?anarchist utopia? with no possessive pronouns, and The Left Hand of Darkness, about an alien race without any fixed gender. Le Guin picks her words and subjects carefully, expositing boldly on writing as an inherently political act (an insight she traces back to George Orwell) and on Margaret Atwood?s discomfort with labeling her work science fiction, while shutting down conversations on subjects she feels less able to speak to, such as self-publishing. Her expansive knowledge of the SF genre provides, most strikingly, a sharp perspective on how its female practitioners have too often been forgotten in favor of their male contemporaries. Her rapport with Naimon results in an exchange that is both informative and charming