An edition of The Left Hand of Darkness (1900)

The left hand of darkness

25th Anniversary ed.
  • 4.32 ·
  • 37 Ratings
  • 400 Want to read
  • 15 Currently reading
  • 68 Have read

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  • 4.32 ·
  • 37 Ratings
  • 400 Want to read
  • 15 Currently reading
  • 68 Have read

Buy this book

Last edited by dcapillae
June 28, 2024 | History
An edition of The Left Hand of Darkness (1900)

The left hand of darkness

25th Anniversary ed.
  • 4.32 ·
  • 37 Ratings
  • 400 Want to read
  • 15 Currently reading
  • 68 Have read

When The Left Hand of Darkness first appeared in 1969, the original jacket copy read, "Once in a long while a whole new world is created for us. Such worlds are Middle Earth, Dune - and such a world is Winter." Twenty-five years and a Hugo and Nebula Award later, these words remain true. In Winter, or Gethen, Ursula K. Le Guin has created a fully realized planet and people. But Gethen society is more than merely a fascinating creation.

The concept of a society existing totally without sexual prejudices is even more relevant today than it was in 1969. This special 25th anniversary edition of The Left Hand of Darkness contains not only the complete, unaltered text of the landmark original but also a thought-provoking new afterword and four new appendixes by Ms. Le Guin.

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When the human ambassador Genly Ai is sent to Gethen, the planet known as Winter by those outsiders who have experienced its arctic climate, he thinks that his mission will be a standard one of making peace between warring factions. Instead the ambassador finds himself wildly unprepared. For Gethen is inhabited by a society with a rich, ancient culture full of strange beauty and deadly intrigue - a society of people who are both male and female in one, and neither.

This lack of fixed gender, and the resulting lack of gender-based discrimination, is the very cornerstone of Gethen life. But Genly is all too human. Unless he can overcome his ingrained prejudices about the significance of "male" and "female," he may destroy both his mission and himself.

Publish Date
Publisher
Walker
Language
English
Pages
345

Buy this book

Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The  left hand of darkness
The left hand of darkness
2003, Ace Books
in English - Ace mass-market ed., [50th anniversary ed.].
Cover of: The  left hand of darkness
The left hand of darkness
1994, Walker
in English - 25th Anniversary ed.
Cover of: The Left Hand of Darkness
The Left Hand of Darkness
March 15, 1987, Ace
Paperback in English
Cover of: The Left Hand of Darkness
The Left Hand of Darkness
November 1983, Ace Books
in English
Cover of: The  left hand of darkness

Add another edition?

Book Details


Edition Notes

Published in
New York

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
813/.54
Library of Congress
PS3562.E42 L39 1994

The Physical Object

Pagination
345 p. ;
Number of pages
345

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL1102213M
ISBN 10
0802713025
LCCN
94027147
OCLC/WorldCat
30702191
Library Thing
23117
Goodreads
831880

Work Description

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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History

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June 28, 2024 Edited by dcapillae Merge works (MRID: 144990)
February 9, 2024 Edited by andrbaar Edited without comment.
December 19, 2023 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
November 30, 2023 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
October 16, 2009 Created by WorkBot add works page