"Le Guin, more than Tolkien, has raised fantasy into high literature, for our time". - Harold Bloom 
 Readers often speak of science fiction/fantasy world-building in terms that suggest meticulous documentation and exhaustive detail are what make these worlds convincing. While I agree that precision is crucial, it is a precision of scarcity that I have ultimately found to be more compelling than the (still impressive) precision of volume found in Tolkien or Diamandis' textbook-like compilations. 
 And so, in this "precisely scarce" category, we find UKG and her spectacular, slim novel The Left Hand of Darkness: it comprises the first-person reports of Genly Ai (first envoy from the interplanetary trade organization, the Ekumen, to the planet Gethen) interpolated with Gethenian myths, fragments of other reports and stories, and journal entries from the main deuteragonist in Genly's mission. These fictional primary sources are tantalizing in their ruthlessly partial, incomplete narratives and implications of narratives; thus, what is presented as a careful, plain set of facts about the political situation of a distant earth-like planet is actually a love story told almost entirely through subtext. Because of the unusual sexual structure of Gethenian society, this love story is simultaneously universal and familiar in its development, and alien and bewilderingly complex in its execution. It is touching and restrained - oddly Victorian in tone despite its futuristic setting and depiction of a sexually progressed society - like the best mixture of Dickinson and Sappho. I have not encountered such an engrossing yet minimalistic alternate reality since Jules Verne's Journey To The Center of The Earth.