The Dispossessed : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: More than just utopian sci-fi
Review: The Dispossessed is one of my favourite books - one that almost always gets re-read when I pick it up just by accident. Ursula K. Leguin does construct a world for utopians; but this world is not really a conventional utopia. Our united suffering is one of the key themes, and while the book is often explaned in terms of its idealology, it shines in its personal relationships. I love Shevek, I love Shevek and Takver together, I love Dap with Shevek's younger daughter. Ursula K. Leguin can explore difficult ideas with a flowing style that never makes you think you are being preached or pandered to.

Rating:
Summary: Illuminating, Inspiring, Beautiful
Review: Whether or not THE DISPOSSESED passes as good sci-fi, I know not. I am not very knowledgeable of what SF fans look for in a book. As a novel, and as a philosophical exploration of authoritarianism, anarchism, capitalism, communism, revolution and utopianism -- this book is first-rate. The questions Le Guin grapples with here are by no means simple. Even great philosophers, like Marx and Bakunin, had difficultly imagining what an ACTUAL society would look like without bosses and owners. But through the gripping tale of an anarchist caught between two fundamentally different worlds, Le Guin seeks answers to many of the questions these philosophers left untouched. How would an anarchist society function? What would it take as its fundamental principles? What problems would that society have? What would a "propertarian" capitalist society appear from the perspective of an anarchist? Without offering any quick or final answers, Le Guin sheds light on these issues and beckons the reader to imagine the possibility of another world. After all, the evolution of culture here on planet earth was why Le Guin wrote this book in the first place. Inspiring, moving and transformative, this book was a pleasure. Thank you, Ursula. You have successfully removed another brick from the wall.