The First Envoy to a world always comes alone. One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin

Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
The Left Hand of Darkness is a fictional thought experiment about not aliens invading earth, but earthlings venturing to other planets and becoming alien themselves. Our narrator is the 'First Envoy/Mobile' to the planet Gethen (also known as Winter, for reasons which will become clear very soon), a human man named Genly Ai. When we first encounter Genly, he is embedded in the country of Karhide on Gethen, seeking audience with the current king. His goal as First Envoy is to make the planet aware of the existence of a much larger universe and coalition (The Ekumen) and he's aiming to receive approval to send his ship and comrades down to land on Gethen. At first, it seems like this is close to happening, but then the winds shift quickly, and though Genly Ai avoids so harsh a sentence, his only Karhidish 'acquaintance/frenemy' (Lord Estraven) is forced into exile.

At this point, both figures make their way to a neighboring country, Orgoreyn, through very different means. Estraven has mostly fallen from favor, bearing shame even in a different country for his supposed 'traitorous' act of supporting the madcap alien who was obviously just spinning stories. Genly tries again to connect the planet to the Ekumen, this time through Orgoreyn and their leading bodies. The new country is full of spies and competing allegiances, though, and he realizes too late that he should have heeded Estraven's warnings to leave or call his ship before he receives approval.

Genly Ai is imprisoned in the equivalent of a science fiction gulag, fed next to nothing and living on the very brink of death in a labor camp. Estraven comes and saves Genly Ai, and the two outlaws hatch a harebrained scheme to cross a glacier to get back to Karhide. Estraven is confident that the winds have shifted again, and now Karhide would be amenable to Genly Ai's mission. They survive this seemingly impossible journey, after which Estraven is very quickly outed and then is killed/sort of commits suicide by action. (I know, kind of letdown, hunh?) Genly Ai realizes only at the very end of the journey that he really liked, maybe even loved Estraven, and his ship arrives with a bunch of other earthlings.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here

Dear blobbety-blob enthusiasts,

Greetings! If that felt a little scattered, it's because the book was kind of scattered. I mean, I really wanted to like it, given that it's pretty subversive and it's a fantasy/sci-fi novel by a badass American lady author. And I did really like certain parts of it, just not so much the plot part. I didn't get into it in the summary, because it's oddly not really relevant to the plot, but all the beings on Gethen are androgynous, meaning they can be male or female based on different periods, and during certain ages any Gethenian can bear children. It's probably the most interesting part of the book, but I felt like it could have risen more to be highlighted in the novel/incorporated into the plot. 

I honestly didn't really care what happened to Genly Ai, and that's just not a good sign. And when Estraven took things into his (their? pronouns unclear) hands, I was like, oh. Ok. Well that's that, I guess. 

That being said, there were some bits I did really love. I will share them with you now!
Introduction to the novel
Perhaps another reason why I didn't love this book was that I actually read the introduction (which I never do, for reasons I have written about at length, but she wrote this one, so I counted it as part of the 'book') and I LOVED it. Like, it's some of my favorite writing of all time. Unfortunately, it felt like that writing was from some different person or different instance of Ursula LeGuin. Here are the parts I liked. 

Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

She has a wonderful playfulness with sci-fi and future-telling and lies and truth, and that's one of my favorite passages. Here's another. 

In fact, while we read a novel, we are insane - bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren't there, we hear their voices, we watch the battle of Borodino with them, we may even become Napoleon. Sanity returns (in most cases [hagh!]) when the book is closed.  Is it any wonder that no truly respectable society has ever trusted its artists?"

And one more!

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we're done with it, we may find - if it's a good novel - that we're a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it's very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed. 

I feel this way all the time about books. Especially in a decade like this last one, where I've read easily 200, 250 books for the blog and for fun, and they start to bleed together. I wonder if I'm doing them a disservice by pushing one of them out of my head to make room for another, but then I remember that they're all still there, somehow, every last one of them. Maybe not the separate lines, but the way they changed me, the way I felt, the empathy I built in sharing that world, even just for a little while. 

Concepts and world-building
Some of you know this if you know me, but I've been working on my own novel for about a year now, and one of the pieces I'm working on is world-building. I feel like I should have taken a class with Ursula, because my favorite parts of her book were unique and distinct aspects of the world that she generated and constructed entire theories and logic around. I did also feel like maybe Ursula needed a better editor, or a slightly different structure for this novel, but hey - we all have room to grow, right Carol Dweck? 

Here are some of the world-building bits that stood out for me. 

kemmering - Tbqh, I'm still a little unclear on what this is, exactly, but it was a super interesting concept. It has to do with Gethenian androgyny and sexuality, and how they have sex and mate and reproduce. At least I think it does. Anyway, it also seemed both more finite and more fluid than human sexuality, which was kind of a fun mind-bender to chew on.

androgyny - Again, this was probably my favorite thing about the book, and on some level, I'm sure it was quite freeing for a number of marginalized populations (and maybe even just folks who feel like they don't fit so cleanly and clearly into our definitions and boxes). There was also a sort of badass feminist quality to it, which was great. BUT, I have to say I was bummed that for being so subversive and cool and out there, Ursula still made her narrator a plain ole dude. Seems like a missed opportunity to me! #thefutureisfemale

Here's a great line where Genly describes what an earthling should be prepared for on Gethen: 

The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience. I love this so much.

the Ekumen - this concept was super interesting, both in thinking about how we would be connected (or choose to connect or not) with other worlds, given a much larger planetary universe, and also in thinking about governing bodies in general. She describes the Ekumen as 'not a kingdom, but a co-ordinator', which both reminded me of the EU and the sundry complications of Brexit and made me think of my own work with Breakthrough Collaborative, and how we function as an allied collection of deeply different entities with common goals and agreed-upon norms. 

Genly is asked at several points to explain why the Ekumen has any interest in uniting with the nations of Gethen. Here's my favorite response: 

Material profit. Increase of knowledge. The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life. The enrichment of harmony and the greater glory of God. Curiosity. Adventure. Delight.

That's also where the title logic comes into play - when asked why he comes alone, unprotected, unsupported, Genly Ai responds - One alien is a curiosity, two are an invasion.

Snowshoeing - this book takes place on a planet called Winter (Gethen, to some) and it lives up to its name. There is snow, and ice, and bitter cold, and varying degrees of acceptance and tolerance. Genly Ai is always cold in the book, which admittedly felt refreshing to me since I'm a cool-weather animal, and springsummer approaches here in Philly. When he first awkwardly snowshoes with Estraven, I remembered wearing snowshoes for the first time near my friend's cabin in Washington State, and then again on Mount Cardigan in New Hampshire, and I vividly recalled how frequently I fell while the people around me seemed to glide smoothly along. The exchange below reminded me of a sort of fictional opposite of 'The King and I' and 'I do not believe in snow'.

Genly Ai: Well, in this same latitude on Terra, it never snows.'

Obsle, a commensal from Orgoreyn: 'It never snows. It never snows?' He laughed with real enjoyment, as a child laughs at a good lie, encouraging further flights."

Lines I Loved

• Truth is a matter of the imagination.

• If this is the Royal Music no wonder the kings of Karhide are all mad. lololololzzz

• Winter is an inimical world.

• I put on my winter coat and went out for a walk, in a disagreeable mood, in a disagreeable world. is this zeugma? I love it, whatever it is!

• It is not altogether a bad thing to have criminal ancestors. An arsonist grandfather may bequeath one a nose for smelling smoke.

• A cold north wind dispersed the rain clouds utterly, laying bare the peaks above the ridges to our right and left, basalt and snow, piebald and patchwork of black and white brilliant under the sudden sun in a dazzling sky.

Wonderful Words That Were New to Me

ansible - a fictional device or technology capable of near-instantaneous or superluminal communication. It can send and receive messages to and from a corresponding device over any distance or obstacle whatsoever with no delay, even between star systems. She used this so effortlessly that I thought it was a real word! Very cool.

rufous - reddish brown in color (as in the rufous moon pictured left)

susurrus - whispering, murmuring, or rustling (this reminds me of the French word for whisper, chuchôter)

thole - a pin, typically one of a pair, fitted to the gunwale of a rowboat to act as the fulcrum for an oar

Well, I suppose it's time to draw this blob to a close. I will admit to you, my dear ones, that I felt more than once in the last few days like this: 

I was alone, with a stranger, inside the walls of a dark palace, in a strange snow-changed city, in the heart of the Ice Age of an alien world.

Granted not with a stranger, but that sense of aching aloneness, and the uncertainty of self that comes with a toxic America like the one we live in right now. 

But then I read these lines, and I took some comfort in them.  

As they say in Ekumenical School, when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

And so I will continue to gather information in future books, and when that grows unprofitable, I shall sleep. And so on and so forth. It was and it was not so. 

Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night.