Hello, and welcome to Queerous Fiction, where we discuss queer media from around the world and

throughout time. I'm Jasmine. I'm Irene. I'm Alice. And today we're discussing Ursula K. Le Guin's

1969 science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness.

Before we get started, I'd like to acknowledge the Bunawang Bruunwong people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which we record this podcast and pay respects to their elders past and present.

We recognize them as the custodians of an oral history tradition far older than this podcast.

We also have some content warnings for this episode.

This episode features discussion of misogyny, homophobia, racism, transphobia, incest, sexual

assault, suicide, torture, including non-consensual medical procedures, concentration camps,

starvation, and murder, including mass murder. If any of that sounds like something you don't want to listen to, feel free to check out one of our other episodes. Finally, I'd like to mention that this episode was chosen in a poll of our patrons, so if you're interested in voting on future episode topics, check out our Patreon. And if that's not financially viable for you, I'd also like to note that before the left hand of darkness won our Patreon poll, it was suggested four times from 2021 to 2024, ranking in the top 10 for most common media episode's suggestions. So

shoutouts to Twitter user Moss Kith, Tumblr users Winter's Soldier and the aliens believe in you

too, and Hilda, who reached out by emailing Queerest Fact at gmail.com. More on that later.

I'm going to start by briefly discussing Liguin's biography and career before moving onto a synopsis of the plot. Once completed, we'll move into some queer textual analysis, finishing with the critical reception to the novel, from others and from Ursula herself. I'm so excited to hear what Ursula had to say about this novel, because obviously, like, this novel is, like, how many years old?

Just under 60, so it was 1969.

Yeah, and I assume Ursula has thought a lot since then. Mm-hmm. And obviously, as a society, we've talked a lot about, like, gender since then, so I'm keen. Yeah, we will, in fact, get Ursula's perspective from multiple points in time. Great. I'm so excited. I'm just really interested to hear more about her biography and her career because I'm

like familiar with her as an author and I've read a few of her books from like when I was quite

young she wrote some like young adult kind of books as well and I've read some essays that

she's written and that kind of thing but as for her life I'm just like I don't know she's a

woman that writes who is she what led her to this point yeah I feel like her biography makes a lot of sense for this and all in particular. I don't know about her other works. Ursula Krober-Leguin was born in 1929 and grew up in California. Her father, Alfred Krober, was an anthropologist, while her mother, Theodora, was a psychologist and writer. This already makes so much sense. I feel like anthropology is like central to the way that she writes.

Yeah, I feel like it's like anthropologists plus psychologist plus writer equals Urtuloket.

Like that's it.

That explains everything.

Le Guin describes their influence on her writing as follows.

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