The Left Hand of Darkness

first off, just on gender politics alone it's really interesting. the assertion that Winter is a planet "with no gender" is a lie, and belies the dated conception of gender and gender roles of the 60s within which the book was concieved- yet in it's own way, without perhaps being as critical as I'd like, it holds a mirror to our own ideas of gender. I mean, a world where people that inject hormones to achieve their desired gender presentation? and those people are all literally referred to as capital-p Perverts by the rest of society? Does that sound familiar to you? And of course the usual le guin standards of multi-layered societal building, interrogation, and extrapolation through different points of view is always great stuff to chew on intellectually. Occasionally character exploration comes off weak because of all the page space needed to explore this, and I'm sure if you don't find it captivating it would be a total bore of exposition dumps at times. It really worked for me though. Taking a break from my chronological readthrough of Le Guin's novels for my next read, but pretty excited to read Tombs of Atuan after that.

I didn't realise how much I loved this book until I reread it. It is the scifi book on gender in a very substantive way, but it is also, as the author acknowledges, out of date and lacking. Like Genly, le Guin and society learned and moved - one way and now, sadly, another...

It still shows misogyny in how Genly thinks of women and his (initial) attempts to put Gethians into gendered categories - perhaps exaggerated by the choice of "he" as pronoun (a great example of how "default" is not the same as "neutral").

But it is also much much more than just the scifi gender book. So much politics which must have had an impact on me when I read the book as a youngster - especially on patriotism and kindness - that I picked up much more brazenly on each reread.

Now to go discuss at book club #wsf