The Sword and Laser discussion

I'd read The Left Hand of Darkness about 6 years ago, so I didn't read it for this month, but one of the books I read last year that I thought did something similar (in the sense of alien or human-like societies with weird gender dynamics) was Carolyn Ives Gilman's Halfway Human. Once we get past the frame story that sets up the majority of the book, we get a really interesting look at someone from a "neuter" gender on this planet, who shows us how everyone starts off neuter, but transition to male or female during puberty, and the place of neuters within the society. I really, really liked this book.

Anyone enjoying The Left Hand of Darkness may also enjoy this book's take on gender!

I'm sure some other folk have books with similar themes they can recommend as well. :-)

There is the works of Storm Constantine. Quite a bit more sex in it than Left Hand of Darkness though - like a lot more. Best to start with Wraeththu which is a collection of the first three books in her series where humans are evolving into a new species of hermaphrodites.

I heard she revised the individual books in the first trilogy but they are not in omnibus for. I got them as ebooks from Amazon under the Immanion Press https://www.amazon.com/Wraeththu-Chro...

I consider Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books to be similar enough to TLHOD that I would recomend them to people looking for something to read after this one. The things Leckie does with the gender expectations of the reader are very interesting, and I think along the same lines as what LeGuin was doing.

Also, Necessary Ill is another. The book is set here on Earth and humanity hasn't gone far into space, but humanity has evolved a third gender.

John Gardner's Commitment Hour does some interesting things with gender as well. It's set on Earth but in a community with some tweaks.

Octavia Butler's Dawn has the third gender, the ooankali which makes for an interesting dynamic. Definitely one of my favorites along with LHOD.

Ann Leckie's new novel Provenance is definitely something you should read, as well as the Ancillary series of course (as already noted above).

Valerie wrote: "Octavia Butler's Dawn has the third gender, the ooankali which makes for an interesting dynamic. Definitely one of my favorites along with LHOD."

Kind of the inverse of this book, given that they're both about colonization, but LHOD sees colonization as a mutually positive force, reflected on a smaller scale in the book's central loving relationship, whereas Butler's series is about the destruction and horror of colonization, reflected in all of the horrible rape/drug use/body horror in that series' central relationships.