Review - The Left Hand of Darkness

Title: The Left Hand of Darkness
Author: Ursula K Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness is a masterpiece of fiction, and of science fiction in particular, having been awarded both the Hugo and Nebula awards when it was first published. But, for some reason, I had never read it. Then, I took the Great Course on Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind, and I was reminded of the existence of the book, so I went out and bought it.

Here is what the back cover is willing to give away about the setting and plot:

On the planet Winter, there is no gender. The Gethenians can become male or female during each mating cycle, and this is something that other cultures find incomprehensible.

The Ekumen of Known Worlds has sent an ethnologist to study the inhabitants of this forbidding, ice-bound world. At first, he finds his subjects difficult and off-putting, with their elaborate social systems and alien minds. But in the course of a long journey across the ice, he reaches an understanding with one of the Gethenians -- it might even be a kind of love..."

That's a good synopsis, but, as with most summaries of great works, doesn't do justice to the depth of the story or characters. Le Guin has created a believable world, shaped by the climate of a world in an ice age, and societies molded by a genderless race of humanity. Yet, as she makes clear in her introduction, she is not predicting such a world. In her view, while some of science fiction is "extrapolative," much, including hers, is really more of a thought experiment. And "the purpose of a thought experiment ... is not to predict the future, ... but to describe reality, the present world."

I like this description, and it set a good framework for reading the book. When I've studied science, most recently in the Great Courses, I realized how much the rational creativity of science is expressed in thought experiments. Galileo made many of his great discoveries by thinking about what must be true. As I read The Left Hand of Darkness, when I would take a break from paying attention to the story, I considered what the metaphor of the fiction was saying about Le Guin's view of reality for us. It was intriguing on its own, but it also gave me a new way to look at fiction in general.