Milwood Classics Book Club

Science fiction done right can call the most deep-seated social structures into question and few ever did it better than Ursula K. Le Guin. In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin builds a world in a distant future that is logically consistent, feels natural, and then presents a society that confounded minds in the year the book was published.

In this book, Le Guin tells the story of Genly Ai, a representative from Terra, traveling to the planet Gethen on a diplomatic mission. In this universe, all people are descended from the world of Hain that colonized multiple worlds long ago. Genetic engineering and evolution have made the peoples of these planets very different from their original progenitors, providing a universe where Le Guin can take speculative fiction in any direction she wants.

On Gethen, humans have no discernable sex. Characteristics appear every month and at random. This biology made it possible for one individual to be both a father and a mother. For purposes of the novel, however, the inhabitants of Gethen were generally without sex or gender and the resulting culture lacked such concepts making it difficult for Genly Ai to navigate the society.

And so, amid second wave feminism, Le Guin posits a world without gender and wonders about the effect that would have on the population. The mirror Le Guin holds up to our world is profound and it is for this reason that this book has remained so important over the last sixty years.

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