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book1969

The Left Hand of Darkness

Disciplines:
science fiction/science fiction literature
sociology/gender studies
fantasy fiction/anthropological fiction

Summary

Ursula Le Guin's 1969 Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction novel set on a world where humans have no fixed gender, using the premise to examine what gender is, what politics and loyalty mean, and what makes us human.

Core Contribution

Introduced a gender-fluid alien society in 1969 — long before the mainstream — as a thought experiment about biological determinism, making it the most significant intersection of science fiction and gender theory in the canon.

Historical Influences

Ursula Le Guin

Intellectual Lineage

American Science Fiction Tradition Feminist Literary TraditionAnthropological Fiction

Allied Works

The Dispossessed The Word for World is Forest A Wizard of Earthsea Kindred

Contemporaries & Peers

Dune Slaughterhouse-Five The Dispossessed Kindred

Minds Influenced

No recorded minds influenced.

Intellectual Posterity

GethenGender as social construct — science fiction treatment

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