Play Book Tag discussion

Ursula K. Le Guin is brilliant. She clearly understands culture, power, social psychology, language, trust, etc. She delves into powerful topics, but the writing is so subtle and nuanced, that much of the drama is under the surface. Overall the book is brilliant. I did find a few parts to be boring, but rereading a section almost always led to clarity or an “aha” moment.

The Left Hand of Darkness is about an Envoy from an intergalaxy coordination group (my term) approaching a planet he calls Winter, to see if they might Join. This is a very slow process requiring research by predecessors over a course of years or generations. A single person won’t generate the fear and defensive military action that a larger group would. His job requires subtle, careful communication. Every nuance could matter, and a mistake could lead to disaster. He often seemed to misunderstand what his counterpart was saying, he couldn’t tell that he was trustworthy. The description of this process is very nuanced, and uncertain, and I sometimes took on the character’s frustrations, or feelings of uncertainty. I was reminded of things I observed about communication and trust in corporate settings. (So often I wanted to say - just say what you mean- but in some companies, open communication could come back to bite you. It’s worse in politics.)

The envoy, observes that there is no war on this planet. He is surprised that while there is small scale violence, there is no evidence of massive actions. A tension I felt throughout the book was that he would inadvertently teach them about war, and plant the seeds for disaster. Especially when he found himself in between two factions.

The discussion of the unique and fluid genders was especially fascinating and nuanced. Each person could potentially father a child with a partner one year, and give birth as the mother later in time. He discusses the potential causes and evolutionary advantage of this balance of genders. There is so rape, dominance of one gender, and in this world there is no war. It makes perfect sense to me that all these things are linked to gender balance.

Interesting review. I really disliked this book when I read it a few years ago, and had a really tough time plowing through it until it hit the 'boy's adventure' section at the end.

During the pandemic I persuaded my Feminerdy Book Club to read it because they tend to pick just the latest published with hot reviews and I like thinks to age a while. Plus I'm a far more diverse reader than all but one of them are and felt a need to read the classics. I'm on a mission you might say to diversify their reading of SFF while they are bringing me into their world. Not one of us liked it -- primarily we all agreed that the whole gender fluidity concept was fascinating, there were a lot of aspects to the world that we thought were surprising in a book lauded as feminist SF, such as the narrow-mindedness of the narrator. Also the whole 'boy's adventure' at the end felt out of place. We kept reminding ourselves of when it was written - and we certainly appreciated just how ground-breaking it was, plus LeGuin being the first to break through the SFF awards glass ceiling with this book. But in the end, no one particularly liked it nor has read any further in the series.

For the record - I had previously read and liked A Wizard of Earthsea.

I love Le Guin. This is the well-known novel but The Dispossessed is my favorite (and source of my screen name.) She is a couple generations old now, it might be odd to read in today's literary climate. When Harry Potter came out I saw it as an inferior Earthsea, but they certainly were more cheery and faster-paced.

anarresa wrote: "I love Le Guin. This is the well-known novel but The Dispossessed is my favorite (and source of my screen name.) She is a couple generations old now, it might be odd to read in today's literary cli..."

I didn’t discover her until a couple years ago. (I was turned off by sexism and weirdness in sci-fi when I was young. Too bad I didn’t try her sooner.)

I want to read The Dispossessed too. I read The Word for World Is Forest this year and I loved it. I actually thought it was one of her newer books when I clicked on it. It’s fast paced and it felt current. It’s in line with recent novels related to colonialism and environmental exploitation.

I gave this 3 stars, it was fine but I had expected more. However, it's good to remember that the idea of gender fluidity was original and shocking at the time.

NancyJ wrote: "anarresa wrote: "I love Le Guin. This is the well-known novel but The Dispossessed is my favorite (and source of my screen name.) She is a couple generations old now, it might be odd to read in tod..."

There was and is a lot of sexism in some circles of sci-fi and fantasy. Stories by Asimov and Heinlein of people in space still had beautiful young women serving drinks (plus everyone is smoking!) Many of the stories were published in magazines that catered to men. And even today it is a big problem on some online platforms.

But I still remember in 1972, a college friend of mine named Patty telling me she wanted to write sci-fi/fantasy because it was a great field for women. It is all about "what if" and you can create society any way you want. She owned one of the few books that was a collection of sci-fi by women. (of course several women were writing under men's names and nobody knew.) Patty turned out to be Patricia C. Wrede, a successful writer of fantasy mostly for children, such as Dealing with Dragons, with feminist themes. I don't know why but I was really impressed with that conversation and I have such a clear memory of where we were when she was telling me about her plans. In recent years, many women, including women of color, have written very successful books in these genres.