Swords, Sorcery, and Socialism - The Left Hand of Darkness

Episode Date: October 19, 2024

It's time for a classic. We are joined by returning champion Trevor to discuss Ursula K. Le Guin's seminal work, The Left Hand of Darkness. We talk about gender, how you have states without war, and of course, the balance of light and dark.patreon.com/swordsandsocialismEmail: [e-mail] The Show: @SwordsNSocPodAsha: @Herbo_AnarchistKetho: @MusicalPuma69

Audio book for this. Yeah. Story. So it's just it might be the one I got a sleepy voice and it's easy to kind of get not pay attention, you know. There's just very there are very specific words he would say where I was like, I don't like how you're pronouncing that. Yeah, this one was definitely a very sleepy narrator in the one that I had. The world's sleepiest narrator.

It's I mean, I love Le Guin, but sometimes the names and words she comes up with a little whack, so I kind of get it. Yeah, it's not always the like the most. This isn't this isn't token levels of of constructing a language. This is just I think this sounds cool. Well, I can admit that we're going to invent the word shift Grether. And then make people pronounce shift Grether a whole lot of times.

And are a. Sasson off. I think it was the way the guy said Estraven really bothered me. He like he did it like he was speaking Spanish, like a through then. And I'm like, this isn't Spanish. You can pronounce the T. It's not a T.H. I think that was one of the things that really bothered me was the way he pronounced Estraven. But yeah, there's no way that Orgerain isn't just or a th. I think that was one of the things that really bothered me was the way he pronounced Estraven.

But yeah, there's no way that or grain isn't just Oregon with with an extra one. Yeah. Rearranged. Fun fact that I learned ecumen comes from a Greek word that her dad used in his like sociology like stuff. That's that it was it was based off of the term ecumen

for her fictional alliance of worlds, a term coined by her father who derived it from the Greek oikoumene referring to the Eurasian cultures that share a common origin. Oh, interesting. So it comes from a Greek word that meant Eurasian cultures have a common origin and then her dad just changed the Oikumen to acumen, acumen for her books. He invented it for her. Way to go, dad. I'm actually really frustrated that I can't find my copy of the book because I read it

and then put the book down somewhere and now I don't know where the fuck I put it because there's a lot I think to talk about not just in the book itself but in the prologue not the prologue but the the introduction introductory authors note is actually one of the best authors notes I've ever read. I think I was reading that the first edition of the book didn't even have like an introduction. Oh, that introduction is so good. It got added later. Bro. Are you fucking real man? Come on, man. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real.

I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real.

I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real. I'm not fucking real, man?

Come on. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Sword Sorcerer and Socialism, a podcast about politics and themes hiding in our genre fiction. As always, I'm Aurora and I'm joined by my co-host, Ketho. How's it going, Ketho? Howdy. And we have back our favorite guest, Trevor from the history of Persia and America's secret wars. How's it going, Trevor? Hello. Hello. Happy to be here.

I got the podcast right, didn't I? Yeah. Yeah, you did. Sick. So good at this. Today, we're talking about the Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. I would argue my favorite of all of the Quinn's sci fi books personally. We're here to talk about it because we love it and it's about time we finally talk about it with this podcast been going for three years. And this book is probably had a strong influence on the podcast existing and how we feel about these sorts of books.

We just wanted to hold off on it for a while because we didn't want to jump the gun on something that was so good. But it's time now. And we are starting off right at the beginning, talking about the introductory authors note. I was about to read before I remembered that we actually had to start the podcast officially that the original 1969 edition of Left Hand of Darkness did not have an introduction. I mean, that kind of makes sense. She kind of references the book itself a little bit in the intro,

like the result of releasing the book. The way it's written in the Wiki article is that after reflecting on her work, Le Guin wrote in the 1976 edition that the genre of science fiction was not as rational and simplistic as simple extrapolation. So she went back in later and added that introductory note, which we feel is actually incredibly important to when you're talking about themes and like the author's beliefs. And yeah, like we said, interestingly, it comes in an intro that was added after. Because this is the kind of the origin of how on this on this podcast we kind of talk about whether something fits the definition of a fairy story for token or a science fiction story for.

When and this is kind of the intro the intro to this novel is kind of where she explains her idea on what. novel is kind of where she explains her idea on what science fiction is for the first time, or at least the most public time. Yes. So it's like this is where she explains that it's a thought experiment, and that it's descriptive, not predictive. It's like stuff like that. So and of course, it's got some really banger lines in there. Like the truth is a matter of the imagination. And whereas she says, I don't have it in front of me, but a really great line where she's like, essentially calls herself a liar. Oh, yeah. So the author is a liar. And she was like. She says something broad about religion in like a positive way, where it's like and then she says, I'm an atheist, distrust everything I say.

So it. I think I found it's just it's full of incredibly quotable moments is what I'm trying to get at. Yeah. I mean, the opening line is that science fiction is often described, even defined as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here and now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect and extend it into the future. If this goes on, this is what will happen.

Prediction is made a method and results much resemble those of a scientist who feeds a large dose of purified and constituted food additive to mice in order to predict what may happen to people who eat it in small quantities for a long time. The outcome seems almost inevitably to be cancer. So does the outcome of extrapolation. Strictly extrapolative works of science fiction generally arrive about where the club of Rome arrives, somewhere between the gradual extinction of human liberty and the total extinction of terrestrial life. She's kind of right.

This may explain why many people who do not read science fiction describe it as escapist. But when questioned further, admit that they do not read it because quote, it's so depressing. Almost, almost anything carried to its logical extreme becomes depressing, if not carcinogenic. Fortunately, through extrapolation is an element in science fiction. It isn't the name of the genre, but the name of the game by any means.

It is far too rashless and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the writers or the readers variables are the spice of life. This book is not extrapolative. If you like, you can read it and a lot of other science fiction as a thought experiment. Let's say, says Mary Shelley, that a young doctor creates a human being in his laboratory. Let's say, says Philip K. Dick, that the allies lost the Second World War. Let's say this or that is such and so and see what happens. In a story so conceived, the moral complexity proper to the

modern novel need not be sacrificed, nor is there any built-in dead end. Thought and intuition can move freely within bounds set only by the terms of the experiment, which may be large indeed. The purpose of a thought experiment, as the term was used by Schrödinger and other physicists, is not to predict the future. Indeed, Schrodinger's most famous thought experiment goes to show that the future on a quantum level cannot be predicted, but to describe reality, the present world. Science fiction is not predictive, it is descriptive.

And I think that's the key of what she's talking about here as to stop myself from just reading the whole intro because it's so good. But like that's the point is that she disagrees with the idea that all you can do is take a thought experiment completely to its end because and think what the future will be like what you're doing is trying to talk about what today

is like. Yeah, it's it's an it's an explanation of today. It's an exploration of now not actually a prediction of the future and any attempt to extrapolate all the way out to exploration of now, not actually a prediction of the future. And any attempt to extrapolate all the way out to the future, like she said, just ends up really depressing. Because if you take any one thing about society and then make it as extreme as possible, you're always going to end up in a situation that, like she said, it's like a cancer at that

point. It's just overgrowing everything in a way that is ultimately unpredictable. Like you're not able to predict it and ultimately feudal because it's like, what's the point? If you're going to do it that way. 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 only truth I can understand or express is logically defined a lie, psychologically defined a symbol, aesthetically defined a metaphor. Half the time I don't even know what it means. It sounds good. It just sounds awesome. Why is she like this? This book is not about the future. Yes, it begins by announcing it's set in the ecumenical year 1490, 97, but surely you don't believe that. The artist deals with what cannot be said in words.

The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words. Thanks, Le Guin. I mean, she's right. It's like art in and of itself is usually trying to describe something or give you a sensation or a or an exploration of something that's incredibly hard to put into words, which is why so much goes into the subtext of a novel. It's like, because that's where the art actually lies,

really, is the subtext. What's not said in words. So it's like she's authors are trying to get you to think about things that aren't being said by saying things to you. And she's right. Yeah, that that is what your podcast is, is the stuff that is not being said. The stuff the stuff that isn't being said, but is being said at the same time. And that's what I when you said earlier, this was sort of foundational to like the sort of our podcast. That's it. Like Trevor just pointed out, that's what we're trying to do here. Is like, if you read a book, what is it you're learning?

What is it you're figuring out that the author isn't directly saying to you? Well, sometimes we talk about they're directly saying to you because some authors follow the maxim that subtext is for cowards. But a lot of times they don't. And there's, as Le Guin is just laying out in the open here for you, things they are trying to tell you that they can't directly tell you because there's no way to do it. It's not possible. Really. And so we come here.

If they did, it would be really boring. Yeah. Yeah. That was what I was going to say. That's what we call philosophy. And it doesn't make any more sense. I was about to say, I was about to say that sometimes they tell you on your face what they're talking about, and then it's called the dispossessed. That is true. Le Guin does skirt both sides of that line. Slandering the dispossessed in a Le Guin episode. I'm sorry, forgive me. Look, sometimes as an author, you get to a point where you're like, they're not getting it. I need to make them get it

And that's how you get the dispossessed No, they still think this is a hero story god damn it But today we were talking about the left hand of darkness, which is technically the fourth book in the heinous cycle series But you don't really need to read the heinous cycle in order I did and I think I like it better that way, but you don't have to really. I mean, it works like more like an anthology than anything else. I mean, it's in similar vein to somebody like C.S. Lewis. One of the last books is the first chronologically.

So it's like I was going to say I do highly recommend going and trying to read Wikipedia editors attempting to piece together a timeline of these books because they're all over the place. Yeah, technically, the word for world is forest is like chronologically, I think the first, isn't it? I think it might be. Does the ecumen exist in the word for world is forest? I don't think so.

I'd have to know. The name of the overarching organization of human planets changes throughout the series. Well, because it starts as one thing. And then you have the crisis where they almost get conquered by. Some nonhuman. It's the enemy. Their name starts with an S. I can't I can never remember what it is.

Yeah. One of the characters calls it the age of the enemy in this. The age of the enemy. So you have a few books set before that where it has a different name. That's like City of Illusion is set before it. I think Rock Cannon's world is set before it. And then you have like the age of the enemy. And then you have the books that are set afterwards

in which it's changed to the ecumen, I believe. I think the ecumen is the second name for it, but I'm not entirely sure. But yeah, you have the age of the enemy where they almost get destroyed and they sort of temporarily lose interplanetary travel and communication. Then they have to go back and reestablish it again. This is set when you have the ecumen and they're doing the most they're doing all of their exploring. I don't know if exploring is the right word.

I mean, they're well established in one corner pocket of space and have, you know, discovered other places, and they send people to try and get them to join the ecumen ultimately. So, you know, something just occurred to me. You think you think the Mass Effect writers read the read these? Probably. Uh, yes. Think about the way that the council races of Mass Effect

generally like interact with other like sentient species. Like it's a very sorry. It's like what if the it's literally like what if the Asari were the only council race? It's good because they don't do the like uplifting that like the Salarians or whoever do. They don't give they very specifically do not give the cultures they encounter new technology at first. Anyway, I mean, at first, once they agree to join the ecumen, they'll give them access to things like the Ansible. But other than that, yes, they'll do some stuff with them. But I guess it is it is literally just like what like the Asari and like some of them and what they're doing in Mass Effect.

So it literally just occurred to me just now. I'm like, oh, this is just what they're doing in Mass Effect. So it literally just occurred to me just now. I'm like, oh, this is just what they're doing in Mass Effect whenever they count in new races. Well, these books were also coming out around the same time as the original Star Trek II, which has got its own version of this with the primary idea of like, we're going to approach people,

we're going to observe people. Eventually Star Trek also incorporated the idea that everybody came from a same parent planet. And that's why everyone just looks like humans with makeup on. I mean, this is kind of similar. Ultimately, like the the the the heinous cycle in and of itself, Everyone is from some type of human, just alternate. We mentioned like the timeline earlier, there was an original expansion of humanity where they went out to a bunch of planets, and then they lost the technology to communicate and interact between planets for a long time. So they essentially formed splinter subgroups of humanity,

and then they eventually got space travel back and formed the ecumen and began exploring again. But that's how you get Gathenians, right? Who are human, but not, or the people on Roccanian's world who are human, but different. You know what I mean? Like it is very much, they did all come from one planet to start with. And I'm pretty sure they say it was Haine, It is very much they did all come from one planet to start with. And I'm pretty sure they say it was Hain as in, you know, namesake of the Hainer cycle. But I'm not I'd have to double check that. Yeah. Well, that was one of the things I found interesting

when I first encountered the series is that she very explicitly makes all of these human subgroups not from Earth or Terra, because in the future, we have to change the name of the planet. Yeah. I mean, Terra has gone through some not in there. It's gone through some shit. It's terrible. Terra is a weird place in the heinous cycle.

Is the only book set only books set on Terra City of Illusions? Yeah, it's the only one. We just get bits like Genly's narration in left hand that like throws in some extra details. Is she sprinkles little details like that? She doesn't the dispossessed to because the Terran ambassador is the one at the end of that one that. Gets chevich off world. Yeah, weird. Weirdly, a city of illusion is one of the books I actually think about the most often. And I don't know.

One ever talks about as being one of the best ones, but as one of the ones I think about the most have to explore why at some point. But we're talking about left handed darkness today. You got it this far. You know what the deal with the left hand of darkness is. The science fiction part, the thought experiment, the the thing we're supposed to be descriptive and learning about in the left hand of darkness is surprise, surprise. Gender.

Hooray, gender. Keeping in mind, everybody, that is this book was written in 1969, which just which leads to some hilarious terminology. I just want to point out. You get a little I love accidental retrofuturism. You know, that's like my favorite like thing in science fiction in general is accidental retrofuturism. So like including bits of dialogue and things or words for things that you're like, hmm,

that's a little old. That's like old fashioned. For example, consistently referring to the standard setup of human biology as everyone being bisexual. The dream. I'm just kidding. I mean, you know what? Freud used to say that shit. Freud used to say a lot. Let's maybe not use him as a template. Yeah, he's not a good template. You know who else said it? Dennis Prager.

template. You know who else said it? Dennis Prager. The human is that base bisexual. He's like, if anything, people are like in an interview or some shit. He was like something about humanity, probably starting out bisexual. And it's like, oh, hey, Dennis, you got something you want to tell the class. Yeah, that's got the same energy as like somebody coming out like their parent and having their mom be like, Oh honey, all women hate men and no women really enjoy sex. It's just something you have to do.

Like we all had crushes on women growing up. And then the daughter's and the daughter's being like, Hey mom, maybe, maybe you ever talk to your friends about this? So, yeah, she does say that things basic human sexuality is bisexual, which is interesting. I mean, it's necessary. It's almost necessary on, you know, for Gethenians. They get this real neat thing where when you and somebody want to hook up and it's in hooking up season, your gender turns on

your gender just like turns on and you don't really decide which way it goes. So again, if you're listening to this and you haven't read the book, what are you doing here? Number one, if you haven't, I guess the idea is everyone on Gethin, all the Athenians are like genderless most of the time. Then like once a month on essentially like a lunar heat cycle, basically, you kind of get horny. And most of the time you don't do anything about it, I guess, unless you're like in a permanent relationship, which she makes sound like it's not super common, or it's not necessarily the rule.

But then if you wait, then it just goes away. But if you do decide to hook up with somebody, then like between the two of you, the pheromones happen and it's like one of you becomes female and the other one sort of becomes male. And that just lasts the length of like the time you're horny. I don't want to say the time you're in a heat, because that makes it sound like I'm a vet, but like, it's sort of the same thing. It is pretty much the same thing. Well, and I want to point out that it's not just gender, it's sex.

Like your biological sex changes, comes into being. Like they don't have secondary sex characteristics until they're in this, what do they call it? This period of biological horniness. Kemmer. Kemmer, yeah. Kemmer. Once, yeah, you're right.

It's not that like it changes or whatever, just they have no biologicaliness. Kemmer. Kemmer, yeah. Kemmer. Once, yeah, you're right. It's not that like it changes or whatever, just they have no biological sex until Kemmer. Then upon hitting Kemmer, you like become a gender for the length of Kemmer. And then when Kemmer's over, you just go back to being androgynous again. And people who are, who place themselves in a permanent state of Kemmer are called perverts. Yeah. Because if you're in a permanent state of Kemmer, it means you're

horny all the time, at least to Cathenians, because they're only, they're only have sex characteristics when they're horny. So to them, anyone who has sex characteristics all the time is therefore permanently horny and therefore a pervert. Yeah, it lends really like back and forth, just some interesting back and forth between like Genly and everybody else. But just the fact that on one end you have all these Gethenians who are like, I kind of think he's a pervert, like a weird pervert.

And he's like, I feel like I'm being lied to all the time. Like they literally call him the pervert. Well, it took me a couple of times of them using it to realize, like, most of the time it's not even really meant as an insult. It's just what the Gethenians used to describe someone who looks like Genly. Yeah it's just descriptive. They're like oh yeah that's the pervert the one's got a dick all the time. Permanent dick-haver the pervert. There's the one scene where Genly is explaining There's the one scene where Genly is explaining the difference between Gethen and the rest of humanity to the King, and he realizes a whole planet of perverts.

And that's one instance where the audiobook narrator really communicated the tone that was supposed to be implied. The King gets upset by the idea of like overwhelmed by the idea an entire planet full of perverts. Would you know what? We should all be upset. Which we are all a bunch of fucking perverts. But we need to point out that one of the side effects,

we're talking about the thought experiment, what it all means. One of the side effects are of this is that the idea of like seduction on the one hand and like outright sexual assault on the other are basically unknown on Gethin. Because it's just like not physically possible most of the time. Yeah, it's it's it's like not a thing that can be done. If you have no secondary sex characteristics, you can't. A sexually assault someone really. Right.

Which which character is it that attempts to? It is one of the officials in Ogerain. It tries to seduce the. His friend, not Genly Genly's friend who is currently. Estraven. Estraven. Like he tries to like he he'd like they've been spying on Estraven to know that Estraven was in Kemmer.

So they had to know that Estraven was like in Kemmer at the time. And then so this guy artificially puts himself into Kemmer via drugs and then uses that. And because also for for Gathenians, because it's rare and only comes like once a month, they get like extra turned on, I guess, is like how it's described. Like the urge to like have sex becomes more powerful and more overwhelming because it happens so infrequently.

And so this. Orgonian official or the like tries to essentially time enforce camera on himself so he can seduce Estraven to try and like blackmail him or something. And like that is as close as you get to like any sort of like sexual menace to seduce Estraven to try and like blackmail him or something. And like that is as close as you get to like any sort of like sexual menace in the whole book. And again, when it's. And it doesn't work.

Estraven's like, oh, I really want to, but I can tell this is a bad idea. Yeah, Estraven has self control, which is very important. It's one of Estraven's main characteristics is that Estraven has a lot of self control most of the time. And but even then, like it's portrayed as being like dirty, like a dirty trick, you know what I mean? Like what this official does, it's it's it's not like a. Oh, look at this tactical spying stuff.

It's like this is like sort of like a low down, dirty, disgusting trick this official tried to play. You know what I mean? Like it's shameful that they would do it, which is if only. And really harms his Shrev Gather. Yeah, his shift, Gather. Like, I don't know. Maybe if if more books or human society had this sort of attitude towards sexual assault, maybe

I wouldn't have so many goddamn problems with all the other books we read. True. Very true. Like, I'm sorry, audience, but do you know how hard it is to be like, I would like to read a fantasy book or a sci-fi book that doesn't have sexual assault in it as like a plot device? You gotta fucking look for it. I don't know.

Yeah. I don't know if it's surprisingly rare or if we just happen to keep hitting them. No, it's a common thing, especially in fantasy for whatever fucking reason. Yeah. Mm hmm. See authors. Fiction writing is really where you get to see people excise their own kinks. You know, what is that? What is that?

What is the mean barely disguised fetish? Yes, it's the thing that's got the like the like it's like got the law and order text. And it's like this episode brought to you by this author's barely disguised fetish. Every Quentin Tarantino movie like barely that's that is a featured scene in Quentin Tarantino movie. Like barely that's that is a featured scene in Quentin Tarantino movies. I mean, in the vampire one that he like wrote, but didn't direct what George Clooney in it, you know, I'm talking about fucking. Oh, I know. Heather, do you know the title of this movie?

Because I know what she's talking about. I I both do not know the title of the movie? Because I know what she's talking about. I, I both do not know the title of the movie and don't know what she's talking about. It's killing me that I don't know. Tarantino, vampire, Clooney, Google. Dust till dawn. Yes. From dust till dawn, Tarantino is a writer and one of the actors in it because it's actually someone else's film. But he wrote a scene in which Selma Hayek puts her toes in his mouth and then pours whiskey down her leg into his mouth.

Or maybe it's tequila. You know, but you know, Fiona Apple said that she gave up cocaine after a night doing cocaine with Paul Joseph Anderson and Clinton Tarantino and said they were the most annoying people ever known, like that she had ever been around while high and she was like, I gave up, okay. I cannot imagine spending time

with Quentin Tarantino on Blow. He's already insufferable from every public appearance he's ever made. This man wrote a scene for Selma Hayek to put her toes in his mouth. So like- And I just want to like connect that back to the book and point out how baffling earth fiction would be

to any Gethenian in the entire story. They would not be able to read a lot of our fiction because so much of it is based on sex, sexual attraction, sexual characteristics, gender being horny, like all of that. Like what? There's so much that just wouldn't make sense to them. Societally, instead, they because they couldn't have weird hangups about sex or gender, they invented shift, Grethor, which is the world. The like fantasies most or I should say fictions, or gender, they invented shift Greta, which is the world, the like

fantasies most or I should say fictions, most complex system of like personal honor that I think anyone's ever tried to explain. Like, do you actually do either of you actually know how shift Greta works? No, absolutely not. It doesn't make any fucking sense. Very arbitrary. Well, it seems arbitrary. It seems arbitrary to us because we don't understand it. I mean, that's the thing. Yeah. A lot of it at least seems to be like rooted and built on Xenia,

the ancient Greek, broadly Middle Eastern, Indo European, like guest friendship customs. Sure. But like it's so heavily like that provides a frame that she just builds on this bizarre system of like social impropriety. Social impropriety and favors and like not being able to say anything directly. Like you can't just tell anyone anything. Everything has to be like hinted at. It's like, it's like the most intricate society wide form of like court politics.

You know what I mean? We're like, everything is an implication of something else. It's all about. Ironically, it's all about what isn't said. Hmm. What is the theme here? The entire, the entire thing of Shiv Gretha is about not what the person is saying to you, but what is implied by what Shiv Gretha is about not what the person is saying to you,

but what is implied by what they are saying to you and what they're not saying to you and what you should take away from that. It's almost like it's a theme. Who knew the I fiction? How dare they? I didn't come here to learn. So our main character is Genly I, who is a Terran. You know, from actual Earth.

Just a just a dude. Just a dude. Typical Le Guin fashion, a dark skinned dude. If you actually read the descriptions, who comes as like an ambassador from the ecumen to figure out if Cathenians are ready to join the ecumen. He starts off. There's two major countries on Gethin.

There's also a couple smaller ones that you just hear of in passing that are like to the south, but they don't matter. The ones that matter are Carhyde and Ogerain, because they're the ones that I guess the ecumen deems worthy of, like consideration of negotiating on behalf of the entire planet. They're the world powers. So like if it came to them, everyone else will fall behind and not want to be left out as kind of the implication.

Yeah. It's like if you came down to the earth during the cold war and was like, went to the U S and the USSR and said, well, one of you gets to get space technology. One of you gets mass effect technology and the other one doesn't, or only does if you also agree to join the council. And then the rest of the world. To have interstellar communication. And the other one does not. Unless you agree to join, in which case, we'll give it to everyone equally. And then like the non-aligned movement is we'll just follow along, because if the US and the USSR end up with like, you know, mass effect technology,

then like the non-aligned movement is going to have to do to or they get left behind. Now I'm picturing the other countries on this planet being run by Tito and Gaddafi. These are the interesting thing about this is because of that sort of like culture of like what like what you were saying about the I can't remember how to pronounce it. Shift Grether. Yeah. Is that kind of ties in with the fact that there's still kind of like monarchist? Well, I was going to say it is a very Cold War novel in that these two superpowers,

one is a very autocratic monarchy and the other is run by a council of scheming merchants, all trying to one up each other's political parties. Do you have a council of scheming merchant bureaucrats? Oh, and the planet stuck in an ice age. Also, it's literally named winter in. English. Yeah, it's we didn't mention that. It's like a big part of the narrative. But like I don't

I feel like the permanent winter is less directly impactful on the theme, but that could just be me missing. I think it's it creates a lot of the setting that she uses and a lot like it's explains or plays into a lot of how she designs the social customs, but not necessarily the themes. Like if you need to have a culture, so based on my guest rights and people staying over and like all that sort of thing, then well, how do we make sure that people are always staying over in each other's houses?

We'll make it permanent winter. So if you're not in a house, you die. I mean, I think part of it is also the the fact that it is so dangerous. Like like she needed it to be a setting where the environment itself was kind of dangerous and isolating to kind of reflect. Gently being isolated. And feeling like the world is dangerous to him. Yeah. Yeah. So it I feel like it was more set like set dressing specifically

for the circumstances of the novel, less so than like a way to reflect themes, but more like something that she needed so that the plot could be there. I think it also helps when you talk about like describing Gathineian society, because one of the other important things you learn about Gathenians is that despite having these different countries that are competing and stuff, they haven't invented the concept of war. They never invented war as a concept.

And part of the explanation for that is because the planet itself is so unforgiving that wasting your time and your lives on war is just an unbelievably stupid concept to them because the planet is trying to kill you. There's no reason to be like actively killing each other, like on a mass scale, like they don't even have a word for it because they haven't like breach the concept of more than like ten guys getting into a brawl at any given time. Right. That that whole thing was really interesting to me as both the. Environmental and, you know,

anthropological way she writes about things of, they have raids and they, you'll send at most a hundred people across the border to go fuck up some farms or something and like they have that level of conflict, but not actual wars and like it's never prolonged because of the setting. But it's also this very second wave feminist thing that really bugs me of like implying that gender and sex are this driving force of conflict for the real world.

And I'm like, you can't you can't have Margaret Thatcher and still think this. Like it's sort of leaning on that second wave thing. We're like, if women ruled the world, we'd have less war, right? If there weren't men, I'd like to point to the current presidential candidate talking about having the most lethal military in the world in all of her speeches. Yeah, there might be some argument to be made that if you went back to the beginning of humanity and like erased some of it, that concepts like the nation state would be harder to form and just from the socialization aspect of it all. But at the same time, it's like that's incredibly like that's an incredible amount of conjecture.

Sure. And in this setting, they definitely still get the nation state. Yeah. So you have the war kind of war is kind of a thing that happens. That's the most baffling thing to me is you've got a king in a kingdom and like, but he's not a warlord. So how do you get there? Like, yeah, that's well, they do. There is like murder and there is like. Like throwing people in jail and stuff like the king still

like monopolizes and projects power. But it's also described that because of the weather, his pat, especially for like a good portion of the year, his power doesn't really extend outside theoretically much further than the capital. Because you just can't get there. So like a lot of the small car, hi, dish communities are by default vaguely autonomous. It feels more like the way they describe like kingdoms in the ancient world,

which Trevor like you'll understand, where this town is a part of the Persian Empire, but in the way that twice a year somebody comes to collect some taxes and besides that you never see anyone official ever in your life. That's how a lot of these small Kar heightish villages are, are like described to me is, you know, am I completely wrong? But you know, I'm talking about, yeah, a lot of the ones we encounter, like vaguely modeled after like monasteries too, of like secluded religious places in the mountains. Yeah. Particularly the one place where he goes to watch the, the fortune telling.

Yeah. they call. She calls them what like whole something holds fastnesses. Yeah. But so you know, I mean, like comparing it to like an ancient empire like Persia, like if you didn't live in, you know, Persepolis or Babylon or whatever, you know, like one of these major cities, like when are you ever going to be really bothered by the existence of the of like, you know, the king of kings? Yeah. When does that when does that matter to you?

I don't know. Maybe I just have, you know, too much ocelot in my way of thinking about it. But like, how do you get these these dates like they have without violence? So, you know, something driving the formation of those hierarchies, you know, whether that's limited violence or gender roles or what, like what is what is creating their the rest of their social structure if it's not the things that created ours? I think that's a good point.

Like what drove the nation state to be created? I guess people are still power hungry, I guess. Like people still want to be in charge. People still want to make money as they definitely show us an ogre rain. Right. Like people definitely still want money and power and influence. So I guess they think. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead, Kathy. I think I think it might be honestly, like Trevor was saying, partially a second wave

feminist sort of thing, which Le Guin would very clearly have been kind of up on. Um, but also like Le Guin herself being a pacifist, I think colored her impression of that sort of thing a little bit. Part of me honestly thinks it's just I think it might just be a misstep on her part and maybe like. We have both long been thinking. We have both long espoused the opinion that despite her being like our favorite, possibly favorite author, that her pacifism is like the most one of the more objectionable parts of her, her, her like entire ideology. I find it really funny, though, because her previous novel, The Word for World is Forest, has a clear understanding of where violence has its begin.

Like it. So or at least her interpretation of where violence has its start is the existence of other violence. And even if you're defending yourself from said violence, it's like you end up in a situation where you now have that violence as part of your society because of what you have to have to do. And she even in the work for what is for she doesn't like say that this violence to protect yourself was a bad thing to decolonize yourself was a bad thing, but just kind of laments the loss of innocence. And to have so clear an understanding, I think, or what seems so clear and understanding from her perspective on where

violence would come from on the effects that violence would have to have on colonization and that sort of thing. Sort of thing that would have to exist in a place that has these almost globe spanning nation states to not have or like large scale conflict as part of that. To me just seems kind of odd coming from her. Because I feel like she would have understood a little better. Yeah, well, one, I just think it's funny that once again the main criticism of Le Guin comes back to the pacifism. That is a theme in her writing almost. But also I think part of it is probably comes back

to like this part of the heinous cycle that she never really fleshes out of how much of each planet's culture can be traced back to when they were first colonized by people and how the different aspects of colonization played out because like in this one she makes it really clear that when the Hanish first came to Gethen they did genetic experiments and that's what resulted in the sexless genderless inhabitants.

And there is an implication that something happened to make everybody leave, to make the government leave. Mm-hmm. That they were like an experiment that essentially got abandoned. Right. But like, so within the setting, I think you could make a case that the origin of, you know, any structure or, you know, social dynamic like violence doesn't necessarily come from within the culture we're looking at.

Yeah. So yeah, like when they were found similar, similar to that, I find that really funny because it's somewhat similar to like the dispossessed where the they they they on the moon they kind of rebelled and then they just kind of left like like the occupying force was like And they just leave There's gonna fuck off without much violence happening. They just kind of leave. Yeah, they just let the moon rebel. Yeah, they're just kind of like, oh, okay, send us some shit every year. You're fine. In my mind, that's kind of where this like, if the Haine did come there, do these genetic experiments, then everybody like, then they abandoned them

one day without much violence, just leaving. But you're still left with like the implication of certain structures from that origin point of like, you know, how, you know, the first people being independent know that Hayne had nation states. So that's kind of how they structure themselves. Like I think there's a case to be made for that. You've got like the ghost of the ghost of like the societal structures and the people that founded you, but not like all the other things that are like

base implications from like where that came from. It's interesting. Also, by the way, because I had to look at it was bothering me. The the enemy from the heinous cycle are called the shing. S.H.I.N.G. And we're talking about violence. And that's what made me remember. Maybe have to look it up because like

the most violent things I can think of really that happen in the heinous cycle as a whole come in like the struggle against the shing. And even then, what we see in books is often interpersonal. Violence, it's not large scale violence, except for the end of Roe Cannon's world, where they like launch a fucking missile from a different from like space down onto like a shing base. To like blow up an entire base of the giant bomb. But like besides that and like references to a war with the Xing,

all the violence or most of the violence perpetrated by the ecumen or on the ecumen is like interpersonal because like the Xing work through like infiltration and betrayal because they like look like people. They work through like, you know what I mean? Like deception. They don't work by showing up with an army. So even in violence on its grandest scale, in a war between like...

Sorry, then the previous name for the Ecumen was the League of All Worlds, by the way. So like the Xing were fighting the League of All Worlds. And so this is like this galaxy spanning combat but fight between the League of All Worlds and the shame. And it happens some by violence and a lot through infiltration and deception. So like this universe at its most base level lacks a lot of the. Violence that our primary world does. That makes sense, because I mean, just knowing

Le Guin's body of work and what she has to say about it personally, that sort of violence just doesn't interest her as an author. No, it really doesn't. Yeah, it's like, I mean, that's the whole deal with Earthsea being a fantasy series that never concludes with any sort of big. Climactic violence scene. It always concludes with something introspective and somewhat passive. Like a struggle of will, usually.

Yeah. Yeah. Not like Ged coming in going. Fire and then conjuring a giant ball of fire and throwing it at somebody, you know, it's and that's the thing about almost every adaptation of any Le Guin property ever is that they always try and throw in some sort of big fight or something. And she's like, that literally just defeats the point. She's like, why are you doing this? It's something I feel like we're going to come back to every time we talk about

Le Guin is violence or the lack thereof, because even though I like I respect her for. Not being interested in it and not wanting to write about large scale violence, like I totally get that. It just has some weird implications when you try to extrapolate it to like how a society would function and still have a king. It just says on implications. A king that everyone agrees is mad.

Is it him? Is it him who is like vaguely suggesting the idea of what another culture would describe as war? No, I think that's that prime minister that takes over after Estraven. Gets deposed, which is the king, the king's brother or part, sorry, sibling. It's the king's sibling who like takes over as like the new prime minister, essentially, who starts doing radio broadcasts about like inventing the idea of nationalism and like militarism against Ogarene.

And so like Gendley is there, we get to see like the development of the idea of like a militant nationalism against a foreign enemy, AKA Ogerain. Yeah, just kind of taking advantage of the already existing like performative nationalism, like because at the beginning, it's like a whole parade. Yeah. A parade where, by the way, they say that you have a ceremony of him laying like a brick at the center of an arch. And they explain that in the past, they had the blood of their enemies in the cement laid into the cement for arches for new constructions.

But don't worry, we use animal blood now. But that to me, where were they getting blood of enemies before? Why do you think they had all those raids? Where are you getting blood of enemies? How did they not do war if they were like killing each other and like capturing enemies to sacrifice for blood cement? Yeah, the implications for how violence works don't don't add up particularly well in this one.

Screw gender, which is the whole point of this book. I want to talk about violence. OK. Getting violently upset about the state of violence. I'm getting or geth in the fuck. Again, I'm going to make an audiobook narrator. You get again, I'm going to make an audio book narrator. You get again. I'm going to make a Mass Effect reference because again, these are just the Asari where it's described that the whole world of the Asari Thessia

is a group of republics where everyone, all citizens vote for like all things essentially. And that like war is essentially unknown because all the republics solve everything diplomatically. And that like the the like the fucking Asari hierarchy is just the matriarchs who have been voted to be in charge by the constituent republics. And you're like, okay, sure. If you say so. Yeah, world is a big EU. Like it's literally like again, we talked about it in the Mass Effect episode. It is liberal utopia.

Yeah, that's true. That's it is utopia for liberals because every they have a badass military, but they never really have to use it because they're so diplomatic all the time. They solve everything through giant meetings or everybody votes, I guess. Yet still have identifiable republics that you could be a part of and not whatever. Let's talk about Ogerain, a country that is so openly capitalistic that it feels like it comes from an entirely different era than the like vaguely late medieval early modern car hide.

And then you have next to it, this country that feels very solidly like into the modern era. And you've got to drop it into Europe and they would fit right in. They just drop them like right next to Belgium and they'd be fine. They just replace Belgium with Oger in like, you know, I mean in the industrial revolution and you wouldn't notice a difference. It's a bunch of like scheming merchant bureaucrats who can't form a government like and all they're interested in is like the slight variables of the power of their political party and how much money they make.

So come to think of it, it just is Belgium and like the European Union headquarters, Le Guin predicting Brussels. Yeah, you're right. It does feel very anachronistic to have Carhide with this very ceremonial court procedural monarchy. And then O'Gurray is run by a bunch of Wall Street bankers. Like, well, it's even Wall Street. It's partly Wall Street bankers is like industrialists. You know what I mean?

It's like the guy who owns the factor, who owns the factory. Cause like people there get jobs in factories like it. Well, to be fair, what O'Gurray feels like is somebody describing like late era USSR without a premiere, essentially, because every citizen is assigned a job that they have to go work at. They're assigned living quarters. You have to have papers that track you everywhere you go. And the only people that matter are the bureaucrats on the ruling council.

And there is also a very powerful secret police. Well, right. And if you fuck up, you get sent off into the Tundra to live in a gulag. But you get you get you get sent off to get drugged and live and die in a work camp. So you really did think, oh, what are the two like worst countries to ever give intergalactic like interstellar technology to? And was like, oh, both Russia. It's just different versions of Russia. It's it's Zara.

It's Zara's Russia and Soviet Russia. And they're the two kinds of country that you can have and you can't, and you can't give either of them space travel. I really did. It's like Catherine the greats Russia and Stalin's Russia and have them share a continent, but they've installed Russia. This is like later than that because they don't have, it's like Gorbachev's Russia. It's like Gorbachev's Russia where everything is run by like scheming

bureaucrats that run state industries. Like that's what it is. Yeah. Next to yeah. Next to, you know, well, I would even say Catherine because Catherine was competent. They have to be one of your, a later Romanov. You know what I mean? It's like, no, not, I mean, argument seems even worse at running a country

than Nikki to be fair, you know, it's like, you know, like Nikki's grandpa. You know what I mean? Like one of the slightly later era, like Roman OPS. And it's like, she's put it right next to there. Just feels in it again, it's sci sci fi could happen, but it feels anachronistic to have one country that's so like industrial and have another one. Oh, no, we're just small farmers on our little plots of land.

To be fair, the heinous universe is entirely anachronistic, like to begin with, because you have all this coexisting with interstellar travel. Well, and I was going to say, one, that it feels anachronistic, and then you remember that it's basically Russia's relationship with Europe for most of modern history.

Yeah, to be fair, before the Russian Revolution, there were industrialized countries, and then there was Russia. And also, the technology that she puts on this planet is really interesting because they haven't invented air travel or television. But they have cars and radios. And they just seem utterly uninterested in visual media or the idea of flight. Like the idea that anybody would bother to try and fly between planets is so confusing to them.

They don't fly even in the air on their own planet. But I think she describes it by the fact that there are no birds. I'm getting like there's almost there's almost there's barely any animals at all that you ever see because it's too cold and they all die. So like it's like no one there conceives of flight period because there are no flying animals to give them the idea that flight is possible or even a you know what I mean? It's like trying to describe a concept for which they they they they they you know it's describing the undescribable because they've never even considered that you could fly because they've never seen anyone fly because they didn't know that flight was even a thing that could be done because there are no birds showing them the way.

Well, I mean, that makes sense to me that Le Guin would write something that way, because I'm thinking about some of her other work and I'm thinking about like the dispossessed and how much even if it is kind of a bunk theory, how much like Sapir Wharf, like, linguistic theory there is in something like the dispossessed, where, you know, it's like, if you don't have the words for it, your language can shape the way you think. Hence why everyone on Anis doesn't have words for ownership at all in their language and it's it makes sense to me that she's kind of the sort of person who has these sorts of ideas of like if they don't have the concept for something are they going to. Come up with that concept like and then thinking about. Stuff like flight and where did we come up with the idea that we could fly through the air? And it was probably looking at birds.

And planes are shaped like that, right? Like that's started with knowing that's what made flying work. And we look at the shape of a bird actually prevent someone from thinking, can I fly through the air? It actually prevents someone from thinking can I fly through the air? It's a great question. Like that example You ever invent come up with the idea of flying through the air if you had never seen anything ever fly through the air I have no idea It's clear that that's what Le Guin feels Well, and it feels so obvious to us too

But like we are what a hundred and twenty years passed the first time people figured out how to do that shit. Like and and and humans in the in the in the primary world here have for our entire existence looked at birds and go, man, that looks like it fucking rules. Yeah. Yeah. All of our superheroes. Literally the first thing you give us, the first thing you give a superhero is flight. Like, I mean, some of our earliest stories are about people flying, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's part of the fucking epic of Gilgamesh as he flies over the mountains.

Like, yeah, Gilgamesh is flying, Icarus is flying badly like it's like it's. Yeah, but even in the case of something like Icarus, they created mechanical wings that look like birds wings. Yes, if you have nothing to model it on, how would you even begin to? Yeah. To imagine at the very least, I feel like it would take significantly longer to come up with that idea than it would necessarily be. Not possible for them to come up with that idea than it would necessarily be not possible for them to come up with that idea. It would just look very different. It would take a

lot longer. They didn't have helicopters realize how dangerous they are and give up on flight as a concept. Well, and speaking of Ketho, you mentioned like, if having words and language to describe a concept. One of the other things that she presents is this is that on Gethin, all of these countries have a very, almost like Bronze Age relationship to writing, where they have it, but nobody uses it and oral tradition is much more important. And that influences a lot of how people communicate with one another in the setting, too, is. Like they place very different emphasis on.

Visual cues or visual information, because they don't see it as quite as important. Yeah, like the one the one modern form of communication that they've developed is radios and because that's still just voice. It's a planet. He really loves her. And I think God planet. Oh, God. The podcast, your planet.

This I mean, this all makes sense to me, given that Le Guin was, you know, the child of a well established anthropologist. And, you know, you look of a well established anthropologist. And you know, you look at her bookshelf in an interview and I and it's probably just going to be full of anthropology linguistics, just stuff like that. So it makes sense, especially in the late 60s, that that sort of Sapir Wharf stuff, which was really popular at the time, would be present in her work. Speaking of language, though, we are going to have to bring this up at some point because

it's the most controversial thing about the book. All right, let's do it. Okay. But you know, I mean, we say it's controversial, but the controversy has come and passed and Le Guin herself became a champion of the particular thing that she neglected to do in this novel. But despite the fact that everyone is for the most part genderless and sexless for the majority of their time in existence, the pronoun used for everyone is he. So the gender neutral pronoun. I think there's a couple instances where he meets someone who is in Kemmer and has female

characteristics and he recalls them she at that point. And specifically Genly does that. Yeah, Genly does that, yes. So when the Gethenian characters encounter someone in, for want of a better phrase, feminine Kemmer, the Gethenians, she continues to write using the word he. It's true. And she does make it clear in the first chapter that he is what Genly is using to translate their universal pronoun.

deadly is using to translate their universal pronoun yes and to be fair. This is nineteen sixty nine she was a linguistics nerd and maybe a bit of a grammar nerd to end at the time it was seen as the. Grammatically correct thing to do to use he as a gender neutral pronoun, which she would, of course, go on to not only apologize for, but also write an entire little diatribe about how that was only decided by a bunch of dudes in a room intending to make men more important than women. So she very, she very much, I think made up for her mistake here. But it does kind of make things more difficult as a reader, reading the book, and was and then describe a very effeminate character. Which she obviously did on purpose to contrast the the pronoun usage with the sexless society she's presenting. It almost works in this book in its favor as a way to highlight the setting. Yeah.

But it comes from this place of, you know, to be my own linguistic nerd, like in Indo-European languages that kept grammatical gender, the male pronoun is the default because the gender neutral pronouns are implicitly implying an inanimate object. Yeah. In some languages, definitely like German. I mean, yeah, German or Latin. Before extremely common use of the plural they, I mean, the singular they like the neutral pronoun in English would be it, which is an which is usually used to describe an inanimate object.

So, you know, like it. Yeah, I'm just thinking the German dared, you know, dare to end us. It also made like I appreciate the fact that the Gwynne never went back and was like, I'm going fact that the Gwyn never went back and was like, I'm gonna remake this book with vapor. I, because both a like you were saying it, it, it, in some cases does benefit the novel to have done it this way. And in other ways, stands as a like a monument of its time. Like, and I mean, honestly, I just think it's incredible that something like this existed in like a monument of its time. Like and. I mean, honestly, I just think it's incredible that something like this existed in 1969 anyway.

Something exploring gender and sex and gender roles this thoroughly and trying to deconstruct them coming out before 1970 is still pretty insane. And and Le Guin herself admits that she wasn't as well read on feminist topics at the time as she should as she feels she should have been. And then you can see after the end of Earthsea and after the end of the heinous cycle, the dramatic shift she took in her writing to suddenly be almost aggressively feminist fiction, almost until the end of her life. Like the rest of her writing post Earthsea and heinous cycle is like after the dispossession never went back and wrote in the heinous cycle again, in terms of a full length novel. So but she did write more

sci fi but she wrote like always coming home, which a utopian piece of fiction mostly about i mean it's mostly like an anthropological study but the sections that are like a novel. Are about a woman specifically and when she went back to earth she sure to hana. And she wrote to Hanoi, which pissed a lot of dudes off. So yeah, it's not I, I, I think it's rare to see an author take criticism so well, and then legitimately take the criticism to heart. And like, essentially spend the rest of her writing career challenging her own what she saw as missteps, which I just see it as something to deeply in terms of science and anthropological studies and history writing, we were still very much digging out of the Victorian era academically, where discussions of gender in anthropological studies of other cultures or in like historical texts were treated as like, well, clearly these people were confused or were just not understanding the language they're using. in like the mid 60s that you start to get the shift toward what we kind of default to now of, well, maybe like they had a different society and structure than ours. Like that's a lot of the influence on Le Guin is that her parents were part of that shift away from assuming everybody lived like they were in Victorian England. Maybe different societies from the past had different

concepts about sex and gender. And like what that meant and how that how that related to each other. Believe it or not. It's really coming to understand these things as social constructs and therefore something that could be constructed differently by different people as opposed to some universal objective truth. The world is something we have constructed. We can just as easily construct something different. That Graeber? That is David Graeber. I may have butchered it a little bit, but I got the idea across in within left hand.

One of the big things Genly has to learn throughout his time there in terms of like an interpersonal relationship with Estraven and in the way he relates to the rest of Gathian society is that his own like concepts of masculinity that he learned growing up on Terra. Are actually impediments to him. Understanding Gathianians and truly like interacting with them and knowing like who they are, because there's all these things that he does like implicitly. Because it's man stuff and like the fact that he can't get over that until near the end of the book is one of the things actively hindering him

from accomplishing his mission and from, you know, having like an actual open friendship with Estraven because he can't get over his like his inborn manly masculinity and like what that means and how he thinks he has to behave because of that, you know, like not crying and like not asking for help and having to be like like bluster and like aggressive and all this other shit. Is all stuff that he later on admits like, oh, that's just because that's I was raised a man and I think that's how I have to behave, you know?

Yeah, well, and there's also the he sees the Gethenians as. He sees the Gethenians as. Feminine in comparison to himself, and that makes him distrustful. He feels like they're liars. Yeah, he can't understand their motivations. It's explained a number of times that he like he sees them as being yell like liars or being like shifty or underhanded

or whatever, because they seem feminine to him. And often no multiple times Le Guin like has generally like describe a person when he's like uncomfortable with them or their methods, describing them as coming across as like feminine, you know what I mean? Like like certain officials he has to deal with when they're being like backhanded or squirmy like again, this is where I think it's not Le Guin saying this thing. It's Le Guin having Genly say it that he implicitly associates

that sort of like deceptive, underhanded nature as being a feminine nature. I mean, that's a huge theme. Again, not like I know I keep reaching out of this book to talk about this book, but how fucking do you? Yeah, but in the case of that sort of thing, like that's the same way women are perceived in Earthsea. Yeah, it's a it's a staple trope of like Western literature back to Greece and

Mesopotamia, like it is the DNA of how we write fiction. It's, it goes back to Mesopotamia and Greece and gets reinforced through the Bible. Like that's Eve. Yeah. Eve. That's original sin, right? Is a woman being underhanded and deceptive.

Now I'm not saying that the Bible invented that because I got, Lord knows somebody out there would back, see, it's, it's because of Christianity that we feel this way. That's not true. The ancient Greeks felt this way. There are a lot of ancient Greeks that felt this way. The ancient Greeks are worse about it. Like go read some like original Greek mythology.

That's women are implicitly tricks, like tricksters trying to, you know, seduce and then murder their husbands. Like, oh, this is back when this was back when, like with the whole, like women are evil and obsessively horny. Like they read about Medea. Like, oh, God. Yeah. This is the the Medea. Like, oh God, yeah. This is the the ancient. That is the I had the whole like women are inherently deceptive, but also all inherently horny,

like all women want to fuck all the time, which is. You know, it's one of it's one of those weird things that like I don't we misogyny is different now and we don't necessarily we haven't always maintained that form of misogyny, but it is interesting to read ancient sources when they're like oh even like medieval Europe there they were like oh if you leave a woman in a room alone with a man for long enough she will try to bang him because women are women are too horny you gotta you gotta keep them under control and you're like oh sure you got it boss and. And this makes Genly.

I think that everybody on this entire planet is lying to him through the entire novel. Yes. This inherent women are shifty like cultural bias. And again, I want to make clear, Le Guin is not saying this. We are investigating the fact that Genly feels this way. They it isn't until he spends 80 days on the ice almost dying with Estraven that he's like, oh, they aren't all they aren't all inherently feminine and traitorous. They're just different.

It isn't until he. The point of the novel. Yes, it isn't until Estraven and Genly almost fucking a tent on a glacier that he understands that he's been viewing them all wrong. Now, he never really gets over the fact that he viewed them as feminine and therefore evil. It's the fact that he just learns that they're not, not just feminine. You know what I mean? Right.

Well, it takes being in close proximity to Kemmer and like interacting with Estraven long enough to see that he's still the same person. Yes. Even when he's all horned up in a feminine way. You know what? Maybe it just takes a life-changing experience, you know, with a gender ambiguous person in a tent on the ice. You know, if that's what it takes to get rid of your misogyny, maybe we,

maybe that's what you got to do. You got to go on a life-changing Arctic hike with an, with an andro. I'm like, there's no misogynists on the ice. But only when they aren't like turning on just a little bit of their masculine switch to get a temporary burst of super strength. If you studied in a monastery for a while where you can do fortune telling. Yeah, but the whole religion aspect of the book is weird guys. So aside from his like epiphanies about androgynous people and how you view femininity implicitly and how that helps them overcome it,

let's do the religion talk on, I think specifically in Carhide, right? We don't really hear about religion in Ogerain And I feel like they've got that weird Soviet state atheism going on kind of they have like one religion, but you don't learn that much about it. And I don't, oops, I hit my mic. I don't care. Let's talk about car hide ish religion.

Uh, Trevor, I think you said you had something you wanted to start with about this, right? Oh, just the, the weirdness of. If you, I don't remember what the religion is called, but if you go and you live in one of their monasteries for long enough and study, you can learn to like, it's implicitly tied to Kemmer. Like some, I think they're implied to be like Kemmer traits of, you know, you can get like, I don't know, the testosterone boost of the male sex characteristics and get a degree of extra strength through practice and meditation. Like, you can meditate, you can eventually you can learn to meditate so hard that you can give yourself like you can push yourself beyond your normal physical limits. But then usually when you're done, you're like worn out for a while, which is an interesting idea about some sort of meditative like practices. Also, the people that they religion we're talking about is called the Hondurata.

And they do that. Aside from weird like burst of Superman energy, they also do like foretelling, which you can ask them a question and they go through this whole ceremony. And at the end they can like do some telling of the future, but it very much has that mythological idea of fortune telling. We're like, how good of an answer you get really depends on how good your question is. And like, you don't always understand the answer when it's given to you. You know, this very this very much has the like.

If it's like it's like the wish spell in D&D, you know, we're like, if you don't word it exactly right, it's going to accomplish the thing you asked for, but maybe not in a way you intended or enjoy, you know, the monkey's paw. Yeah, but it but it monkey's paw to me implies that it will inherently do it in a bad way, which I don't think the I don't think the Honda Rada fortune telling works like that. It's just that if you're not asking a good enough question, you can't understand the answer.

Well, it can drive you could drive you mad because you don't understand the answer. In the scene where Genly experiences the foretellers at work, it's kind of implied to be like a probabilistic thing where the answer is more or less ambiguous depending on how likely any given outcome is. Yeah. So when, and the interesting thing is that when Genly asks, will get then join the ecumen, the answer is just yes. Well, he says, will the get, will get and be a member of the ecumen in five years

time. That's all he asked in five years. Will geth and be part of the ecumen. And yeah, he just gets a yes. And to him, he says that's good enough because that's answers enough because he knows that one way or another, the ecumen's mission will succeed. Yeah. How he gets there is not really something he's torn up about. It's just right. Like this works out for me because nobody else is going to get there to make them join in

the next five years. Yeah. Like he knows that no one else is showing up. So he knows in some manner or way, his presence on the planet will get them to join the acumen. Whether he lives to see it is a whole different story and like you point out I think by the end he realizes that doesn't really matter to him or it's not as important as the fact that they will join. You know this you hear the story about like the you know how asking a question can be bad where like the one ruler of a fastness came and like. Asked how long he was going to live. And they're like longer than your boyfriend.

And he's like, what? Or you know what I mean, like or however many days. And then they're like, well, how long is that? It's going to be like, well, you're going to outlive your partner. And then that causes so much mental anguish that the guy murders his partner. And then in the in like the rage of having realized he murders his murdered his partner, he like kills himself and like, OK, this is some ancient Greek oracle stuff.

Trust in the wooden walls. Yeah. This is very much like you're going to be killed by your son. So I sent my son away where he wouldn't know he was my son and he can come back and then he came back and he fucked his mom. But like you ever find it interesting that the fortune tellers and all those are always women. They all are actually minus geth it. But in all those ancient stories, actually, minus Gethin. But in all those ancient stories, they have fortune tellers, oracles are all women, even the ones that don't get listened to. Was it Cassandra who is cursed, who is cursed to predict the future,

but have nobody ever believe her? Well, it's it's human women and masculine gods. There's not a ton of goddesses associated with prophecy. Yeah, it's human women and Apollo. Because Apollo is the god of prophecy. The oracle Delphi was dedicated to Apollo. She's weird. I don't I don't know if I'm qualified to try and figure out why that's the split.

That it's masculine gods and human women. I don't know if I'm qualified to like speculate on that, but I will point out that in order for their foretelling to work, they have to go through this whole ritual where you have trained I call them monks, religious people. I think they're religious specialists who live in isolation in mountain fastnesses. I feel like monks works for that.

Yeah. So they're monks. Yeah. You have to have a certain number of monks. You have to have the head monk that leads it. And then you have to have one pervert. And like, there's just like a local village pervert. There's like one Gathenian in the local area. Everyone's got a village pervert. There's like one Gathenian in the local area. Everyone's got a village pervert. The one, you know.

But like, do you think they have like perverts on a registry, like a sex offender list? I think everyone because nothing's written down. I feel like everyone just knows, you know, somebody goes on and reads out the list on the radio once a month. There's your local list of perverts. Well, I think more accurately they need to for the ritual, they need someone in Kemmer. No, I, no, I was, I thought because they call them a pervert, that implies that he's permanently

in Kemmer. I thought that's what I got was that the person you have for the ritual is a, is a person who is permanently in Kemmer. I just thought that was more reliable than waiting around for somebody to do it naturally so you could do your fortune telling. But maybe I mean, maybe if you have someone who's in camera, it works. But like I was under the impression that they just had like a guy around who was just always like that. Look, we all know a guy who's always like that. We all know the local pervert.

But if you don't know the pervert in your friend group, it's you. I'm kidding. But that's but yeah, like you've got you've got all these like monks and the pervert, and then they go through this whole ritual where they like, I don't know, do your probabilistic foretelling. Weird, I want to point out that another societal thing, the way that sort of communal society works, that anyone can go and get their fortune or their question answered. And what you pay is based on what you can afford to pay. So like if a poor farmer came and asked a question,

he would only give like, you know, a small amount of food or whatever he could spare. But if the leader of a fastness comes to ask a question, they're expected to donate a lot. It's a very like egalitarian way of making them pay to get their fortune told is that like you pay what you can afford to pay. So that way that their ability isn't restricted only to like nobility for lack of a better word. They kind of imply that it is a gradient scale of what you can afford to pay.

Like, you know, they're not going to ruin a peasant's life for needing a prediction, but they're going to make the king pay out the nose. Yeah, yeah. That's I mean, it's it's more like actually egalitarian and that like a peasant pays only a little bit in a way that like a percent of income. Yeah, it's like you got to pay two percent of your income. If two percent of your income is two pennies, well, then that's all you got to pay. But two percent of the king's income is a lot. He could be paying a lot.

In a way, I feel like that's almost a way to prevent extremely wealthy people from abusing it. I think it is. Like I said, also allowing the poor farmer to like actually get their fortunes told, which is probably the people who need it more. Like farmers predicting when they can plant their crop in the middle of an eternal winter. Yeah, it's very much

like otherwise, like the king and the local, like rulers of the fastnesses would be getting questions answered all the time, right? Like they would just be in there all the time because if it only cost them a fiber, they're going to keep doing it. Their religion is weird. But getting into their religion, though, also really, I think, is one of the is one of the times you dive the closest to the name of the novel and closer to something we've explored in other books about Le Guin, which is her, like,

her maybe not observance, but respect for and including of like a lot of basics of Taoism in her work always comes up. It always comes up because this is where you like it is through the Hondurata and their faith that you get a lot of the quotes about the balance and where you get like the quote, the title of the books from that. Like the actual like the actual coat, but that something is the left hand of darkness, because it's very like

there's equals and opposites and you have to have both. And you can't have one without the other. And like it's it just on Gethin, there's a balance of like not only like behaviors and attitudes, but gender itself is one of those things that is balanced. And you have to have both of to be a complete person, you know, like you can't have a person is both masculine, as we would describe it, masculine and feminine.

A person is both masculine as we would describe it masculine and feminine a person is both one and the other Because you you need both for there to be true balance I Found the quote if you want it. Yeah, go for it Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light two are one life and death Lying together like lovers in Kemmer like hands joined together like the end and the way you know I've also read the town a ching the end and the way you literally throw in the way at

the end yeah I've read the Gwyn's translation. I think we've I think you have to have a juke out. Yeah, yes, I have. The Gwyn's translation of the doubt, it's a game. And you're like, I wonder where this came from, Ursula. I think even in like in that conversation where Estraven explains that to Genly Genly immediately compares it to Yin and Yang. Like, yes, he draws a yin. He draws the yin yang symbol like on the ground to like show to Genly. I'm pretty sure. Yeah.

Because he's like, we have something like that on Tara. And he like draws the yin yang. And you're like, oh, OK, thank you. We again, I know it comes up all the time and it should be baseline for for Le Guin. But like it is interesting how often she returned. We know we we love to criticize someone like C.S. Lewis for being like, here's the Christianity again. But like Le Guin does kind of do it with.

That was like in a lot of her stuff. I mean, we talked about it in Earthsea. We talk about it here. Sure. But Taoism is in Le Guin's work, like Catholicism is in Tolkien. It's much more. It's not like she's rewriting a sci fi version of the Tao Te Ching. That's true. It is not right.

Is that you know, Lao Tzu is a as an actual person in her story, but as a lion. And even as much as she would hate it, you're right. She's much more like Tolkien that way, where her belief is like a foundation that the world is built on. But like, if you don't want to go into it and read it yourself, you don't have to. It's just sort of there and is compatible with the faith as opposed to explicitly requires it to exist. Because like Lord of the Rings can exist without Catholicism. It's just made to fit with it. The Hainish, you know, the Cathenians and you know,, Earth can exist without the dot aging,

but it fits, whereas the Narnia cannot exist without Christianity. Simply cannot. It simply just cannot be. I do want to point out that like the more trade and money focused country is the one that is even more schemey and underhanded and is the one that has like a secret police and prisons. She is still in. Really? She is still an anarchist at at the end of the day.

Yeah. All the governments in this in this book are presented as bad. Yeah, literally. It's like every government. Literally every government is bad. The closest thing to good is the ecumen, and the ecumen isn't really what I would call a government. They're just a trade association. Yeah, it's just like a grow.

We are a trade confederation. And, you know, on the implication that like, that's the only way you can really use interstellar travel is because like it's too slow to bother going to war. By the time the army gets there, you'll be seven administrations back on your home planet and they've changed their mind. Like it's for essentially spreading ideas to the ansible. That's what that's what the League of All Worlds and then the ecumen

later is for. It's not yet. It's not for like shipping goods to each other. It's for like sending ideas to each other, because that's the only way you can travel. It's just like much like radios on Gethin. The Ansible is like the way that interplanetary communication works. It's not pictures. It's not physical stuff. It's words and ideas. And I don't I had an idea and I lost it.

I talked over you long enough that you lost it. That's just what happens. I've got ADHD. Look, at least two thirds of this podcast is ADHD. That's true. Which two thirds are you talking about? Maybe it's the whole podcast. I said at least two thirds. Look, there's something that drives us to be podcasters and it's not being neurotypical. Yeah, I will say to any podcast listeners, if you feel like ADHD is strangely more common, consume a different form

of media. If you're like, wow, all the podcasters I know have ADHD. Yeah, there's a reason for that. All the basketball, all the professional basketball, all the basketball players I know that are professionals are over six feet tall. I wonder why. No, I just remembered. I think that's actually a much more realistic interpretation of how interstellar anything would work than most anything related to interstellar travel ever Mostly being that if it could happen it would either be so fucking slow or would not be possible for large-scale things other than information

because I mean Wormhole stuff with quantum entanglement doing stuff is The is theoretically possible with information, but much, much harder with transferring matter. Look, if you get if you get high enough, you can pilot a spaceship through a wormhole. Okay. That's that's big brain stuff. But you're right. Like we haven't discussed it much, but the way interplanetary travel, interstellar travel works in the hand cycle

is that it deals directly with the scientific concept of like time dilation. That if you are going from, you know, wherever whatever planet the ecumen had like launches people from to another planet, say, Gethin, which is pretty far away. I think it's explained that it's pretty out like at the edges, you know, past the edges of ecumen sort of space that even though for Genly and his and his crewmates, it took them.

Was like months or something that like the people back on the planet they launched from from the ecumen have all like died now or. You know what I mean? Like the people running the ecumen back home are all gone by the time they get there because how many years have passed. And like Genly talks to the people on on Gethin when they're like, what happens if we don't accept you? He's like, well, I get back on my ship. I go back up to our waiting ship that's nearby. We wait like.

For us a few weeks and then we come back and it's been a hundred years for you and we'll talk to whoever's here then. Like he's like, I'll just go back up there and wait until you're all dead and I'll come back and try again. Yeah. I'll do a loop around your solar system and come back and resolve the issue. It'll be like, it'll be like two weeks for us and for you, it'll have been a hundred years and I'll just try again. the issue. It'll be like it'll be like two weeks for us. And for you, it'll have been 100 years.

And I'll just try again. And they describe even more directly, I think, at some of the other books, like in in City of Illusion, the main character who comes to Terra comes from the planet. I think he's originally from the planet that you're on in the planet in Planet of Exile, the very first heinous book, which I don't remember the name of that planet.

That's where he's from originally. And he talks about the fact that like he had like a spouse and parents and then he and his son get on this exploratory ship to head to Tara, knowing full well that by the, even even if everything went perfectly, by the time they got back, his like spouse would be dead and he'd be coming back to an entirely new set of people. And you're like, that's oof. My wormhole travels got to be the way it's going to have to be.

Yeah, because otherwise, literally just everyone is dead by the time you can communicate again. Yeah. Like I mean, that's also the plot. It happens right at the beginning of a rock cannons world. There's you start on planet with this person living in their sort of medieval society or whatever. And she begged some people because of something she wants to accomplish. She begged some people to take them to their leaders. It like, you know, the league or the ecumen or whatever.

And they're like, fine, if you want to go, we'll take you in the spaceship. And she goes up in the spaceship to the ecumen and meets some people and comes back and realizes it's been like 150 years since she left. And like everyone she knows is dead. The castle she grew up in is abandoned. Like the country and the local has all changed. And it fucks her up hard because she couldn't grasp the fact that she was only gone for like a few days and she came back and it had been hundreds of years like on her planet. Like it's it's a much more like you said, realistic. And I would say depressing take on interstellar travel.

Yeah, going into, you said, realistic and I would say depressing take on interstellar travel. Yeah. Going into warp or hyperspace or whatever FTL travel you come up with for your sci-fi is more fun. It's way more fun to be able to hit your atoms apart. It's way more fun to hit the mass effect accelerator and just go across the galaxy. But like, that's just not how that works. Like you said, it would rip you apart like a fundamentally like atomical level level. Yeah. To be accelerating that quickly. You don't get it. It's the Mass Effect fields. They keep everything nice and stable, right?

Element zero. We need to find the Prothean ruins on Mars. Look, no one on it. Element zero. Dark matter. We need to find the prothean ruins on Mars. Look, no one on- And discover element zero. Yeah, it discovers something. Look, nobody on Earth would be more excited for us to discover a mass effect relay than me. Because of the implications.

You'd be like, oh my God, I'm gonna meet this be sorry before I die. Like my life time. It's funny because IRL I'm actually like kind of anti space exploration because there's no way I think it can be done in a sustainable or useful way while we still exist under capitalism. And so the only thing that can exist now is exploitative. capitalism. And so the only thing that can exist now is exploitative. However, I will amend my beliefs if we find a

Mass Effect relay, because I will be the first person through that. Because I'm going to go to an alternate universe where the Rakhni won the Rakhni war. Hey, look, the Rakhni are the great filter. Okay, we're just we're not talking we're OK, we're just. We're not talking. OK, we don't have time to get into that. I don't think I don't know. You guys have anything else to say about the left hand of darkness?

It is pretty spectacular. And I think even though there are ways, I think other authors may have done it differently or in some ways better since then, the fact that this was an explanation of like gender roles and sex and how that affects society. The fact that it came out in the sixties, I think is sort of what puts a head and shoulders above a lot of other works that might explore like the same topics. But what do you two think as final thoughts as much as this might sound gender essentialist in 1969, the only way this book comes out is if it's written by a woman. Yeah. I don't think any of the male sci-fi writers at the time would have

put this out. Absolutely not. And the only way it sells is with a male protagonist. Yeah. Because I think it would be way more interesting if Gendley was a woman. Yes. But there's no way it would have sold copies in 69. No. Well, to me, that's the same thing that like Le Guin doesn't drop until like partway into Wizard of Earthsea that Sparrowhawk is like dark skinned. I think it's the same idea. I think that I don't think it could have come out if they had been like, oh, yeah, this has got a black guy as the protagonist, just like I don't think they would have put

out left hand if they like it with a woman protagonist. Even though you're right, I think that would have been a really, really interesting way to put it. I think it's a really interesting way to put it. I think it's a really interesting way to put it. I think it's a really interesting way to put it. I think it's a really interesting way to put it. I think it's a really interesting way to put it. if like it's with a woman protagonist, even though you're right.

I think there would have been a really, really interesting way to explore that gender binary with a woman. Listen to her talk about what parts of, you know, car hyders society she finds oppressively masculine, you know. Yeah, it'd be less like, oh, my God, these people are all deceptive. It would be like, oh, my God, everybody's a little bit dangerous. Like, yeah. Or maybe the woman would feel safer because like we talked about earlier,

there's basically no threat of. Of sexual assault. That's true. Maybe. Yeah, I feel like we didn't spend a ton of time talking about the gender aspect of the book, but it's so on its face that I don't know what else we would add to what the book just says itself. It's the gender book. But again, like we talked about the beginning, like there's a lot of things she's explaining that are unsaid, but I think a lot of the gender politics of it are explicitly said.

You know, it's generally being like, oh, these are all feminine and deceptive and, oh, I'm all masculine. And that's bad. You know, it isn't until he like gets it realizes that he can also be a little feminine, you know, on a tent on the ice that he's like, oh, shit, maybe things aren't as essentialist as I thought they were. And maybe these people all are weird liars because I can't view them as anything other than women that are kind of wrong. I do think it's instructive for Gendley as a character and for that sort of masculine role that like when Estraven tries to get him to explain women, Gendley is really bad at it. Like Gendley has to try.

It's like somebody asking you from first principles to explain what female gender roles are. And Genly has no idea how to even go about that. Like how to explain that women are the ones that bear the children and do the housework and are essentially, in often cases, subservient. Like how do you even go about explaining that from first principles? And Genly struggles with it. And he gets caught up in the fact that like, as you start explaining it, you're like,

oh, this makes us sound like horrible monsters. Yeah, he like is explaining women and he's like, oh, we're kind of mean to them. Maybe that's, yeah, maybe you should think about that, Genly. It turns out when you lay out some stuff just by saying what's happening, it's pretty easy sometimes to find out that some things are fucked up. You see, women are the smaller and the weaker of the two and Ergo must bear the children

and stay at home under threat of violence. What would you do that for? Again, please explain. Look at Bird. Yeah, look at Bird. Let's, you know what? I don't feel like talking about women right now. I'm getting too hot and bothered. I at bird. Yeah, look at bird. Let's you know what? I don't feel like talking about women right now. I'm getting too hot and bothered.

I'm the pervert. Remember? I forgot what women sound like. But it's getting is basically his excuse is that he's been on car. He's been on gethin for so long that he doesn't remember what women are like, like essentially. And it's like, what do you mean? You don't remember women are like, you've lived with them your whole life. You go 12 months without seeing one

and you can't remember them anymore. How's that going for you? Gently, what's that say about you? Pretty sure if you asked me a year from now what women look like, I think I would remember. Listen, I remember being in high school and going to Buckeye Boys State. Yeah.

And we didn't see women for like a week. And you would have thought that people were like going to die. Yeah. I. Well, I also went to Boys State in the state I grew up in. Surprise. And yeah, I'll have to say about a few days being surrounded by all dudes. All I could think of was goddamn. And yeah, I'll have to say about a few days being surrounded by all dudes. All I could think of was goddamn.

This is this is the worst. If anything, if anything, it would make him remember women better. I think it would clarify and sharpen my memory. But then again, I've got other stuff going on, so who knows? It would create an idealized vision of what a woman is in his mind. Right. Like he's like, he's just thinking of the. Wouldn't forget who they were. He would have this like perfect Aphrodite.

Yes. Goddess in his mind. The platonic woman in his head. Yeah. If you imagine the platonic woman at all times, instead he's like, instead he's like, you know, I can't even remember what women look like, who knows? And I'm like, again, I think that says more about Genly than it does about anything else. That like you get surrounded by androgyny and you're like, all you can think of is men.

Mm-hmm, men. You know Genly? These are all weirdly effeminate men. You know, Gendly, there are men out there who often spend their time thinking about effeminate men. They're called the gays. Maybe you should consider the concept, Gendly. Let's get- Gendly Eye, Twink to the stars. Genly I the twink ambassador. Twink Hunter.

Genly, we're sending you to a planet of androgynous twinks. Oh no. What will I ever do? Genly's so turned onon is about to pass out. I think I have COVID. They tell Genly this and they're like, but listen, you have to leave Earth and you're not going to see it again for a hundred years of its time. He's like, I don't care.

I don't care. Where do I sign up? Where do I sign up? Twink planet, twink planet, twink planet. I took us to, you know what? It took us two hours, but we got to the hot take of of Left Hand of Darkness, which is like, Gendley's just gay. And he really should have. He he really just signed on to go to.

Yeah, to go to like the, the, the ice ball twink planet and gets there. And within like a year is like, I don't even remember what women look like. Okay. But I am about to go out for 80 days in a tent with this, with my best friend. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Le Guin. I'm sorry. Anyway, thanks for coming on, Trevor. Oh, happy to be here.

Hey, I was on your podcast and we didn't talk about an evil author. As for the first time, we had Trevor on to not to talk about author who isn't inherently a terrible person. For anyone who doesn't remember, Trevor's been on to talk about J.K. Rowling and C.S. Lewis and Andrzej Sapkowski. So two of which have redeeming factors. Yes. But also some really troubling qualities as well. Thank you for coming on to talk about somebody who doesn't suck and

When is one of those rare those rare types that people are like, what's the worst thing about her? They're like She doesn't want to fight people. She's a pacifist She's a pacifist What else her family was friends with Oppenheimer. Oh, no, no, no. True fact. Yeah, true fact. Yeah, like literally Oppenheimer would come over and have dinner with her parents on a semi regular basis.

Again, Le Guin such a good person that like the most heated take we could have is that she was too unrealistically pacifist. Pretty much. most heated take we could have is that she was too unrealistically pacifist. Pretty much. Well, I got thanks for coming on. Hope everyone enjoyed it. We'll be back again soon. I think if all goes well, the next book we're going to cover is a sci-fi short story called A Psalm for the Wild Built by I believe Becky Chambers, maybe the author.

I don't remember. It's a song, a song for the wild built. It's a fun little sci fi short story that I enjoyed quite a bit. We're planning on the future already doing a city of brass, which I don't know anything about the author's politics, so I can't say that. And I haven't finished reading it yet, so I don't have any bad hot takes about the book yet, but we're definitely having Trevor back on for that one. So warning listeners, Trevor's coming back to talk about that

because of where the book is set. But thank you all so much for listening. Shout out to our patrons. I love each and every one of you personally, and I will be over later to tuck you in. Have a good night. Goodbye! Goodbye, see ya! Bro. Are you fucking real man? Come on.