By Libby Doyle
Imagine you’re a miner in space, digging ore from
the bowels of an inhospitable planet. An alien creature is stalking your fellow
miners, burning them to a crisp. You’d want to kill it wouldn’t you? Of course,
you would. But suppose it turns out you’re the invader?
The alien creature turns out to be a horta, a silicon-based life form. The
miners had tunneled into the horta’s
egg chamber and were callously destroying her progeny. They didn’t know the
nodules they’d found were eggs. To make matters worse, the horta was the last of her kind, charged with tending the eggs until a
new generation was born. Thanks to Captain Kirk and Spock, who mind-melded with
the creature, the humans were able to learn all this before it was too late for
the horta. The miners agreed to
safeguard the eggs, and the horta
agreed to stop incinerating the miners, even to help them.
“The Devil in the Dark,” is one of my favorite
Star Trek episodes. I like its lesson – that our hatred of one another often
stems from fear, ignorance, and miscommunication. In fact, one of the reasons I
adore science fiction is what alien characters can teach us about ourselves.
Ursula K. LeGuin’s classic 1969 novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, used
its alien characters to hold a mirror up to one of the most vexing (and
wonderful) aspects of the human condition: gender.
Human male Genly Ai travels to the planet of
Winter to entice its inhabitants—the Karhadians—to become part of the Ekumen, a
confederation of planets. The Karhadians are a sexless race. To reproduce, they
enter kemmer, which is like estrus in
animals. At that time, they can turn either male or female depending on who
catches their fancy. If they turn female, they can become a mother. If they
turn male, they can father a child. After kemmer,
they return to complete androgyny.
I love this bit, when Estraven, a Karhadian, asks
Genly about women:
“Are they
like a different species?”
“No. Yes.
No, of course not, not really. But the difference is very important. I suppose
the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one’s life, is whether
one’s born male or female. In most societies it determines one’s expectations,
activities, outlook, ethics, manners—almost everything. . . . It’s extremely
hard to separate the innate differences from the learned ones.”
And this passage isn’t the only one that makes you
think. When Genly sends a report back to his superiors, he says: “The fact that
everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be . . . ‘tied
down to childbearing,’ implies that no one is quite so thoroughly ‘tied down’ here
as women, elsewhere, are likely to be – psychologically or physically. Burden
and privilege are shared out pretty equally[.]”
What a concept! The book is filled with these
nuggets.
Now, you may say to me, Libby, this is the Science
Fiction Romance Brigade blog, and you
haven’t mentioned a romance yet! But I consider Left Hand to be a love story. Estraven and Genly face extreme
hardship together, and love grows. When Estraven enters kemmer, there’s a spark of attraction, but their situation
precludes romance. It doesn’t matter. This novel is one of the most profound
depictions of love I’ve ever read, and Estraven is a total [expletive deleted]
hero. Really, it’s beautiful.
The Left
Hand of Darkness also touches on another theme near and dear to my
heart, which happens to be where it gets its title. A religion described in the
book believes in the unity of all living things, expressed in the precept: “Light
is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light.”
I started writing my own books before I read Left Hand, and I was excited to discover
this theme. My own Covalent Seriesfeatures the concept of Balance, the equilibrium of light and darkness, order
and entropy, love and hate. I was inspired by yin and yang and covalent bonds,
which are formed when two atoms share a pair of electrons to create a stable
balance of attractive and repulsive forces.
The hero of The
Covalent Series, the alien warrior Barakiel, derives his power from
Balance. His powerful enemies mean he needs
his hatred. He needs that energy. Lucky for him, he meets the heroine, Zan
O’Gara. She’s his left hand, the light that balances his darkness. He’s good
for her, as well. His race, the Covalent, view sex as one of life’s great joys,
casual or committed. For them, sex is never, ever a source of shame. Through
her alien lover, the human Zan learns to throw off the shame of her past.
That’s why I love science fiction romance as a
genre. All those opportunities for our cross-species lovers to learn from one
another.
Libby Doyle is the author of The Covalent Series. To learn more, visit libbydoyle.com.
