Evan Gottlieb, OSU professor of film and literature, will review Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic novel The Left Hand of Darkness, as part of the library’s Random Review series on November 20th at 12 pm.
For regular Random Review devotees, you’ll note this month’s iteration falls on the third Wednesday of the month, rather than the usual second week – we’ve been told the shift is for November only.
Slated for the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library’s Main Meeting Room, it’ll also be livestreamed here.
The book, the author, and the reviewer
The Left Hand of Darkness, published in 1969, established Oregon’s Ursula K. Le Guin as a major figure in speculative fiction. Through the eyes of an Earth ambassador to an alien world whose inhabitants have no fixed gender, it explores themes of gender, sexuality, and tolerance in a gripping planetary adventure tale. Le Guin, who spent her nearly 60-year writing career in Portland, from 1959 until her death in 2018, received the 1970 Hugo and Nebula awards for this book, which is still considered one of the best science fiction novels of all time.
Evan Gottlieb is Professor of English at Oregon State University, where he’s taught for 21 years (and counting). Originally from Ontario, Canada, he is the author of five books on eighteenth century and Romantic-era British literature (both poetry and novels), and on literary theory and criticism. His interests recently shifted toward genre fiction, especially science fiction. A course he developed, English 108: Introduction to Science Fiction and Fantasy, regularly enrolls 100 students at a time.
Gottlieb recently completed a book on ecological theory and science fiction film that will be published in spring 2025 in Bloomsbury’s “Film Theory in Practice” series, and is currently writing an introduction to the genre for a student guidebook to sci-fi. An international soccer fan, he holds master’s and doctoral degrees from State University of New York, Buffalo.
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