E-book extra: In-depth study guide.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 planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
It’s a testament to Le Guin’s integrity and imagination that should could imagine so precisely the limitations of a social system she herself advocated for.
Like most Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle novels, this is primarily an anthropological work. It’s more concerned with society and ideology than with plot or characters.
A classic of speculative fiction, The Dispossessed is a seminal work of the genre.
On a personal note, I loved the subplot about a gay character who wishes he could have children of his own, even in a society where child rearing is communal. While not the focus of the story, it touches briefly on subject that remains a strong taboo in the gay community to this day.
Un libro di fantascienza geniale, avvincente e al tempo stesso ricco di significato. Negli ultimi anni ho tratto grande piacere dallo studio del pensiero anarchico e delle sue differenze con il comunismo autoritario (e chiaramente con il capitalismo). Penso che il pensiero anarchico sia criminalmente escluso dagli studi scolastici e che moltissime persone, per questo motivo, non sappiano realmente cosa sia. I reietti dell'altro pianeta immagina un'utopia anarchica, dandole però sostanza: è bellissimo vedere come funzionerebbe una società anarchica secondo Ursula Le Guin, anche perché ne presenta anche le possibili criticità. La critica feroce alla concezione del lavoro e dello sfruttamento nel capitalismo sono da pelle d'oca. Ho imparato più sull'anarchia leggendo lei che leggendo Kropotkin!
I love Ursula but this has been my least liked book of hers so I'm giving 4 stars instead of 5. I enjoyed the heavy intellectual ideas. I enjoyed the romance. I was utterly destroyed that she made this main character who I had thoroughly liked, out of nowhere sexually assault a woman because he experiences alcohol for the first time in his life. The way it's written is really fucking blaming the woman victim character while our main character dude just gets to brush it off and go on with his life as the hero and doesn't even think about this incident for even one goddamn second for the rest of the book. I know Ursula took some serious thoughts about feminism later in life and made some apologies and changes in her writing with the Earthsea series which I thought was wonderful. I really wish she had taken the time to go back and edit or at least write an apology about this. It fucking sucks. The rest of the story is great. This one scene should be deleted. It's fucking horrible. And no it's totally not believable that creating an anarchist communist society would suddenly erase rape and that rape is just an invention of capitalism and greed. Yea no. I can't bite down on that idea at all. The other heavy ideas make sense but only up to a point and then it's just like trying to say capitalism causes humans to rape. Like no fuck you. Rapists are psychopaths. They are the same as murderers. They are born with it in their brain. They cannot feel empathy. They are predators. Society can't make them do it or not do it. They exist in every society through all time. They can't be fixed either. And a man who is absolutely loving to his true love, his little daughters will not just suddenly sexually assault a woman because he got exposed to capitalism and alcohol and "went crazy." Fucking bullshit rape apology sexist bullshit. And then feel absolutely no remorse about it? Cmon!!
Where does Anarchism succeed and where does it fall short?
4 stars
The two planets Anarres and Urras are each other's moons, yet the people living on them hardly know what it's like on the other planet. All they know is that Urras is an archist society, while the people of Anarres are anarchists.
In this book we follow Shevek, a scientist from Anarres, who travels to Urras in a mission to facilitate interplanetary understanding. Every other chapter switches between past and present (or future and further future) and we thus get introduced to Shevek on Anarres and what led him to go to Urras while we also learn about him on Urras and how his mission is going.
But the book is not actually that interested in Shevek's story. Much time is spent showing us the workings (and failings) of Anarres' anarchist society: The education system, job distribution, living arrangements, romantic partnership, etc.
Similarly, the chapters on capitalist and archist Urras …
The two planets Anarres and Urras are each other's moons, yet the people living on them hardly know what it's like on the other planet. All they know is that Urras is an archist society, while the people of Anarres are anarchists.
In this book we follow Shevek, a scientist from Anarres, who travels to Urras in a mission to facilitate interplanetary understanding. Every other chapter switches between past and present (or future and further future) and we thus get introduced to Shevek on Anarres and what led him to go to Urras while we also learn about him on Urras and how his mission is going.
But the book is not actually that interested in Shevek's story. Much time is spent showing us the workings (and failings) of Anarres' anarchist society: The education system, job distribution, living arrangements, romantic partnership, etc.
Similarly, the chapters on capitalist and archist Urras further explores anarchism through Urras' people arguing with Shevek. Of course, we also learn about Urras' society, but any politically literate person should already know about such topics as wasteful production, poverty, police brutality, greed, etc.
Urras is obviously not presented as "the good ones", but Anarres isn't shown through rose-colored glasses either. It too is corrupted by power and is by no means a paradise. It's still a society made up of humans that can be shitty to each other.
In the end world building takes a bit of a backseat as Shevek's story becomes more important, but he is a stand-in for anyone. This story is not about a physicist—or an anarchist diplomat. It's about what justice, shame and greed are. What role art and science plays in politics. It's about what freedom means in a society.
One star is docked for a sexual assault that occurs somewhere in the middle. I don't have a problem with that topic popping up in general, but the way it enters into this story is just baffling: The people of Anarres are always painted as very conscious of power imbalances, going so far as describing sex as "copulating" as that is supposedly the only word that does not carry heavy undertones of something being done by one party to the other, but rather something done together. And still one of these folks does not understand the concept of consent! And it's not portrayed as that one person being "one of the bad ones". It would have needed more set up or explanation to be valuable.
This book blew. My. Mind.
I'm serious, for this alone Ursula K Le Guin became my fav sci-fi author, leaps and bounds above anybody else.
She showed me what you can do with science fiction, how you can break the limits of the imagination.
It is the first time I actually managed to picture a non-hierarchical society and it is so real, so visceral, that things clicked and I realized that "wait, this is possible!?"
And she does that with a completely made up story set in two completely made up societies, both fleshed out with their greatness and infamy, their ideologies and contradictions.
It is NOT an easy read: Le Guin happily forces your brain to do some mental gymnastic, where things don't make any sense until a few pages later when they suddenly, perfectly do, things click in place and your mind is blown.
It is the book …
This book blew. My. Mind.
I'm serious, for this alone Ursula K Le Guin became my fav sci-fi author, leaps and bounds above anybody else.
She showed me what you can do with science fiction, how you can break the limits of the imagination.
It is the first time I actually managed to picture a non-hierarchical society and it is so real, so visceral, that things clicked and I realized that "wait, this is possible!?"
And she does that with a completely made up story set in two completely made up societies, both fleshed out with their greatness and infamy, their ideologies and contradictions.
It is NOT an easy read: Le Guin happily forces your brain to do some mental gymnastic, where things don't make any sense until a few pages later when they suddenly, perfectly do, things click in place and your mind is blown.
It is the book that made me understand how the limits of our current society are, first and foremost, limits of our imagination, and I don't say this lightly.
This book blows our minds, because we have been robbed of the ability to imagine a better, if imperfect, world.
Wow. What else is there to say? This book was a buffet of ideas ranging from sexism, capitalism, socialism, the military-industrial complex, and politics. I especially enjoyed Le Guin's writing on women, but anarchist and archist, through the eyes of the anarchist main character. For the first few chapters I was amazed at Le Guin's interpretation at an anarchist utopian, and took it as a blueprint for the work we socialists have to do here on Earth. But as the book progressed we learned more about the so-called utopia and it's possible fault -- one of which being politics and the formation of government--and I finished the book with more questions than answers. This was a delightful and nerdy read.
A third of the way into this book I had the strange experience of realising I must've read it as a teenager and completely forgotten. This makes young-me an idiot, because this is a masterpiece. Well written, complex world building that manages to balance the showing with the telling.
I can see how young-me may have had difficulty with this manifesto on anarchism, one that doesn't shy away from the difficulties and weaknesses of the system even as it promotes its values. Plus at one point the protagonist suffers some drunken premature ejaculation.
Wonderful and well written book tackling more issues than you would think could fit into the pages it has. Le Guin manages a surprising shift in narrative well, giving us the perspective of an anarchist looking at a capitalist society. A particular joke stuck especially with me, flipping a common argument on its head:
"But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and, contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anarresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work — his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy — and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker."
Beyond that, she manages …
Wonderful and well written book tackling more issues than you would think could fit into the pages it has. Le Guin manages a surprising shift in narrative well, giving us the perspective of an anarchist looking at a capitalist society. A particular joke stuck especially with me, flipping a common argument on its head:
"But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and, contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anarresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a human being’s natural incentive to work — his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy — and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker."
Beyond that, she manages to describe certain phases of teenagers incredibly well. I never cared much for coming of age books as a teenager, but the few chapters she spends on the topic probably would have spoken more to me then than any coming of age book i know of.
Overall, a good book because I enjoy SF and I was mentally stimulated by some of the ideas about social structures.
The reason why I give it 3 stars and not 4 is that it seemed to me that the author was trying too hard to describe the philosophy at the cost of the SF aspect.
I found this hard work, I'm not sure why. The self-sacrifice rings true but the isolated research doesn't. My least favourite of the Hainish cycle so far.
Le Guin explores why and how an anarchist society can work, undaunted by complexity and in vivid detail. At the same time a reflection on individuality, sense of purpose, and the nature of abstraction. Probably one of the best books I've ever read.
I've heard this book called “a bundle of ideas disguised as a book,“ but honestly, I don't think that's fair. It's a pretty good balance between world-building and character— better than a good chunk of SF, at least.
What can I say? It's a good book that gives insight into anarchist ideals, the compatibility between freedom and human nature, and human relationships. Also gives you some cool words to throw around. “Egoizing,” “propertarian,” what a goddamn masterpiece.
I think Le Guin has a quote that fits, actually (that I'm paraphrasing from memory): “A mark of a good book is feeling that you've learnt something, even if you can't put your finger on what it is.”
It's a comparison of capitalism and social anarchism in a science fiction setting. I had a lot of sticky bookmarks in it when I had finished, for paragraphs to go back and think about. Unusual for fiction for me. The main character is a physicist but the physics is imaginary - no science background needed.
It's a comparison of capitalism and social anarchism in a science fiction setting. I had a lot of sticky bookmarks in it when I had finished, for paragraphs to go back and think about. Unusual for fiction for me. The main character is a physicist but the physics is imaginary - no science background needed.
