Sci Fi Green-Lights Le Guin Miniseries

Sci Fi Channel is beaming up the library of author Ursula Le Guin again.

The network announced Wednesday that it finalized a development deal with
Jaffe/Braunstein Films to shape LeGuin's science-fiction novel, The Left Hand
of Darkness
, into a four-hour original miniseries that will air on the
channel in 2003. The project will be executive-produced by former Hallmark
Entertainment executive Alan Jacobs.

The deal follows Sci Fi's recent development pact with Lawrence Bender
Productions for Le Guin's Earthsea Trilogy, which will also be
transmogrified into a six-hour miniseries that is slated to air that year.

Le Guin -- the recipient of a host of awards including five Hugos and a
finalist for the Pulitzer Prize -- wrote The Left Hand of Darkness in
1969.

The story centers on a lone human ambassador sent to an arctic planet to
convince the populace to join a multiplanetary alliance. What he finds is a
society in which the inhabitants are capable of becoming male or female. To
survive his perilous journey, the ambassador bonds with a native -- with deadly
consequences.