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Originally Posted by gmw
I did like the answering the wrong question part of the foretellers in Karhide (it made me wonder if this provided inspiration to Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), but it seemed to me this didn't really go anywhere (unless we are supposed to question whether the answers provided by this book are to the wrong questions?).
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I also thought of Adams; I also felt that it was a throwback to Western myth, as with enigmatic/gnomic responses from oracles, such as the one at Delphi. I hesitate to comment on Eastern myth since I know so little about it, but perhaps there's a similarity to Zen koans?
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The rest of political/religious/spiritual aspects of the novel, for me, were less interesting, because they didn't feel particularly new and they didn't feel as if they reflected what these people were. We have talk of kemmerhouses and hearths, but I felt that none of this was really reflected in what we saw in the book.
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I agree. The societal structure seemed to me a throwback to the European Dark Ages and not especially organic to Gethen, except perhaps as a way to weather harsh conditions. The Gethenians if not humanoid are certainly humanish, and to what extent could they reflect whatever experimentation in regard to biology took place, that is, was a side effect to inculcate "human" responses to environment and socialization, an unconscious preference on the part of the breeders?