[Aptorian]

Tomorrow begins the first week of our three week read of Ursula K LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness.

The book is a little over 300 pages long and we'll be reading roughly a hundred pages a week or what ever fits your chapter breaks.

As always let's be careful of spoilers and keep the discussion on this week's content or what we read last week.

This is the book's description on Amazon:

Quote

Ursula K. Le Guin’s groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.k

[Aptorian]

From the books description I can already tell we might end up having some pointed discussions.

[Andorion]

Excellent. Thanks for the post Apt.

Incidentally, I have started purchasing a lot of Le Guin and Part 1 of the Hainish omnibus arrived a couple of days back. I will start reading tomorrow

[Tiste Simeon]

Have started the audiobook. Fascinating intro by Le Guin exploring the realm of sci-fi. The narrator sounds like an old man and I love listening to him. I'll wait til others start to begin talking about thoughts etc

[Aptorian]

I'm reading her intro to the book as well. Funny reading her thoughts on sci-fi extrapolation and dystopias, in the wake of 84K.

[Andorion]

Loved the introduction and her ideas about the author as artist. Le Guin always strikes me as being extraordinarily articulate.

Also finished the first chapter. Interesting set up so far, though I think the world building and setting are going to end up being more important than just the plot

[Macros]

Forgot to bring it over with me for work. Will start this weekend

[Tiste Simeon]

So I'm really liking how I think we're meant to see Winter/Gethen through the eyes of Ai. It is alien and strange to him and as a result to us as well...

[Macros]

Starting now

[Aptorian]

Read the first chapter. I can't quite get into her flow. There's something about the narration that feels off, partially it's the typical introduction of weird made up names and concepts but there's something else I can't quite put my finger on.

[Macros]

Same for me

[Tiste Simeon]

I struggled at first but I'm really enjoying it. I'm well ahead now as I'm listening on Audible and I have quite a commute and it's under 10 hours so I think I'll finish quite quickly...

[Aptorian]

Bad Tiste! Only read/listen to the first third! You're supposed to pace yourself!

[Andorion]

8 chapters done.

The PoV chapter from the original investigation team cleared up a few of the alien problems for me.

As Apt says above, the deep weirdness of the world is a hindrance to easy comprehension, but I think that's intentional. We are aliens in this alien world and just like the protagonist, a lot of it is too weird or outside the frame of reference for us.

But the basic idea of court politics seems commonplace enough.

[Macros]

Finished week 1s reading last night (yes yes I know, this is like every book so far I've been lagging, but I am still Hella busy. Hoping the work load Vijay drops off come December)

I really didn't like this book at th start.
But as with others I think the last section of the first third, the investigators report, makes things a lot clearer and easier to read.

Would this report at the start have made for smoother reading? Undoubtedly, but also it would have been a very dry opening. I guess there's a reason for this slow exposure.

Not a lot to get your teeth into at the start, it's premise and set up, I think that things will get more interesting now that the envoy and PM are going to meet up again in the org