The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

published	December 1st 1994 by Eos
first published	1974
binding	Mass Market Paperback
isbn	0061054887 (isbn13: 9780061054884)
pages	400
literary awards	1975 Hugo & Nebula Winner. 1975 Locus Awards Winner
description	Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred...more [close] 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. [close]
date added	12-19-06 edit book

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Scott rated it:

12/26/07

bookshelves: sci-fi

Read in December, 2007

I came across this book working on an idea for a "History Seen Through Science-Fiction" class, and as an example of Social Science-Fiction it works remarkably well.

The utopia/dystopia setting, with anarchist-oriented Anarres founded by revolutionaries from capitalist and nationalist Urras provides a wonderful means of examining issues such as freedom and the meaning of the idea of the "state." Le Guin creates a fully realized "anarchist" society on Anarres, comp...more I came across this book working on an idea for a "History Seen Through Science-Fiction" class, and as an example of Social Science-Fiction it works remarkably well.

The utopia/dystopia setting, with anarchist-oriented Anarres founded by revolutionaries from capitalist and nationalist Urras provides a wonderful means of examining issues such as freedom and the meaning of the idea of the "state." Le Guin creates a fully realized "anarchist" society on Anarres, complete with one of the more intriguing look at the role of language in informing societal thinking. The Odonian society on Anarres seems a functional society--complete with the onset of ossification and the re-introduction of "possessiveness" of its related power relations.

Unfortunately, Le Guin's depiction of the societies of Urras--from capitalist A-Io to socialist Thu and the "police-action" decimated Benbili--is rather sparse, apparently with the idea that its society would be readily recognizable to readers. What the reader is left with, however, is more a stereotype than functioning parallel to the well-developed Odonians.

The novel has attracted considerable attention for its political views, especially the seeming "superiority" of the Odonian society on Anarres. Some of the aspects of the story seemed forced. The clearest example, that shows the society of Anarres at its best, are the periodic famines that call forth the best in people. In the novel, the famines are the result of the inability of Anarres to support the society while undergoing a basic form of terraforming; the famines are a natural phenomenon. They are intended, however, to be parallels to the famines so common in our historical experience, especially those that hit the Soviet Union and, to a lesser extent, communist China. The difference is that the historical famines had far less to do with "natural" causes than the political situations of the societies in which they occurred. Le Guin manages here to sidestep a major issue that would seem to be central to her theme.

That said, I think Le Guin's subtitle, "An Ambiguous Utopia," gives a greater clue as to her theme. Odonian society is not a utopia, and probably never was. A group dedicated to promoting "customary" behavior is no less interested in maintaining its own power and reproducibility than a group promoting "legal" behavior that we (and Le Guin, apparently) term a "state." And there lies the ambiguity: is it institutions such as laws, governments, and even languages that cause tensions and inequality in societies, or the fact of the people in those societies themselves? I would argue that Le Guin comes down on the latter side.

All in all, a good read....less

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Brooke rated it:

10/02/07

Read in January, 2005

Old book blogging...

Ursula K. LeGuin is a fantastic SciFi/Fantasy writer. I've read another one of her books several months ago, that I have forgotten the title of. She writes very sensitively, very strong in the human element. The Dispossessed was a very interesting look at what an anarchist society would be like in "reality". ie. if it were allowed to exist on a separate moon of a capitalist planet after a revolution and to evolve over the course of 150 years. What I liked best a...more Old book blogging...

Ursula K. LeGuin is a fantastic SciFi/Fantasy writer. I've read another one of her books several months ago, that I have forgotten the title of. She writes very sensitively, very strong in the human element. The Dispossessed was a very interesting look at what an anarchist society would be like in "reality". ie. if it were allowed to exist on a separate moon of a capitalist planet after a revolution and to evolve over the course of 150 years. What I liked best about it, though, was that it wasn't your typical utopian society kind of book, trying to shock you with all the differences between modern culture and what the future could potentially hold if society evolved differently...The impact of humans and human decisions and emotions on the course of the Odonian society was strong, and made the story extremely believable. Even though it is set thousands of years in the future on a planet light years away, I could still relate to it in the main character's struggle for individuality, without abandoning his strong sense of collective. Also, the book had a lot of semi-advanced temporal physics, which was interesting in it's concepts of time, and how those could progress logically from the Theory of Relativity...if an alien race took that theory and ran with it in order to understand the simultaneity of time. I got lost in parts, not being a temporal physicist, but the rest of the story was strong enough for it not to matter if you got a little bogged down in the science.

I feel as if I'm doing this book a terrible injustice, because I am already forgetting it. It wasn't very fast-paced, and mainly revolved around the life story of Shevek, the physicist, who is the first man from the anarchist society on the moon to return to their home planet despite strong opposition. The society on the home planet was much like the capitalist american society and was rather shocking and painful to see through the eyes of a character who had only known sharing and never owned anything in his life. I liked it best because it took me out of the modern "owning" mindset and let my imagination run with the thoughts of what it would be like to be free of "stuff", and the power struggles, and the desire to always have more than we need. And yet, it wasn't written like a lesson or a diatribe against capitalism. It was more like an exploration into the "what if" ideas for which I appreciate science fiction so much. ...less

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Jonathan rated it:

04/09/08

bookshelves: sciencefiction

Read in January, 2002

My ex had me read this, as it was her favorite book. It didn't really click with me at first, but I've been thinking of it ever since, and I think it has actually become one of my favorites.

In the afternoon, when he cautiously looked outside, he saw an armored car stationed across the street and two others slewed across the street at the crossing. That explained the shouts he had been hearing: it would be soldiers giving orders to each other.

Atro had once explained to him how this wa...more

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Manky rated it:

04/14/08

bookshelves: book-award-reading-challenge, play-book-tag-challenge, rit-alphabet-soup-challenge, theworst

recommended to Manky by: Hugo Award Winning List
recommends it for: no one

Sci-fi/fantasy is at the very bottom of my list of books to read... and that's only if I'm forced to put it some place. It really wouldn't be on my list of to-reads at all. But to satisfy a requirement in a book challenge, I read this one because Ursula LeGuin is a Hugo Award winning author. As a matter of fact, The Dispossessed won a Hugo Award.

The main character of this book lives on one planet but makes a journey to a different planet because the life styles of the two lands diffe...more

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Mara rated it:

09/20/07

bookshelves: classics, literary_sci-fi, m_for_mature

recommends it for: sci fi fans, politicos, anarchists, anyone who likes to ridicule anarchists

I wanted to post an Ursula K. Le Guin book and had settled on the Wizard of Earthsea, which of course is her fantasy classic, but as much as I love that book and the ones that follow it--and I do love them, very much--I think this is the more interesting and challenging book. Exploring her view of a functioning semi-utopian anarchist society (I say semi because can anything really be utopian when people have to live so very poorly?), Le Guin manages to make a political experiment live and breath...more

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Sujit rated it:

09/17/07

Read in August, 2007

I would've given this Book 3.5 instead of 4 , but Since the Rating System Does not Allow That, I rounded Up.

Another Sociological Study by LeGuin disguised as Sci-Fi .. well, she needed a setting and I suppose an alternate world was the best. The Book Explores the result of years of Capitalistic tendencies gone wild which results in a Popular Uprising by the proletariat for a more Socialist order.

The capitalists buy off the socialists (The movement is called Odonianism after some long-de...more

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stormlight rated it:

06/05/08

Read in May, 2008
recommended to stormlight by: Kelli

Like the objectivist works by Ayn Rand, The Dispossessed is more of a philosophical work dressed up in fiction instead of straight-ahead storytelling. LeGuin presents her idea as a communal anarchist settlement on a bare mining colony at odds with its mother planet, which represents the excesses of capitalism and state communism. She constructs a compelling hybrid of political philosophy, sociology, ecology, sociolinguistics, education theo...more

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James rated it: (review of isbn 1857988825)

09/11/07

Read in September, 2007

A very intriguing and, for the most part, enjoyable read. The book shows that the Science fiction genre is the perfect medium for showing alternative forms of social organisation. It has a gripping story, interesting characters, passage after passage that I just wanted to underline and read out to friends. The vision of the Anarchist world of Annares is original and inspiring, and the author does not stint in making the issues facing the inhabitants there complex and human; this is no Utopia but...more

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Sarah rated it:

04/25/08

bookshelves: released

Read in April, 2008

The full title of Ursula K. Le Guin's award winning novel is The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia. It's part of along tradition of ambiguous utopian novels that are thinly dressed critiques of contemporary society. In the case of The Dispossessed the two societies in question are the United States and the Soviet Union.

What makes Le Guin's utopia all the more ambiguous is her refusal to take sides. Both societies are flawed in a number of ways and yet both have supporters and detractors. Li...more

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Tony rated it:

04/29/08

recommends it for: everyone with a brain that doesn't hurt when it has to think

I still think this might be the best Science Fiction book of all time. I owuld need to read it again, but leGuin was the first Writer to wed plot, Science, sophisticated Characterization, social commentary, psychological exploration and political theory in one book. it is a tour de force. the following does not really poil anything the book takes place after the events described, and they are revealed trough the course of the actual plot.

When I read it I was a teenager who was an avowed ana...more

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Themba rated it:

05/17/07

Not just a goodread, positively an amazing read. o.k, i still have fifty pages to go but what the hell. talk about "sinewy grace" in prose, this is the definition of it, sparse and organic what more could you ask for. Also, the world-building, the logical clarity in composing and thinking through the cultural encounter of two utterly alien civilization is quite, well, otherworldly. in case you want to know what life in an anarchist society might look like, this is probably the best pla...more

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Jeff rated it:

07/05/08

bookshelves: classic, science-fiction

This is an excellent analysis of government and society and the roles people play in the world and how culture shapes us. This is the embodiment of what Science Fiction can achieve as literature. I remember reading Bakunin when I got my first Master’s degree and arguing against his analysis of anarchism in that all the examples of successful anarchies he could point to all had one thing in common: they relied on conformity to maintain stability in society. Years later I read this book and I...more

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Joe rated it:

11/29/07

bookshelves: speculative-fiction

Oh, Ursula. No longer will I love you in a vaguely ashamed manner, skulking through chesty-women-blow-shit-up-also-monster! book covers in the sci-fi/fantasy aisles with a moderate velocity as though I am actually trying to find Civil War biographies but am amusingly lost amongst all these shelves, that's so like me, need a GPS for Borders. Today, I will begin loving you publicly, proudly, for you are the Anti-Ayn Rand. You do not skullf**k Ayn Rand and make her your bitch, no, too easy. ...more

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Karina rated it:

04/11/08

Read in January, 2006

This is my favorite book. I like all the books by Ursula LeGuin I've read so far (yes, even The Word For World is Forest), but this one is definitely the best.

Some readers think The Dispossessed is intended to promote anarchism, but that would be too simple. The book is a part of the Hainish Cycle series. Each book in the series is set in a different solar system and is basically a comparison of two cultures. But while it is set in space, the series is really a set of alternative histories ...more

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Joel rated it:

06/09/08

bookshelves: favorites, fiction, science-fiction

Read in June, 2008
recommended to Joel by: Penelope of Red Wheelbarrow Books in Paris
recommends it for: Everyone I know

This is my second book by Ursula Le Guin and it is safe to say that I am hooked. The depth of the characters, the total believeability of the worlds she has created, and the different levels on which this book can appeal to so many different readers is truly astounding. This is a book that you don't want to end. All the different characters are so appealing, and their evolution throughout the story leaves a lasting impression. I saw a little bit of myself in many of them and in particular in...more

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Javier rated it:

07/20/07

bookshelves: anarchism, collegeleisuretime

Read in June, 2007

I was rather disappointed by this book, to be honest. I suppose I enjoyed reading the descriptions of Anarres' somewhat-anarchist society, but I found the writing style rather uninteresting and the plot rather slow. I might entirely have missed what Le Guin was getting at with this book, but I don't really see the point of going on and on about some theory of physics when she could have produced a richer and deeper discussion of the tensions within Anarres and between it and other societies......more

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Seabury rated it:

07/19/07

Read in July, 2007
recommends it for: everyone

I just gave an enthusiastic review to brave new world, and now, I want to give an even more enthusiastic review to this book. This may be the best book I have ever read in the utopia/distopia genre. It is about two societies and one misfit. There is a libertarian socialist society, and then there is a state capitalist society. The libertarian socialist society is a very intresting society, where there is no property, no government, no structure, absolute freedom. Wonderful how it sounds, as the ...more

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Kat rated it: (review of isbn 006051275X)

03/15/08

Read in March, 2008
recommended to Kat by: Eva

Eva warned me that this book starts slowly and that, my friends, it does. Le Guin wants to investigate relationships between anarchism, socialism, and capitalism at a fairly complex level, while still writing a popularly accessible book. So it's science fiction, and it's the sort of science fiction that takes a billion pages to set up its worlds before it really does anything, and I get impatient with that shit.

But I don't mean to complain too much. I love her anarchist civilization--nei...more

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Anne rated it:

09/20/07

bookshelves: fiction, sff

Read in June, 2005
recommends it for: science fiction fans, polical theorists, philosophers

The Disposessed is Le Guin's classic book of political sci-fi. The protagonist, Shevek, is a brilliant physicist from an anarcho-socialist planet Annares, who is unable to convince others in his society to see the value in his theories. He travels to the neighboring planet, Urras which has an authoritarian government. On Urras, he is encouraged to do his work, but is horrified by the social inequities he finds. The thing that impressed me most about this book is that, while it is often descri...more

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Lauren rated it:

06/06/07

Read in June, 2007

amazing book, really refreshing, visionary... a futuristic science fiction book that takes place between two planets - annares (an anarchist utopia living on a moon) and urras (a high tech capitalist society that has achieved some ecological balance). it deals with the tension between individualism and collectivism in the left/anarchist tradition... and i really connected with that, and see it in my own life as a contradiction between a sense of duty and my own sense of creativity and desire....more

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avg rating (this edition): 4.15 (1185 ratings)
number of reviews: 167

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isbn: 006051275X