Where is Winter?

The Left Hand of Darkness seems to me to be particularly interested in the act of naming. In the first few pages of the novel I noticed LeGuin’s adoption of the sci-fi trope of giving seemingly everything a strange, unpronounceable name. The talk of Gossiwors and kyorremmy reminds me of a particular criticism of Atwood’s The Blind Assassin: the book was replete with silly “sci-fi” names that were meant to make the world seem alien, but they only really served to distract the reader, rather than immerse him. While this is a stylistic tic that I do personally find somewhat frustrating in sci-fi, its use does not seem too egregious to me in The Left Hand of Darkness.

It is less the strange, invented alien words that struck me, but the ambiguities that were given to names. At the end of his conversation with Estrevan, they come to the name of the planet. Estrevan asks Ai “what do you call it, this world, in your language?” At first, Ai answers with Gethen, the technical name of the planet. Then, upon further provocation, he reveals what he has called it several times in his interior monologue: Winter. Up until that point, I was not even sure whether Gethen and Winter were interchangeable, and not in fact different places. This seems to be a simple analogue for the ambiguous sexuality of the Gethens, where their gender truly is only what an outsider decides to call it, which they inevitably only do so based on their outside appearance, but it seems to me that the naming of Winter resonates more on its proof that this dilemma of the naming of things occurs on every scale in the story. Not only does the gender of a man/woman rely on semantics, but an entire planet can chameleonically change aspects with a single turn of phrase.

To return to the alien words, in terms of ambiguity they do serve an important purpose in science fiction in general. One could argue that these ambiguities are a literalization of the primary appeal of sci fi . A common tactic of immersion is to throw the reader into the setting, to make them experience a narrative without understanding it. Nonsense words are an instantaneous way to achieve the confusion and intrigue required for this form of immersion. Then, the revelation of their meaning parallels an equal understanding of the narrative, characters and background for the story. The appearance of this trope, an apparent sci-fi “shortcut,” makes me wonder what other people think about the phenomena. Do you find the fanciful, invented terminology to be successful immersively, or just annoying, or both? For me, I feel that it can’t help but succeed in immersion, with the unbeatable “throw the baby in the pool” approach, but I also find it to be a consistently annoying tic that, if not erased completely, I wish would be toned down in some cases.

Shut up, Narrator

One aspect that struck me as particularly strange about “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” was the narrator, particularly in the first act of the story. It is a very colloquial narration, which isn’t too odd in and of itself, we have seen that in many novels, but more than that it is that the narrator seems to assume he knows more about us, the readers, than he has any right to. He makes constant commentary on what we are “looking at” or “see,” or even refers to actions we seem to have done, but certainly do not recall.
The first thing it made me think of was a film, as the narration is so clearly focused on providing a replication of a visual experience. “I'll give you just one goodie. Maybe you noticed on the sportshow or the streets? No commercials. No ads…That's right. NO ADS. An eyeballer for you,” (2) says the narration. The way the narrator assumes he knows what you have “seen” can support either two interpretations: that he is assuming a film-like experience, where you are being shown what he wants, or that you are standing right there with him. The first causes problems because he seems to make reference to what the reader has “looked at,” implying that he can see us as well, rather than just show us, while the second cannot be possible because he is a seemingly invisible narrator. However, as this is a short story that exists only in print, neither of these interpretations are possible at all. I can’t help but wonder what purpose this confusing of the medium of “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” achieves.
Then again, the capitalized buzzwords and melodramatic gesturing also echo vintage copywriting. The whiz-bang, snake-oily style of “But you're curious about the city? So ordinary after all, in the FUTURE?” (2) or “Look around. Not a billboard, sign, slogan, jingle, skywrite, blurb, sublimflash, in this whole fun world,” seems like it is called by a carnival barker. This draws an obvious connection to the themes of the story and seems to me to be the most compelling rationale for an interpretation of the narrative style.
However, because of this I find the narration to be, in a word, annoying. To me the narrative style is gimmicky. Moreover, the confusion of media that I mentioned seems only to take me out of the story. Once the narrator sends us on our way (“But it's time to go back down, far below to our girl. Look!” [3]) and departs for a moment, we get into the gory details of Burke/Delphi’s transformation and Tiptree reveals herself to be a capable science fiction author. Once the narrator returns, however, I just have to fight the urge to find him and kick him. To me, one of the strengths of Science Fiction is its ability to immerse the reader, and in this case, the narrator’s gimmicky, somewhat smug narration constantly yanked me out of the story, and disturbed me more than any of the actual themes of the story ever could.