Masculinism in Science Fiction: Le Guin vs. Haldeman

Introduction: Gender and the Science Fiction Tradition

Science fiction has always been a masculine genre, no matter that Mary Shelley invented it with her novel Frankenstein. Until fairly recent times, most science fiction writers were men, and they dealt with subjects like technology, power, and space battles, featuring male heroes, explorers, and adventurers. In film, science fiction has been a perfect vehicle for ultra-masculine actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger, although Lieutenant Ripley in the Alien trilogy proved that women could be masculine heroes as well — and very effective at destroying hostile creatures that threaten humanity.

Joe Haldeman's novel Forever Peace certainly fits within this conventional masculine narrative. The story is narrated by Sergeant Julian Class, an alienated soldier of the First World who opposes his own government and society. He is the archetypal disillusioned male hero who nonetheless hopes that the world can achieve peace and prosperity through the better use of technology. Even though it was written thirty years earlier, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is a radical departure from these themes and characters. It takes place on an underdeveloped planet called Gethen, far in the future, where permanent genders do not exist: the natives are all bisexual and hermaphroditic, remaining neuter for most of the month except for a brief period when they can become either male or female. Even characters who appear purely male in personality and appearance are equally female, while the male narrator from Earth, Genly Ai, is the outsider who must struggle for years before he can truly understand this society.

Le Guin's Gethen: A World Without Fixed Gender

Ursula Le Guin was one of the first women science fiction writers of the contemporary era, and her themes, settings, and characters frequently bent the traditional rules about gender and sexuality. In The Left Hand of Darkness, the inhabitants of Gethen (also called Winter) have no fixed gender, at least as Earth people would understand the term. They are neuter most of the time, except for a few days each month when they undergo a change called kemmer, during which they may become either male or female. All of them are hermaphroditic and bisexual, and all are capable of bearing children. In this world, the Earth envoy Genly Ai is considered strange, suspicious, or even perverted because he is male one hundred percent of the time.

The novel is set at least two thousand years in the future. Although the Gethens know nothing of their true origins or even of flight, the Earth people suspect they have been genetically engineered for survival in a very harsh environment. Bisexuality and gender-bending were quite radical and risky subjects when the novel was first published in 1969, and Le Guin was undeniably a pioneer in this type of science fiction — although feminists later criticized her for making most of her main characters essentially male in speech, behavior, and appearance.

Works Cited

Haldeman, Joe. Forever Peace. New York: Ace Books, 1997.

LeGuin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books, 1967, 1987.