For Ursula

"Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here.They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?Yet you cannot think of a Gethenian as "it." They are not neuters. They are potentials, or integrals. Lacking the Karhidish "human pronoun" used for persons in somer, I must say "he," for the same reasons as we used the masculine pronoun in referring to a transcendent god: it is less defined, less specific, than the neuter or the feminine. But the very use of the pronoun in my thoughts leads me continually to forget that the Karhider I am with is not a man, but a manwoman."

Speaking of authors that make you think, Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice is a recent Sci-Fi that made me think. Without spoiling, the odd person view seemed a bit jarring when I first started reading it, but within a few chapters it makes sense. I enjoyed the trilogy as a whole, but the first is the best of the three.