Left Hand of Darkness《40年前的经典同人小说》

很佩服作者的文字功底，引人深思的智慧和一种严谨的高贵感贯穿始终。横越冰川大陆的几章用了很奢侈的笔墨，读起来稍显枯燥，但篇幅确实也给这段经历增加了很多重量。原作发表的1969年正是登月的那一年，也只有这样的背景才会让她写出这么博爱乐观的一部地外接触系科幻。文中有一段话令人由衷欣赏。主角之一 Estraven在谈到自己对爱国主义的看法时说："How does one hate a country or love one? Tibe talks about it; I lack the trick of it. I know people I know towns farms hills and rivers and rocks I know how the sun at sunset in autumn falls on the side of a certain plowland in the hills; but what is the sense of giving a boundary to all that of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry? Then it's not a good thing. Is it simply self-love? That's a good thing but one mustn't make a virtue of it or a profession....Insofar as I love life I love the hills of the Domain of Estre but that sort of love does not have a boundary-line of hate."爱国，不应该建立在对他国仇恨的基础上。这种观点即使在40年后的今天仍然没有取得它应有的地位。

这么一部大名鼎鼎的女性主义科幻，在今天却可以用另一种眼光来解读。宁宁姐说得没错，勒古因奶奶确实是同人女一只~~且看她自己在这部25周年纪念版后加的后记－－这位对文字要求极为严格的作家在这里提到了一个小小的语言实验，即使用不同的性别代词对这部作品产生的影响。在第18章，大使Genly和雌雄同体的冬星首相Estraven冰天雪地中独处帐篷，而E同学突然处于***期这充满性张力的一幕，她始终使用了“他”来称呼E。如果使用女性代词“她”，整个气氛就完全变了味道。在这里她很激动地承认了这一点："I was fascinated to realize how in the original the intense sexuality of the whole scene is kept hidden by sublimating it into mindspeech -- a bodiless intimacy a different intercourse. I've never seen so clearly how I was controlled when I wrote the book by the hidden force the real dominance of that false-generic "he". If I had called Estraven "she" in kemmer and so been forced to deal directly with the fierce sexuality of kemmer that scene might have had a more immediate less reticent power. But who knows?"