It's facile to say this is Le Guin's book about speculative fiction itself.  It runs deeper - about how our desires for comfort, riches, power, or even simple security have endless implications, how the desires themselves are both the danger and the promise.  Lathe is truly one of the few books that truly address themselves to the eternal questions of the individual human and their relationship to the world.  We all feel, after all, entitled to dream, but are we all then held hostage to each other's dreams?  A work that will stay with you your whole life, that you will remember your whole life. It asks a question that you can only answer by living.