The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Narrated by George Guidall

This is the 1969 novel that won both the Hugo and the Nebula and made Ursula K. Le Guin’s reputation as a science fiction author. It asks a simple question--What if people were neither male nor female?--and a number of corollary questions, including What sort of society might that lead to?, and How would such individuals view us?

The setting is the planet Gethen, which was originally settled by humans who, for reasons long lost in the mists of time, decided to run a genetic experiment and create human beings who were neither male nor female. Gethenians are neuter most of the time, but every 26 days they briefly go into a state called kemmer, when they experience sexual desire and become either male or female, depending on who else is nearby in kemmer and how their kemmer is manifesting. At that point they are fertile and can either fertilize an egg or produce one and become pregnant.

The protagonist who sees all of this is Genly Ai, a lone emissary from a loose confederation of worlds called the Ekumen. Genly’s task is to convince the Gethenians to join the Ekumen--but he must do so without any show of military or technological might (because that would be coercive), and indeed without any companionship of his own kind at all, or any really convincing proof that the Ekumen actually exists. He’s completely on his own.

On Gethen he’s also considered a deviant, a perverted sort of freak, because he is always, by their lights, in kemmer. And he has a great deal of difficulty understanding Gethenians and their culture, because, as he says to the one friend he makes on that planet, he grew up in a society where one’s sex is, in many ways, the most important thing about a person, defining or strongly influencing what sort of person one is, one’s capabilities, one’s point of view, and even one’s ethics. On a planet where there is no gender and sex is fluid, persisting in thinking of neuter individuals as either male or female seriously handicaps Genly’s ability to get any real grasp on the culture, on whom to trust, on how people are actually reacting to him and how to influence that.

So, plenty of strikes against poor Genly, and of course things go south. Badly. Fortunately he has, in spite of himself, made one friend, though it takes him a very long time to realize it. The question is whether that will be enough--to save his life, and, more importantly, to accomplish his mission.

Le Guin does a lot of exploring in this book that may seem old hat to us now--and more that we still haven’t done much of yet in our culture. As with any science fiction book, it’s as fascinating a picture of the society the writer lived in at the time as of the society it depicts. With Le Guin’s keen and curious intellect behind it, it’s no wonder that this What If tale caught so many people’s imagination. It first caught mine when I was in my teens, and thirty-odd years later, it still doesn’t disappoint.