https://www.shmoop.com/left-hand-of-darkness/
Let's perform a little thought experiment. Imagine a planet in the
middle of its ice age, snow blanketing everything, always seeing your
breath puffed into the wind. Every aspect of life from traveling to
housing to eating is dominated by just how frigid the world is. Drinks
even come with little ice-picks so you can break up the ice that's
constantly forming on top.
So, who do you imagine would live on
such a planet? Probably some burly Viking-type dude who wears animals he
personally killed, carries an axe instead of a cell phone, and listens
to Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" on loop. Right?
That's what we thought, until we read Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness, one of her Hainish Cycle novels. (Don't worry; you can read this one without reading the others—but you might not be able to help it.)
Le
Guin's novel tells the story of one Genly Ai, a human whose job is to
convince the people of the planet Gethen to join the Ekumen (think United Nations but in space). But the Gethenians aren't the manly-men Vikings we
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