The Left Hand of Darkness

I read this years ago and didn't care for it much. But I was looking then for gay sci-fi and it didn't satisfy. (It's no Dhalgren)! This time I'm ready to engage just with LeGuin for her anthropological self and I liked it much better.

The world building is exquisite. Some of the details of the politics are incredibly intricate. And just barely followable, she moves fast. But it comes together into a really compelling story about a culture's response to an alien visitor representing an advanced technological power. It recalls narratives of Europeans in Japan, or China, or Hawaiʻi. Only a much gentler and kinder one focussed on common humanity and exchange of knowledge, not colonialism and weapons.

I still don't like it as a gay novel. It's just not about the gay male experience and doesn't try to be. I certainly recognize it as a queer novel though, a whole society of androgynous / changing gender humans. But their whole society is that way and its presented as entirely normal, there's nothing of the queer experience of otherness. Well there is, the cis-male narrator himself is "the Pervert", but LeGuin doesn't explore his experience as a gender variant in this society as much as I'd like.

But genderqueer and trans friends of mine find much more of themselves in this book. Or at least the hope of the experience of being something other than the basic male/female gender, of giving alternative gender experiences equal respect. That's a good thing.

Finally on gender, I tripped over LeGuin's use of "he" as the gender-neutral pronoun. LeGuin did this on purpose and then later regretted it, and part of me wonders if a light edit using they/them pronouns wouldn't read better in 2026.

Mostly I want to go back to the main sci-fi story, the part mostly separate from gender. The way the Envoy is misunderstood, and misunderstands, his alienness in this society with different ways of communicating and being. The deep friendship with Estraven is very moving, in particular the heartbreaking last third of the story. It's a lovely first contact tale.