The Left Hand of Darkness has received highly positive critical responses since its publication.[43] In 1970 it won both the Nebula Award, given by the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the Hugo Award, determined by science fiction fans.[24][44][45] In 1987, science fiction news and trade journal Locus ranked it number two among "All-Time Best SF Novels", based on a poll of subscribers.[11][c] The novel was also a personal milestone for Le Guin, with critics calling it her "first contribution to feminism". It was one of her most popular books for many years after its publication.[24] By 2014, the novel had sold more than a million copies in English.[46]
The book has been widely praised by genre commentators, academic critics, and literary reviewers.[43] Fellow science fiction writer Algis Budrys praised the novel as "a narrative so fully realized, so compellingly told, so masterfully executed". He found the book "a novel written by a magnificent writer, a totally compelling tale of human peril and striving under circumstances in which human love, and a number of other human qualities, can be depicted in a fresh context".[47] Darko Suvin, one of the first academics to study science fiction, wrote that Left Hand was the "most memorable novel of the year",[45] and Charlotte Spivack regards the book as having established Le Guin's status as a major science-fiction writer.[7] In 1987 Harold Bloom described The Left Hand of Darkness as Le Guin's "finest work to date", and argued that critics have generally undervalued it.[9] Bloom followed this up by listing the book in his The Western Canon (1994) as one of the books in his conception of artistic works that have been important and influential in Western culture.[48] In Bloom's opinion, "Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time".[9]
Critics have also commented on the broad influence of the book, with writers such as Budrys citing it as an influence upon their own writing.[49] More generally it has been asserted that the work has been widely influential in the science fiction field, with The Paris Review claiming that "No single work did more to upend the genre's conventions than The Left Hand of Darkness".[49] Donna White, in her study of the critical literature on Le Guin, argued that Left Hand was one of the seminal works of science fiction, as important as Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, which is often described as the very first science fiction novel.[45] Suzanne Reid wrote that at the time the novel was written, Le Guin's ideas of androgyny were unique not only to science fiction, but to literature in general.[24]
Left Hand has been a focus of literary critique of Le Guin's work, along with her Earthsea fiction and utopian fiction.[45] The novel was at the center of a feminist debate when it was published in 1969.[50] Alexei Panshin objected to the use of masculine "he/him/his" gender pronouns to describe its androgynous characters, and called the novel a "flat failure".[45] Other feminists maintained that the novel did not go far enough in its exploration of gender.[45] Criticism was also directed at the portrayal of androgynous characters in the "masculine" roles of politicians and statesmen but not in family roles.[51] Sarah LeFanu, for example, wrote that Le Guin turned her back on an opportunity for experimentation. She stated that "these male heroes with their crises of identity, caught in the stranglehold of liberal individualism, act as a dead weight at the center of the novel".[52] Le Guin, who identifies as a feminist, responded to these criticisms in her essay "Is Gender Necessary?" as well as by switching masculine pronouns for feminine ones in a later reprinting of "Winter's King", an unconnected short story set on Gethen.[51] In her responses, Le Guin admitted to failing to depict androgynes in stereotypically feminine roles, but said that she considered and decided against inventing gender-neutral pronouns, because they would mangle the language of the novel.[45] In the afterword of the 25th anniversary edition of the novel, she stated that her opinion on the matter had changed, and that she was "haunted and bedeviled by the matter of the pronouns."[53]
