![]() Once a month they enter "kemmer", a period in which they can develop either male or female sexual characteristics, father a child, or become pregnant: "burden and privilege," as Le Guin puts it, "are shared out equally". ![]() Winter, the ice-wrapped world she presents, is populated by humans – but humans who are neither male nor female. Le Guin herself has described the book as a "thought experiment". But The Left Hand Of Darkness, which won the Hugo award in 1970, marks a significant shift – both because Ursula K Le Guin was the first female winner of the prize and because a good part of its premise is based on playing around with gender. Even Robert Heinlein had a look at sexual equality in Starship Troopers. True, many of them demonstrated a fondness for big-breasted airheads who are perplexingly eager to service whichever goaty old man is standing in for the author – but Frank Herbert, Robert Zelazny and Philip K Dick all featured independent strong female characters. ![]() ![]() It would be unfair to say that the winners of the Hugo award for best novel were all sexist before 1969. ![]()
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