For one second all I know, everything is made of snow

[sovay]

I was just informed that there will be a television adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).

If the Gethenian characters are not cast with genderqueer actors, I will feel someone is missing the point.

Comments

[thawrecka]

That's one of those stories where I don't even see how they could do a good TV adaptation, because so much of what I like about it is internal, and most of the rest is stuff that Hollywood tends to blunder up.

[sovay]

That's one of those stories where I don't even see how they could do a good TV adaptation, because so much of what I like about it is internal, and most of the rest is stuff that Hollywood tends to blunder up.

I'm not even going to disagree with you: I don't even know how a TV script would weave in the Ekumen reports and the folklore of Winter (I could see it working on stage). Just in the same way that any portrayal of Earthsea should obviously star a bunch of non-white people, I feel this way about the characters in The Left Hand of Darkness, as a minimal sign of understanding how the book's world works.

[redbird]

Yes: the journey over the ice could work well on camera, but so much of what's going on in that chapter is conversation and introspection.

And there's a moment during the time Genly spends with the Foretellers that could work beautifully, but what is television going to do with "the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question"?

[sovay]

Yes: the journey over the ice could work well on camera, but so much of what's going on in that chapter is conversation and introspection.

I feel very strongly that good television can be made of conversation, but I agree that introspection is tricky.