&gt;  I would definitely recommend reading The Left Hand Of Darkness, I think it stands out among her best.<p>I slogged through &quot;The Left Hand of Darkness&quot;.  I was bored most of the time.  And the whole gender thing felt very hamfisted and <i>very</i> at odds with real biology (reproduction generally tends to shut down when organisms are under extreme stress and need to conserve energy).<p>However, I do recognize that I am reading it in a different time from when it was written.