I'm never going to get over The Left Hand of Darkness, or really any of Ursula Le Guin's worlds. Finishing The Left Hand of Darkness put me into some sort of state… the book just leaves you feeling completely convinced that that planet exists out there. I LOVE the way she wrote that book. A lot of science fiction feels like "here are my wacky tales of strange aliens and their weird societies!" but she makes it much more "human", much more alive, with respect, if that makes sense. Like, yeah this is a culture very different from your own, an incomprehensible distance from where you come from, but they're still people (even if maybe they have antennae or whatever), this is how they live, and it makes sense. I love Le Guin's style of sociological "hard" scifi. I think that's way more fun than trying to make the science/tech (or god forbid the money) realistic. Such a good fucking book
I feel similarly about Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie (but not really her other scifi books, not as much).
Railsea by China Miéville, the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett, and to some extent Witch King by Martha Wells also give me this feeling at least a bit.
Any recommendations?
by angelic_creation
3 Comments
You may like Hal Clement’s “Mission of Gravity” for it’s well-thought-out alien civilization (my mother, a professor of literature, taught a class on Left Hand if Darkness, and considered following it up with Mission of Gravity).
I thought I would have dozens of suggestions, as a science fiction reader and anthropologist, but suddenly my mind has gone completely blank. I’m going to have to come back to this!
Fellow fan of The Left Hand of Darkness and Ancillary Justice here. I’d recommend:
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez
The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
Both of these are amazing stories about how culture makes and breaks characters, populated by well-drawn people with interesting inner lives. If you like those, read more by those authors.
Honorable mention: Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford, is a super interesting alternate universe noir story about the city of Cahokia. Let’s just say that Spufford *loves* The Left Hand of Darkness and isn’t afraid to show it.
If you haven’t yet experienced the pure joy of escapism that is the Culture, then shoo! Get out of here and enjoy the trip. 🙂
Seriously, when the world gets to be a bit….much, I find myself wandering back among those books. They feel so detailed and real.