1969 Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning science fiction. Genly Ai is a
human emissary to the world of Winter, sent to bring it into
star-travelling civilisation. The natives change gender as part of
their life cycle. And this is a problem for him.
This is a book I've always found tough going, but not for the
bits most people do. Other readers have reported bogging down in the
legends, but I really liked them and could have done with more; it's
the core story that dragged for me, as the native lord Estraven
slowly, slowly breaks down Genly Ai's preoccupation with the gender
binary. Yes, I get the message, you can stop pounding it in now,
especially since you've contrived this entire situation just to make
your Message the inevitably right answer. (This is, in fact, the
best way to get me to change my views away from the author's
favoured attitude; I get stubborn.)
Much like 1965's Dune, there's precious little science in this
science fiction. If the gender changing were explained as magic rather
than hormones it wouldn't make any difference to the story. However,
for a supposedly feminist book this is chock full of what we'd now
call gender essentialism: any female anywhere will interact with the
world this way, any male anywhere will do it that way, and
culture, even the enlightened culture of galactic civilisation, is
irrelevant: it's all pre-determined. "A man wants his virility
regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect
and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation." And the only
possible way to get away from that is to be a sex-changing alien!
In 1969, soft science fiction was a new and growing trend within SF;
books that suggested that the Big Interstellar Polity (probably an
empire) might have something to learn from the natives were unusual;
books that suggested that people might be impermanently-gendered but
still people were un-heard-of. These things are all now embedded in
our mental and cultural lexica, in large part because of the success
and popularity of this book, but as a result a book that rests so
heavily on presenting them as a new idea tends in my mind to flop a
bit.
Reread for Neil Bowers'
Hugo-Nebula Joint Winners Reread.
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