December 2021

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

0

The novel “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula Le Guin was published for the first time in 1969. It won the Hugo and Nebula Awards as best novel of the year.

Genly Ai is an envoy of the Ekumen who has obtained an audience with Argaven Harge XV, the king of Karhide, the nation of the planet Gethen in which he managed to have the most important contacts. That result was achieved thanks to Prime Minister Estreven, who seems very interested in the possible alliance between Karhide and the Ekumen. However, the night before the audience, Estreven warns Genly Ai that he can no longer contribute to his cause.

Puzzled by Estreven’s behavior, Genly Ai prepares for a meeting with the king but discovers that there have been major changes in the government with the appointment of a new prime minister and Estreven getting exiled. The king rejects the Ekumen’s alliance proposal and Genly Ai decides to make another attempt in another nation but ends up entangled in political intrigues he doesn’t understand.

Bone fragments from Denisova Cave (Photo courtesy Samantha Brown)

0

An article published in the journal “Nature Ecology and Evolution” reports the identification of new fossil bones belonging to the Denisovans, the hominin species still mysterious from various points of view. A team of researchers led by Katerina Douka conducted a very sophisticated analysis of nearly 3,800 bone fragments too small to be identified by normal methods and found five that belonged to humans, four containing enough DNA fragments to establish that three belonged to Denisovans and one to a Neanderthal. The bones were found in a layer of Denisova Cave dating to as early as 200,000 years ago, making them some of the oldest human fossils from which it was possible to extract DNA. They’re important fossils also because they were discovered in the same sediments as animal remains and stone tools that offer information about that people’s life.