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Die Bewohner des Planeten Gethen sind uns Menschen verblüffend ähnlich – mit einem Unterschied: Sie sind androgyn, und während einer kurzen Phase sexueller Erregbarkeit entscheidet sich, welcher der beiden Partner einer Beziehung welches Geschlecht annimmt. In einer solchen Gesellschaft sind geschlechtsspezifische Machtkämpfe und Hierarchien, wie wir sie kennen, nicht möglich. Doch es gibt andere Formen von Macht – und diese werden einem Abgesandten von der Erde schmerzhaft bewusst, als er zum Spielball politischer Interessen wird und gezwungen ist, in Begleitung eines Gethenianers durch die Eiswüsten des Planeten zu fliehen.
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Previews available in: English
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Ciencia-ficción, Hugo Award Winner, award:hugo_award=1970, award:hugo_award=novel, human nature, gender, space travel, ice age, Science fiction, American literature, Fiction, science fiction, general, LGBTQ gender identity, LGBTQ science fiction & fantasy, collection:otherwise_tiptree_award=winner, award:nebula_award=novel, Life on other planets, Fiction, American Science fiction, Extraterrestrial anthropology, Sex rolePlaces
Winter (fictional planet)Showing 6 featured editions. View all 85 editions?
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The left hand of darkness
2003, Ace Books
in English
- Ace mass-market ed., [50th anniversary ed.].
0441478123 9780441478125
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Book Details
First Sentence
"Ich werde meinen Bericht schreiben, als wäre er eine Geschichte, denn schon als Kind in meiner Heimatwelt habe ich gelernt, dass die Wahrheit eine Sache der Vorstellungskraft ist."
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Comment by Kim Stanley Robinson, on The Guardian's website:
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin (1969)
One of my favorite novels is The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K Le Guin. For more than 40 years I've been recommending this book to people who want to try science fiction for the first time, and it still serves very well for that. One of the things I like about it is how clearly it demonstrates that science fiction can have not only the usual virtues and pleasures of the novel, but also the startling and transformative power of the thought experiment.
In this case, the thought experiment is quickly revealed: "The king was pregnant," the book tells us early on, and after that we learn more and more about this planet named Winter, stuck in an ice age, where the humans are most of the time neither male nor female, but with the potential to become either. The man from Earth investigating this situation has a lot to learn, and so do we; and we learn it in the course of a thrilling adventure story, including a great "crossing of the ice". Le Guin's language is clear and clean, and has within it both the anthropological mindset of her father Alfred Kroeber, and the poetry of stories as magical things that her mother Theodora Kroeber found in native American tales. This worldly wisdom applied to the romance of other planets, and to human nature at its deepest, is Le Guin's particular gift to us, and something science fiction will always be proud of. Try it and see – you will never think about people in quite the same way again.
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- Created July 10, 2021
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August 6, 2021 | Edited by Jenner | Merge works |
August 6, 2021 | Edited by Jenner | Merge works |
July 10, 2021 | Edited by tastytea | Added german edition. |
July 10, 2021 | Edited by tastytea | Added new cover |
July 10, 2021 | Created by tastytea | Added new book. |