This book is quite probably Ursula K. Le Guin's most famous work (outside of Earthsea, of course), and rightly considered a modern sci-fi classic. I have a huge amount I could say about this novel but I think it speaks for itself so well that I will not give it the disservice of an attempt at a full reflection in a mere blogpost & instead simply urge you to read it; whether you're a fan of sci-fi or not - this is just a masterfully told, powerful, complex story. To give you the very broadest of broad strokes outlines - we follow Genly Ai, the envoy from the Ekumen* to the wintry planet Gethen, where he gets caught up in the turbulence of its local politics & has to contend with coming to an understanding of the natives' alternative mode of sex.** That's all I'm saying. Read this novel.
* An alliance, for want of a better term, of 83 human[ish]-populated planets, which it's Ai's job to try to persuade Gethen's authorities to affiliate themselves with.
** Incredibly imaginative worldbuilding here: the Gethenian people are all genderfluid bisexuals, effectively - i.e. they spend 80% of their lives living as sexless androgynes, then in their monthly cycles of libidinous urges they become either male or female for a few days. (Sections of the novel read like extracts from a Judith Butler thought experiment.) This is important to the story (what other novel can boast a line like "the king was pregnant"? tell me) but never has to rely on infodumps, instead being organically seeded & developed throughout. You can tell Le Guin was raised by an anthropologist in how believably she is able to depict such an alien (and yet human) society, so well thought-through it comes across.
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