my life would have been if I had read her work sooner. Only by abandoning his prejudice—and learning to trust the Otherness of his savior—can he survive his ordeal. In fact, reading Le Guin again may cause the eye to narrow somewhat disapprovingly at the younger generation: what new ground are they breaking that is not already explored here with greater skill and acumen? It is science fiction of an earlier time, a time that has not worn particularly well in the genre. Please try again. If I could have said it non-metaphorically, I would not have written all these words, this novel; and Genly Ai would never have sat down at my desk and used up my ink and typewriter ribbon in informing me, and you, rather solemnly, that the truth is a matter of the imagination. Rereading The Left Hand of Darkness, decades after its publication, one feels that those who chose it for the Hugo and Nebula awards were right to do so, for it truly does stand out as one of the great books of that era. The good news stops there. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the Club of Rome arrives: somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life. [37] Yegey is the commensal who first finds Estraven during his exile, and who gives Estraven a job and a place to live in Mishnory. This weight of verifiable place-event-phenomenon-behavior makes the reader forget that he is reading a pure invention, a history that never took place anywhere but in that unlocalizable region, the author’s mind. "[51], Le Guin's works set in the Hainish universe explore the idea of human expansion, a theme found in the future history novels of other science-fiction authors such as Isaac Asimov. The issue is not desire and the sex act, but rather how our social perceptions, interactions and expectations are shaped in rather profound ways by our ideas about gender. 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