The Left Hand of Darkness
Jan. 28th, 2018 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoThe passing of Ursula K. Le Guin is a great loss to the English language literary world, and not just to science fiction or fantasy readers. A true Grand Master, she was a leader in the realm of speculative fiction as well as a superbly skilled artist of language and imagery.
Watching the comments of many who said they had never actually read any of her work, or had only read the Earthsea books, sent me back to my shelves to revisit some of Le Guin's works that I first read many years ago. First and foremost among these in my opinion would be The Left Hand of Darkness, published about 1969 if I remember correctly. I have read it at least twice, once as an assignment in a literature class and once on my own that I recall. Overall I have probably read about half of her published works, and have always intended to complete the list. This one book, though, stands out in my memory as perhaps her greatest and most visionary work. It deals with issues of gender and sex role quite neatly, and is often lauded for that, but there is much more to it. Political topics such as nationalism, economics, xenophobia, language and cultural barriers, greed, and power are all inherent to the story and its characters. The realities of long distance space travel are merely touched upon as an element underpinning the plot, but handled in a manner that is accurate and consistent with our current understanding of relativity and physics. Le Guin's description of the "ansible," a device that permits instantaneous communication over galactic distances, was puzzling in 1969 but fits in almost perfectly with our understanding of quantum entanglement and how it might be used now, half a century after she first described it.
Le Guin was made a Gandalf Award Grand Master of Fantasy by the World Science Fiction Society in 1975, and a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2003 (rather tardily in my opinion.) She received numerous other awards during her writing career.
The Left Hand of Darkness received both a Hugo and a Nebula.
I can't recommend Grand Master Ursula Le Guin's writings strongly enough. If you haven't read her beyond the realm of Earthsea, you should. And there is no better starting place than The Left Hand of Darkness.
[I was disturbed to find that my own local public library did not have the book on the shelf, nor was it in their circulating e-book collection. Much to my satisfaction, within a day of pointing this out and urging them to purchase this title and also The Dispossessed, both were in fact made available to users of the e-book selection.]
Watching the comments of many who said they had never actually read any of her work, or had only read the Earthsea books, sent me back to my shelves to revisit some of Le Guin's works that I first read many years ago. First and foremost among these in my opinion would be The Left Hand of Darkness, published about 1969 if I remember correctly. I have read it at least twice, once as an assignment in a literature class and once on my own that I recall. Overall I have probably read about half of her published works, and have always intended to complete the list. This one book, though, stands out in my memory as perhaps her greatest and most visionary work. It deals with issues of gender and sex role quite neatly, and is often lauded for that, but there is much more to it. Political topics such as nationalism, economics, xenophobia, language and cultural barriers, greed, and power are all inherent to the story and its characters. The realities of long distance space travel are merely touched upon as an element underpinning the plot, but handled in a manner that is accurate and consistent with our current understanding of relativity and physics. Le Guin's description of the "ansible," a device that permits instantaneous communication over galactic distances, was puzzling in 1969 but fits in almost perfectly with our understanding of quantum entanglement and how it might be used now, half a century after she first described it.
Le Guin was made a Gandalf Award Grand Master of Fantasy by the World Science Fiction Society in 1975, and a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2003 (rather tardily in my opinion.) She received numerous other awards during her writing career.
The Left Hand of Darkness received both a Hugo and a Nebula.
I can't recommend Grand Master Ursula Le Guin's writings strongly enough. If you haven't read her beyond the realm of Earthsea, you should. And there is no better starting place than The Left Hand of Darkness.
[I was disturbed to find that my own local public library did not have the book on the shelf, nor was it in their circulating e-book collection. Much to my satisfaction, within a day of pointing this out and urging them to purchase this title and also The Dispossessed, both were in fact made available to users of the e-book selection.]
no subject
Date: 2018-01-29 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 03:09 am (UTC)The missing Le Guin here that I'm trying to find is Tehanu, and I know I had it in hardcover but it's not on the shelf with her other books and so far can't be found. In the process of searching, I discovered that two of her books that I have were autographed. I know I've never been physically close enough to ask for her to sign one, so they must have come that way from wherever I bought them and I never even noticed.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-08 04:32 pm (UTC)She's a bit like C.J. Cherryh, in that I keep finding new books of hers that I never knew existed. (Looking up a bibliography would spoil the fun.) Most recent of these was The Word for World is Forest, one of the few books written from an alien's perspective that still makes them feel wholly alien.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-08 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-03 03:19 pm (UTC)