The dispossessed

Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.

Set in the same universe of LeGuin's other space stories, _The_Dispossessed_ critiques the capitalism of late 20th century Western culture, with its proxy wars and gender inequities, the failings of idealized communist societies which succumb to human drives for power through buereacracy, as well as the drive in both to maintain a status quo.

In addition, Shevek's struggle to unify linear and circular views of temporal physics parallels Einstein's (or Ainsetain's (sic))and modern physics struggles to unify general relativity with quantum mechanics. This, along with insights into the perils of dual career families and academic politics round out the tale.

Shevek, is perhaps the only fully realized character and he serves as the readers eyes onto the two Cetian societies and thus the aforementioned critique of our own. So, while I did identify and feel empathy for Shevek, it was the social descriptions and plot which kept me from putting the book down more than once to sleep, over the course of 24 hours.

Are you possessed by your possessions? by your ideas?

It is a very interesting novel of ideas. It's also various other things, an adventure story, a love story, a story about the growth and development of its central character. At these latter levels it succeeds rather imperfectly. Le Guin's writing is a little too stodgy, very dry and humourless, her characterization a little too lacking in sureness and in many ways the book drags a little. But as a novel of ideas it remains eminently worth reading, especially for the parts set on Anarres, much the most interesting chapters of the novel, with their impressively thoughtful and honestly ambivalent picture both of what might be attractive and of what would might be horrible about the sort of large scale anarchistic experiment in living Le Guin there imagines for us.

Note: The Perrenial Classics edition of this book (not this edition) is much more sturdy and readable, if a little more pricy.

I come up with Eric Frank Russell's Gands in _The Great Explosion_ (" . . . And Then There Were None"), Robert A. Heinlein's Loonies in _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, and Ursula K. Le Guin's Anarresti in _The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia_.

Oh, there are a handful of others, notably James Hogan's _Voyage from Yesteryear_ (which was itself strongly influenced by Russell). But most of the rest are thinly disguised libertarian propaganda without a great deal of literary merit (though your mileage may vary).

Of these three, Le Guin's is in some ways the most compelling. In part that's because she's just such a fine writer. But it's also because she's probably the _least_ "ideological" of all the SF writers who have ever tackled this subject.

On Le Guin's somewhat Taoistic approach, each of the contrasting societies contains the seeds of the other, and she lets the reader see both their "good" and "bad" points. She clearly likes the Anarresti society (and on the whole it comes off rather better than its Urrasti foil). But she doesn't hesitate to show the reader some of its critically important drawbacks. Its childrearing practices, for example, recall Ira Levin's _This Perfect Day_, and its treatment of original thinkers (and their "egoizing") even recalls Ayn Rand's tub-thumpingly propagandistic _Anthem_.

In general, then, Le Guin is pretty well immune to the usual salvation-by-ideology claptrap. And as her subtitle suggests, her utopia really _is_ ambiguous. For her, people aren't "saved" by adopting the correct philosophical position or social principles.

Least of all is her protagonist Shevek "saved" by such means. Shevek is a physicist from Anarres (the moon of the planet Urras) and has grown up in its anarchist society. But it doesn't really have a place for him. Neither, more obviously, does Urras, the "propertarian" counterpart to Annares's communitarian society, with which Annares has had no contact for about a century and a half. So with respect to the two polar-opposite patterns of social organization, Shevek is doubly dispossessed.

What's the book actually _about_? Well, Shevek cooks up a plan to get the two societies on speaking terms again and, in order to pursue it, decides to leave Anarres for Urras; so off he goes, as a passenger in a ship called the _Mindful_. (And yes, do be careful not to trip over the symbolism.) That's all I'm going to tell you about the plot. But the essential theme of the novel is, I suppose, barriers and their overcoming. (The very first sentence goes like this: "There was a wall." Yep.)

It's a very thoughtful novel. The narrative hops around in time a lot and the plot isn't exactly marked by nonstop action, so it's probably not for space opera fans. But readers of a more philosophical bent will enjoy it immensely.

And if you're at all interested in literary portraits of anarchist societies, make sure you read this one. If you share Le Guin's Taostic/anarchistic leanings (as I do), you'll like the Anarresti _and_ appreciate Le Guin's refreshingly anti-ideologue-ish honesty in her portrait of it.