Then he went on, “And, sadly, there are budget constraints. As a Muslim, you would normally be eligible for up to four wives, but they only allow me the budget for one. You understand, at times like these, we must all be prepared to make sacrifices.”

“A few of the crew ended up heading out again on other ships as fast as they could. They couldn’t handle the idea of being back, so they became space rats instead. I almost did too. It might have been better for me if I had."

There are families in our culture who commemorate the memories of loved ones with rituals such as lighting yahrzeit candles on the anniversary of a loved one’s death, or going out to visit the graves of parents and loved ones, sometimes on particular days or in some cases as a weekly picnic or whatever. If the loved one is frozen, resting in some unclear legal and religious limbo, what happens to these kinds of visits? You wouldn’t exactly be mourning a “loss.” But neither is

LeGuin explains to us that the Gethenians (the locals) have no shame about sex, that during heat they retire to what might be described (though not by her) as “fuck houses.” Would that Ms. LeGuin were similarly liberated. For all the mention of these houses and their significance for the Gethenian outlook (as well as the not unlikely interest that we mature adults who read science fiction may have in these intimate ways and means of alien species), the doors remain barred to