{"id":3124,"date":"2022-05-08T15:12:15","date_gmt":"2022-05-08T23:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3124"},"modified":"2022-05-08T15:12:16","modified_gmt":"2022-05-08T23:12:16","slug":"review-the-left-hand-of-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=3124","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Left Hand of Darkness"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>Left Hand<\/em> is another classic I have somehow missed to now, written by an acknowledged master, Ursula LeGuin.  It was well worth it, even though it took a while.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It tells a great story with interesting characters that holds your attention.  Like some other great SF, it balances a new environment and world building with adventure and character advancement.  LeGuin displays a deft hand here, with both an engaging plot that features timely twists and an overall composition peppered with sparkling phrasing.  It&#8217;s a great novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What impressed me even more than getting to read a great novel is how powerfully she manipulates ideas.  She puts at least two fundamentally challenging ideas into the reader&#8217;s mind &#8211; how an expanding culture\/nation can open relations with a fundamentally non-aggressive agenda and the extent to which rigid sexuality defines a society.  I was even more impressed that she approached these ideas without resolving them.  So much speculative fiction introduces such ideas in such a way that they are intrinsically bound with the author&#8217;s judgements on them.  LeGuin builds an interesting story around these ideas that reaches a satisfying end without being inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was left with the feeling that there were other ways that these theses could end, but not in the sense that they were sequels to this story.  Both telling a great story and planting an intellectual seed is a remarkable feat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Strongly recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Left Hand is another classic I have somehow missed to now, written by an acknowledged master, Ursula LeGuin. It was well worth it, even though it took a while. It tells a great story with interesting characters that holds your attention. Like some other great SF, it balances a new environment and world building with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3124"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3128,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3124\/revisions\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}