The Dispossessed

Rating:
Summary: Anarchism- Good and Bad
Review: While reading this book, I couldn't help but get the feeling that it is an Atlas Shrugged but for the Left Libertarians rather then the Right Libertarians. They are both books of Idealistic politics and morality. But there is a major difference between the two. Whereas Atlas Shrugged is one-sided propaganda that could hardly be called critical, The Dispossessed is not a fawning love-portrait. Ursula K. Le Guin does not accept Anarchism with the feverent faith that Ayn Rand accepted Capitalism. She recognized that problems would certainly arise, and true to Libertarian form, she addresses these problems in The Dispossessed. Shevek is no John Galt, and that is why The Dispossessed is simply the best novel of Idealistic politics out there.

Rating:
Summary: An Exploration of Government and Humanity
Review: As his anarchist society threatens to degenerate into hierarchy and authoritarianism, brilliant physicist/philosopher Shevek decides to shake things up in an attempt to jump-start the revolution that must be lived every day. So he heads off to the capitalist world of Urras - the historical home of his people from which they fled into self-imposed exile nearly 200 years earlier - in order to trade the extremely powerful "Grand Temporal Theory" that exists only in his head for a chance to forge connections between the people of Urras and the anarchists of nearby Annares.

However, being an anarchist, Shevek is not a very good trader. He quickly finds himself trapped in an invisible prison, carefully isolated from the restless masses of Urras, while the leaders of Urras try to get the Grand Temporal Theory from him in order to establish their rule over the entirety of known space. Breaking out of his luxurious jail, Shevek joins up with socialist revolutionaries and tries to make sure his life's work is not misused.

"The Dispossessed" is written in an interesting fashion, with flashbacks covering the course of Shevek's life routinely interrupting the narrative. While some might be annoyed by the story's resulting disjointedness, I personally was not bothered. The flashbacks let Le Guin explore her ideas of how an anarchist society would operate, how life, love and politics would work in a government-less world. For me, being able to explore the conflicts and tensions between society and the individual, between centralization and autonomy, between responsibility and freedom - this proved nearly as interesting as the plot itself.

Although "The Dispossessed" is technically a work of science fiction, it seems to be primarily an exploration of society and the human spirit. The physics that forms the base of the plot is presented more as philosophy than hard science and the level of technology on Urras and Annares seems hardly more advanced than what exists today. Overall, this book has excellent characters, a good plot, and a whole approach that is sure to make you think about government, society, and humanity itself. Five stars.

Rating:
Summary: Metaphor for OUR world
Review: This is a brilliant work that contrasts two competing world-views in late-20th/early-21st century Earth. Neither is explored through rose-tinted glasses. Shevek, an anarcho-syndicalist from the Moon, comes to believe that the only way to save his society of free anarchists from descending into a Soviet-style authoritarian culture, is to re-initiate cultural exchange with the rich and diverse home world, Urras. Because he has developed the equations that will enable faster-than-light communication across interstellar distances, the propertarian cultures of Urras invite him to visit. He eventually becomes involved in the labor movement of Urras, and, with the help of the Terran ambassador, gives his equations to all of humanity rather than a single nation. Unlike most plot-driven science fiction, Le Guin writes in a human-centered style that uses fictional worlds as a backdrop. An outstanding book.

Rating:
Summary: Imagine no possessions
Review: Ursula K. LeGuin always writes thoughtful novels about cultural and/or political clashes. This one is about an idealist, anarchist society exiled to a nearly barren sister planet of a predictably imperialist, capitalist society. If it sounds heavy-handed, it usually is not because it is really about the protagonist and the deeply human story about his two loves: physics and his family. John Lennon sang, "Imagine no possessions"; Ursula K. LeGuin tries to imagine the consequences of no possessions.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book I Have Ever Read
Review: This book is very involved and chalanges you to think, like most of Ursula Le Guin's book it chalanges our values and our ideas of morality. Not a "light" read but one worth reading more than once.

It is classic science fiction like early Asimov and Heinlein. I have read hundreds of books and own over a hundred mostly Science Fiction this book has been my favorite for over a decade, ever since I first read it.

Rating:
Summary: Remember, this is fiction, not a political text!
Review: This was one of LeGuin's earlier works and still one of her best -- second only, in my opinion, to _The Left Hand of Darkness._ Shevek is a once-in-a-century theoretical physicist and also an Odonion -- an anarcho-syndicalist on the world of Anarres, which is a satellite of the thoroughly capitalist-imperialist planet of Urras, from which the Odonians had removed themselves two centuries before. But Anarrian society is becoming infected with egoism and bureaucratic attitudes, and Shevek finds himself to deal any longer with the jealous resistance his theories have created among his scientific colleagues. Shevek and his friends undertake the necessity of rebelling against the permanent anarchist rebellion, and this involves Shevek making the journey to Urras, both to pursue his research and to attempt to communicate with the anarchist underground there. It's a fascinating story with very fully realized characters, both in their human personalities and in their sociopolitical attitudes. The Urras-Anarres dichotomy, of course, is a straw man LeGuin has set up for the purposes of exploring how a true anarchist society might function, and she succeeds admirably. This book won both the Hugo and the Nebula, and for good reasons!

Rating:
Summary: Favorite Book by my Favorite Author
Review: In Ray Bradbury's book "Farenheit 451" people were reduced to memorizing books in order to preserve them from the book-burners. One book per memorizing subversive. For all my adult life I have known that if I had to choose one book to save; it would be "The Dispossessed".

Rating:
Summary: Boring hodge-podge of Marxism and feminism - YAWN!
Review: I read LeGuin back in the '70s in my teens - I thought she was great.
One of very few female SF writers, if I remember correctly.

I received a copy of this book as a gift, started to read it and was severely dismayed.
Not only was the storyline boring - a lot of dated, insipid "socialism is great, materialism is bad" nonsense.
Perhaps growing up in a socialist European country has heightened my senses to Marxist drivel like this.

Its agenda aside, the book is poorly written, with weak character and scenario buildup.
I guess Ursula was so caught up in setting her bra on fire that she forgot how to write.

Her feeble attempts at physics and hard sciences is frankly ...
None of the stringency and reasoning power of, say, Asimov.
OK, I'm an engineer and if you went through a liberal arts program, fine, just know your limits.

I admit to setting the book aside halfway through, I had more than enough of this ... in school.

The best thing about the book was that it was a gift and that I didn't have to pay for it.

Rating:
Summary: Utopian Theory disguised as Science Fiction
Review: I rate this book up there with the Dune series by Frank Herbert. The only Ursula LeGuin novel that ever held my attention for more than a few pages. Her insights on social interaction within and between cultures are somewhat profound. The theories of Odo rock!
"We each of us deserve everything, every treasure that was kept in the vaults of every king, and we each of us deserve nothing, not even a scrap of bread in hunger. Have we not all eaten while others have starved? Will you punish us for that crime? Have we not each of us starved while others ate? Will you reward us for that virtue? Free your mind of the idea of deserving and then you will begin to think."

Rating:
Summary: Very slow! This fan was disappointed
Review: OK, this is going to be a difficult review to write. For a long while I have been telling everyone my favorite author is Ursula LeGuin. I read all her stuff when I was a teenager and now, 20 years on, have re-read much of it (Left Hand, Rocannon, Planet of Exile, Lathe of Heaven) and enjoyed it enormously again. But for some reason I had never read The Dispossessed until last week. Having read the reviews on this page, I was looking forward to it very keenly.

However, I found the book tedious and very disappointing. If it hadn't been written 5 years *after* Left Hand of Darkness it might be seen as a rehearsal for that much better book. But where Left Hand of Darkness is lean and exciting, The Dispossessed is full of boring backstory. Left Hand starts with a parade in Ehrenrang, where we meet the key players whose intrigue will absorb us for the next 300 odd pages - and then we're running. It's an opening sequence Burgess would have been proud of. Dispossessed starts off slow, and then is constantly bogged down by its non linear format: interspersing current events on Urras with Shevek's backstory on his home moon of Anarres. No doubt this parallel telling of the moons' stories is necessary for getting across the concept of "simultaneity" which is Shevek's life's work. The bigger problem is that there is nothing much happening on *either* moon, until Shevek's climactic entry into Annarian politics in the latter part of the book. And that is not a great payoff either, I'm afraid.

In all the navel gazing and study of Le Guin's work, people tend to forget that she started off as a great storyteller. The Dispossessed is perhaps where it began to come off the rails.

The book is certainly NOT a good introduction to people who haven't read any LeGuin. I would advise them to read Left Hand of Darkness or Lathe Of Heaven. If you don't mind a little science in your SF, Rocannon's World is also great, and in fact science-phobics can read this latter book as a "swords and sorcery" yarn, with a couple of spaceships and a radio (OK, an "ansible") thrown in.

Anyway, on balance, UKLG still rules. So I'll raise to 2*