"The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five" is told largely from the point of view of the matriarchal utopian Zone Three, which places the novel in the category of feminist utopias or feminist science fiction. The "Canopus in Argos" series in general falls under the banner of soft science fiction, or "space fiction" as Lessing called it, due to its focus on characterisation and social and cultural issues, and the de-emphasis of science and technology. Comparative literature professor Robert Alter suggested that this kind of writing belongs to a genre that literary critic Northrop Frye called the "anatomy", which is "a combination of fantasy and morality". Author Gore Vidal placed Lessing's science fiction between John Milton and L. Ron Hubbard". American screenwriter and film director Frank Pierson called Lessing's science fiction "mythic tale" that are closer to Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" and Herbert's "Dune" than works by Clarke and Asimov. British writer Graham Sleight said "The Marriages" comes closest to Ursula Le Guin's works in the way that both Lessing and Le Guin scrutinise societies. Sleight compared "The Marriages" to Le Guin's science fiction novel "The Dispossessed" (1974), saying that each revolves around conflicts between differing worldviews, namely the Zones in "The Marriages", and Anarres and Urras in "The Dispossessed".