Have you read "The Left
Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. Le Guin? It won both Hugo and Nebula awards. I said, sounds interesting, let me read. Half a book through and I am so
bored I decided to stop. Book did not engage my interest at all.
From the beginning I felt that I was "forced" to continue
reading it.
Basically, the novel
describes snow covered, earth-like world of Gethen with two rival states Karhide
and Orgoreyn. In this cold world, a member of far away
civilization, called Ekumen, will arrive. His goal is to persuade
Gethenians to accept their membership to Ekumen confederacy. So far OK.
It
is not clear why Ekumenian traveled 16 light years to accomplish this
task. Of course, Gethenians are suspicious. It appears that they do
not even believe that Ekumen really exists. Could envoy do something to convince them? This is a conservative
society with unusual reproductive physiology designed for population
self-control. Each Gethenian ordinarily exists as an asexual person
who periodically undergoes random transformation into female or male
personality. If in this sexual stage, male or female personality is
able to find his/her kemmering (mate), offspring will be born. This
is basically a novel idea. The rest is utterly conventional.
posted
by David Usharauli
Tweet
No comments:
Post a Comment