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.

Along with "Tractatus Logico Philosophicus" this book has to be a front runner for one of the greatest works of art I have ever come across. LeGuin writes with style, grace, delicacy, and superbly communicates the difficulty of a community so far removed, as to be considered alien.

There's something for everyone here, but for me this was all about the direct restriction of thought via the restriction of language. On Anarres, where certain concepts have been obliterated, we find an intrigueing fascination with incarceration, something so foreign, so unimaginable it becomes a experiment of children... a simple play-thing to try and glean understanding. What other mysterious concepts are there on Urras which Anarres has forsaken?

For a review of the story, you can read Amazon's snip above which is pefectly fine. As far as being a diffucult read, I wouldn't agree. It is most certainly thought-provoking, but suitable for all ages, and ultimately self-rewarding if you can appreciate the depth this book reaches. Surely one of LeGuins greatest works, if not also one of humanity's. A must read.

Whilst I needed tremendous concentration reading Ursula Le Guin’s dense, descriptive prose I stuck at it (I confess to having awfully low concentration when reading). I was well rewarded. The story is of Shevek, a physicist whose theory and science I found to be more of a vehicle to tell a story of differing utopias (or is that dystopia?) Many reviewers have compared the two worlds offered (Annares and Urras) to Cold War-influenced versions of America and Soviet Russia. I disagree with this. I found it much more believable if one took Shevek’s Annares as more of a hippie commune of the late 1960’s rather than an ideal paradise envisaged by Lenin whilst Urras acts more of a (slightly benevolent) host community than an ideological enemy.

What really has stayed with me through the reading Ringworld is the choice that Le Guin presents at the end of the novel. Is repressive, class-driven A-Io the place you would rather call home or is Annares where there is no formal government yet is staid and strangely enough incredibly intolerant (as demonstrated through Sheveks’s scientist colleagues who refuse to allow him to conduct research he thinks necessary) a better example? Normally I would choose the capitalist-pig option because I would want the mere opportunity to be rich – I might never get it but I’d know that I always had the chance. However on Urras I could exist in a sparse environment where work directives mean I could be separated from my family for a long time but it would be a place with no crime, in particular theft, and have a far larger sense of well-being. I have never read a novel that has actually made me think that the other way of living which has been constantly berated in the Western press over the years had actual merit behind it.

A book that presents its two cases very well. (Just let it sink in!)

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.