Coming of Age in Karhide  "Coming of Age in Karhide" is a science fiction short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, first published in 1995. The story is set on the fictional planet of Gethen, the same as Le Guin's 1969 novel "The Left Hand of Darkness", and is a part of Le Guin's Hainish cycle. The story explores themes of growing into adulthood on a planet where individuals have no fixed gender identity. Reviewers stated that the story went further than "Left Hand" in its exploration of gender and sexuality, and was a "quietly feminist" work. It was also described as lacking the "dizzying impact" of "Left Hand". In 2002, it was anthologized in the volume "The Birthday of the World", along with many other stories exploring marriage and sexual relationships. "Coming of Age in Karhide" is set on the fictional planet of Gethen, a part of the Hainish universe, created by Le Guin. The planet is also the setting for Le Guin's Hugo and Nebula award-winning 1969 novel "The Left Hand of Darkness". In this alternative history, human beings did not evolve on earth, but on Hain. The people of Hain colonized many neighboring planetary systems, including Earth and Gethen, possibly a million years before the setting of the novels. Some of the groups that "seeded" each planet were the subjects of genetic experiments, including on Gethen. In the language of its people, "Gethen" means "Winter", and as its name indicates, is a planet that is always cold. The inhabitants of Gethen are sequentially hermaphroditic humans; for twenty-four days ("somer") of each twenty-six-day lunar cycle, they are sexually latent androgynes. They only adopt sexual attributes once a month, during a period of sexual receptiveness and high fertility, called "kemmer." During "kemmer" they become sexually male or female, with no predisposition towards either, although which sex they adopt can depend on context and relationships. This absence of fixed gender characteristics led Le Guin to portray Gethen as a society without war, and also without sexuality as a continuous factor in social relationships. On Gethen, every individual takes part in the "burden and privilege" of raising children, and rape and seduction are virtually absent. The story is told from the point of view of Sov Thade Tage em Ereb, a teenager who lives in a large communal home in the Karhidish city of Rer.