#the left hand of darkness by le guin

[nellasbookplanet]

The three tiers of queer sff:

Broke: what is worldbuilding? Made in a lab to be as blandly inoffensive as possible. Time to randomly namedrope terms like 'nonbinary' and 'ace' while doing zero work actually incorporating them into the world or characters and have someone give a speech about how valid they are. Lines like 'I'm too ace for this' while never exploring the concept of asexuality or aromanticism and still having very central romance plotlines is common. I hate it here learn how to write realistic dialogue and fully realized characters I'm begging.

Woke: more ore less typical sci-fi and fantasy but It’s Queer Now. Might include in-universe queerphobia to be struggled against or may have queer identities be fully normalized. Can be done bad or well depending on the skill of the writer. A good way to explore our contemporary ideas of gender and sexuality or to have a bit of a power fantasy with lesbian princesses and trans knights. There will probably be a bisexual love triangle.

Bespoke: what is a gender. What is monogamy. What is polyamory. What is romance. What is platonic. Time to show you the most fucked up uncategorizable relationship you’ve ever seen. There may be weird ass metaphorical sex

[ringneckedpheasant]

watercolors by trans artist tuesday smilie

[littlestpersimmon]

Genly Ai

[mourningmaybells]

Ursula K. Le Guin would do numbers on tumblr

[ulyuxe]

Books read in 2024: THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. Le Guin

But it was from the difference between us, not from the affinities and likenesses, but from the difference, that that love came: and it was itself the bridge, the only bridge, across what divided us.

[evandered]

homage to one of my favourite books ever

[evelasco-art]

Personal work inspired by greatest writer ever aka Ursula K. Le Guin's short story Winter's King. You can find it in The Wind's Twelve Quarters, it's set in the same world as The Left Hand of Darkness and it's... well, brilliant, like pretty much all her writing.

“Thus, although the best known picture is that dark image of a young king standing above an old king who lies dead in a corridor lit only by mirror-reflections of a burning city, set it aside for a while.”

And then, as she often does, proceeds to break your heart.

At first, I wanted to make 3-4 illustrations for this story, but found a way to put all scenes into a single piece. And I believe that actually works better, given the cyclic nature of the story.

I'm not done illustrating Gethen. Genly Ai and Therem Harth rem ir Estraven: you are next. Once I finish the commissions I'm working on and have the time and energy for personal art, that is.

[kailysander]

The Left Hand of Darkness

[the-entire-chinese-population]

[eleanor-arroway]

times, places, and practices that I want to learn from to imagine a hopeful future for humanity 🍃

the three sisters (squash, beans, maize) stock photo - alamy // anecdote by Ira Byock about Margaret Mead // art by Amanda Key // always coming home by Ursula K. Le Guin // Yup'ik basket weaver Lucille Westlock photographed by John Rowley // the left hand of darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin // photo by Jacob Klassen // the carrier bag theory of fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin // article in national geographic // the dawn of everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow // braiding sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer // the birchbark house by Louise Erdrich // photo by John Noltner

I'm looking for more content and book recs in this vein, so please send them my way!

[art-of-pluton]

"Like the end and the way"

I think about The Left Hand of Darkness literally every day since I first read it in july

[lazyydaisyyy]

Ursula K. Le Guin, “Author’s Note” from The Left Hand of Darkness

[pg13judaskiss]

...that doesn't mean I'm predicting that in a millennium or so we'll all be androgynous, or announcing that I think we dammed well ought to be androgynous. I'm merely observing, in the peculiar, devious, and thought-experimemtal manner proper to science fiction, that if you look at us at certain odd times of the day in certain weathers, we already are.

Ursula K. Le Guin in the Author's Note (1976) to The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Adult SFF Books Bracket: Round 3

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

The Murderbot Diaries series (All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, Exit Strategy, Network Effect, Fugitive Telemetry, System Collapse, and other stories) by Martha Wells

Endorsement from submitter: "Asexual and agender main character. In later books side characters are revealed to be in poly relationship."

"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.

On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.

Science fiction, novella, series, adult

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hainish Cycle series)

A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.

Science fiction, classics, speculative fiction, anthropological science fiction, distant future, adult

[ringneckedpheasant]

[strangers in a strange land, wanderers in a vast and unknowable universe]

[punkrockismyreligion]

How does one hate a country, or love one? […] I know people, I know towns, farms, hills and rivers and rocks, I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply?

— Ursula K. Le Guin – The Left Hand of Darkness (1969, p. 212)