askchapo

Over the last year or so I have read The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin. The Dispossessed in particular describes a communist society - like, an actual stateless, classless, moneyless society - and is really very moving and insightful imo. Le Guin's background was in anthropology iirc so she had some really fascinating things to say about people and culture, even if I don't agree with all of her politics (she was an anarcho-syndicalist).

I mention it because I had been struggling to get back into reading but both of those books absolutely captivated me, again especially The Dispossessed. She really looked unflinchingly at what she saw as the challenges and potential shortcomings of her theoretical communist society which is really compelling and made it feel very real.

I also read "Coming of Age in Karhide", which is a short story in the same setting as tLHoD that examines gender through the eyes of a human society that was genetically modified in the distant past to eliminate all sexual dimorphism, to the point that they are serially dioecious (all individuals can produce both sets of gametes and carry young, just not at the same time) and that was interesting, to say the least, although potential trigger warning as it's extremely about Gender and I don't think I'm well positioned to notice stuff that other people might find disturbing in that context.