ABSTRACT
Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness is a staple of the science fiction canon, often mentioned for Le Guin’s decision to use he/him pronouns for all the characters. In the decades since its publication, critics and Le Guin herself have admitted the shortcomings of this approach to gender difference. In what seems a direct response to The Left Hand of Darkness, Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch series features a main character whose language uses only she/her pronouns. This allows for remarkable diversity of “female” characters, while preventing the practice from fading into the background as it does in Le Guin, since she/her is marked in English. This paper uses The Left Hand of Darkness and the subsequent scholarship on it to examine several recent science fiction works: Leckie’s Imperial Radch series, Lee’s The Machineries of Empire series and Wells’ Murderbot series. Through these works’ treatment of gender variance and gendered language, we can gain a better understanding of how contemporary science fiction is playing with gender variance in a very different time than when Le Guin was writing Left Hand of Darkness. Using feminist and queer theories, I will demonstrate how these books challenge gender’s importance and meaning for the characters and readers alike.
