Book Lovers Series

Book Lovers: Episode 12

Episode 12: The Left Hand of Darkness

December 12, 2020


51 years after its publication, Ursula K. LeGuin’s masterwork, The Left Hand of Darkness, continues to inspire and open minds across the globe for its frank explorations of gender, friendship, loyalty and patriotism. If you didn’t think all that could happen in a science fiction-adventure novel, then it’s time to pick up The Left Hand of Darkness yourself, then listen to this episode. We discuss Left Hand and its obvious impact on science fiction released since, and we dig into the novel’s structure and style, what books we’d like to see redesigned as dossiers, and how LeGuin continues to blow our minds, even half a century later.




Titles and topics discussed:

  • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
  • Stranger Things
  • Midsommar
  • Save Yourselves
  • The War of the Worlds
  • BoJack Horseman
  • The Broken Earth trilogy by N.K. Jemisin
  • The Gentleman Bastard sequence by Scott Lynch
  • The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
  • Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli
  • The Illuminae Files trilogy by Amie Kaufman
  • Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin, Todd Barton, Margaret Chodos, & George Hersh
  • Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov, Frank Herbert and Samuel Delany
  • The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
  • Episode 8: Romance
  • The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
  • Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  • Supernatural
  • 50 Shades of Grey by EL James
  • Episode 12: Slaughterhouse-Five, Two Ways
  • The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir
  • The Color Purple by Alice Walker and The Color Purple, directed by Steven Spielberg