The Left Hand of Darkness——与平信使.docVIP

The Left Hand of Darkness——与平信使 　　厄休拉·勒奎恩（Ursula Le Guin） 1929年出生于美国加州的伯克利，父亲是加州大学的人类学教授，母亲是一位作家。她1951年毕业于拉德克利夫大学，1952年获得哥伦比亚大学硕士学位，1960年代开始创作科幻小说。勒奎恩既是美国当代最重要的科幻小说家之一，也是最优秀的奇幻小说家之一，曾多次获得雨果奖和星云奖。她在作品中用瑰丽的想象搭建了一个又一个神奇的异域世界，其中又往往蕴含了对人性、对人类文明的深层思考。她的代表作有科幻小说《黑暗的左手》（The Left Hand of Darkness）、《一无所有》（The Dispossessed）、《倾诉》（The Telling）等。《黑暗的左手》是她发表于1969年的作品，书中描写了一种没有性别的独特异星文化，并借此对性别、社会、生命等议题进行了深入探讨。该作品获得1969年的星云奖和1970年的雨果奖。 Guyrny Thanern2）. Some snow， rising wind and falling temperature. Thirteen miles again today， which brings our distance logged since we left our first camp to 254 miles. We have averaged about ten and a half miles a day； eleven and a half omitting the two days spent waiting out the blizzard3）. 75 to 100 of those miles of hauling gave us no onward gain. We are not much nearer Karhide than we were when we set out. But we stand a better chance， I think， of getting there. Since we came up out of the volcano-murk4） our spirit is not all spent in work and worry， and we talk again in the tent after our dinner. As I am in kemmer5） I would find it easier to ignore Ais presence， but this is difficult in a two-man tent. The trouble is of course that he is， in his curious fashion， also in kemmer： always in kemmer. A strange lowgrade sort of desire it must be， to be spread out over every day of the year and never to know the choice of sex， but there it is； and here am I. Tonight my extreme physical awareness of him was rather hard to ignore， and I was too tired to divert it into untrance6） or any other channel of the discipline. Finally he asked， had he offended me？ I explained my silence， with some embarrassment. I was afraid he would laugh at me. After all he is no more an oddity， a sexual freak， than I am： up here on the Ice each of us is singular， isolate， I as cut off from those like me， from my society and its rules， as he from his. There is no world full of other Gethenians7） here to explain and support my existence. We are equals at last， equal， alie