by Ursula K. Le Guin, 1969
This one was difficult to get into so I almost didn’t finish it but I did and it did get better towards the end. It was our last book club selection of the year. The characters, unappealing except for one: Estraven, also called Therem, also called Harth. The place, a planet with endless winter called Winter. The story line – idiot king doesn’t trust the envoy who wants to include planet in the Ekumen, the alliance of 84 countries, the nearest of which is 17 light years away, so banishes him to the other side of the planet. The words – like shifgrethor- so difficult to pronounce, not defined, and why bother: it takes so much effort to figure out how to pronounce them so I skimmed over them, which means I skimmed over much of the book. If you’re going to make up words, at least make them pronounceable.
The people on this planet are neither male or female; they go into kemmerer (heat) once a month and become male or female at that time. When not in kemmerer, they are completely devoid of sexual urges, but when in kemmerer, they can barely control the urge, so there are places where you can go and have sex with others in kemmerer. Sometimes they get pregnant and bear children.
Here are some excerpts from the book:
In the introduction by the author, written in 1976: “I talk about the gods; I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.”
The Envoy is speaking with Tibe, an evil ruler: “‘Yes indeed, yes indeed! And gratitude’s a noble, rare emotion, much praised by the poets. Rare above all here in Erhenrang, no doubt because it’s impracticable. This is a hard age we live in, an ungrateful age…'”
When the Envoy (Genly ‘Genry’ Ai) is speaking with a Foreteller named Faxe: ‘”Yes. There’s really only one question that can be answered Genry, and we already know the answer. . . .The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.”‘
When analyzing the androgyny of the planet and how it differs with beings that are either male or female all the time: “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.”
Describing the insane king (Argaven) and his evil prime minister (Tibe): “Argaven was not sane; the sinister incoherence of his mind darkened the mood of his capital; he fed on fear. All the good of his reign had been done by his ministers and the kyorremy. But he had not done much harm. His wrestles with his own nightmares had not damaged the Kingdom. His cousin Tibe was another kind of fish, for his insanity had logic. Tibe knew when to act, and how to act. Only he did not know when to stop.”
More about Tibe: ‘He talked much about pride of country and love of the parentland, but little about shifgrethor, personal pride or prestige…He wanted his hearers to be frightened and angry. His themes were not pride and love at all, though he used the words perpetually; as he used them they meant self-praise and hate. He talked a great deal about Truth also, for he was, he said, “cutting down beneath the veneer of civilization.”…He was after something surer, the sure, quick, and lasting way to make people into a nation: war.”
Some of Estraven’s philosophy: “To oppose something is to maintain it…To be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof…To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.”
When Estraven and Genly are talking once they finally decide to trust one another after Estraven had rescued Genly from the prison: “A man who doesn’t detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government on earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.”
As they are journeying on the ice field, Genly discovers: “What I was given was the thing you can’t earn, and can’t keep, and often don’t even recognize at the time; I mean joy.”
When Genly finally figures out Estraven’s sexuality and person (this could be God – He made us in His image, male and female He created us): “And I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man. Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last, acceptance of him as he was. Until then I had rejected him, refused him his own reality. He had been quite right to say that he, the only person on Gethen who trusted me, was the only Gethenian I distrusted. For he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as a human being: who had liked me personally and given me entire personal loyalty, and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance. I had not been willing to give it. I had been afraid to give it. I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man.”
Genly is talking about mindspeak: “…Not on Alterra, where there’s a high occurrence of natural sensitivity, and — they say — mothers mindspeak to their unborn babies. I don’t know what the babies answer…” (I wonder if she had written this after 1973 when Roe v. Wade happened and abortion became legal, whether or not she would have included that line in the book.)
All-in-all, an unappealing story, setting, and characters. Not inclined to ever read another Ursula K. Le Guin book. And to think this novel won the HUGO and NEBULA Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year.