His name reflects the levels of culture we have in Karhide, friends and hearth-brothers call him Therem, acquaintances call him Harth, and Estraven is his landname, which would be used where we use a title—yet when he learns mindspeech, up on the glacier, it is as Therem that he manages to hear it, and he hears it in his dead brother’s voice—the dead brother with whom he had a child. She took these quintessentially useless and particularly masculine endeavours and made them over into something else entirely. It was fourth in sequence of writing among the Hainish novels, preceded by City of Illusions, and followed by The Wor… But what makes it a book that continues to be great and enjoyable to read, rather than a historical curiosity, is that it’s a terrific story set in a fascinating culture, and the gender stuff is only part of that. The planet is in an ice age, and the adaptations to the climate have shaped the cultures of the planet at least as much as the gender thing has. Try These Ten Standalone Fantasy Novels! They’re like real cultures, with real oddities, and the way the story is told enhances that. She was clearly fascinated with polar exploration—she has a short story in The Compass Rose about women from South America getting to the South Pole first and not marking it or telling anyone. If you haven’t read it, and if you’ve always seen it mentioned as a worthy feminist classic with weirdly gendered aliens, you might be surprised by this interesting story of the discovery of a planet and a journey across the ice. Thank you for keeping the discussion, and our community, civil and respectful. The Left Hand of Darkness is the story of how the Terran Genly Ai comes to the planet Gethen to persuade Gethen to enter the Ekumen, the community of worlds. I cry when he dies, and at the end of the book, every time. The novel is set in the fictional Hainish universe as part of the Hainish Cycle, a series of novels and short stories by Le Guin, which she introduced in the 1964 short story "The Dowry of the Angyar". Got Series Fatigue? The heart of the book is the journey across the glacier, two people, from different worlds, manhauling a sledge across vast distances. The battle may not be over. Our Privacy Notice has been updated to explain how we use cookies, which you accept by continuing to use this website. It is light that is the left hand of darkness, and darkness the right hand of light, as in the yin-yang symbol, in which dualities are united. The book is set in the same universe as a number of Le Guin’s other books, many written much earlier. All comments must meet the community standards outlined in Tor.com's Moderation Policy or be subject to moderation. The prophetic insight of The Left Hand of Darkness lies in its exploration of what came to be called gender issues. A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can choose - and change - their gender. Poor Estraven, so tragic, so clear-sighted, so perfectly and essentially of his world and culture! Five Fantasy Novels Starring Self-Taught Protagonists, Marvel is Reportedly Making a Nick Fury Series For Disney+, Rankin & Bass’ The Hobbit Predicted the Future of Pop Culture. It’s a commonplace of SF for planets to have only one country and culture. I’ve loved him since I was a teenager. Le Guin writes about them believably and interestingly, and I think they enhance the book by being there and providing more strangeness. It has the same furniture, the ansible, the Nearly as Fast as Light ships, the long ago Hainish experimental colonization of planets with tweaked humans—were they trying to make their own aliens?