The Dispossessed (Sf Masterworks 16)
by Ursula K. Le Guin
published
August 12th 1999
(first published 1974)
by Gollancz
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binding
Paperback, 336 pages
literary awards
Hugo Award for Best Novel (1975); Nebula Award for Best Novel (1975); 1975 Locus Awards Winner
isbn
1857988825
(isbn13: 9781857988826)
description
The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous commun...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2209)
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
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
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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
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
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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 was managed, how the sergeants could give the privates orders, how the lieutenants could give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the captains... and so on and so on up to the generals, who could give everyone else orders and need take them from none, except the commander in chief. Shevek had listened with incredulous disgust. “You call that organization?” he had inquired. “You even call it discipline? But it is neither. It is a coercive mechanism of extraordinary inefficiency — a kind of seventh-millennium steam engine! With such a rigid and fragile structure what could be done that was worth doing?” This had given Atro a chance to argue the worth of warfare as the breeder of courage and manliness and weeder-out of the unfit, but the very line of his argument had forced him to concede the effectiveness of guerrillas, organized from below, self-disciplined. “But that only works when the people think they're fighting for something of their own — you know, their homes, or some notion or other,” the old man had said. Shevek had dropped the argument. He now continued it, in the darkening basement among the stacked crates of unlabeled chemicals. He explained to Atro that he now understood why the Army was organized as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness entered in. ...more
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 was managed, how the sergeants could give the privates orders, how the lieutenants could give the privates and the sergeants orders, how the captains... and so on and so on up to the generals, who could give everyone else orders and need take them from none, except the commander in chief. Shevek had listened with incredulous disgust. “You call that organization?” he had inquired. “You even call it discipline? But it is neither. It is a coercive mechanism of extraordinary inefficiency — a kind of seventh-millennium steam engine! With such a rigid and fragile structure what could be done that was worth doing?” This had given Atro a chance to argue the worth of warfare as the breeder of courage and manliness and weeder-out of the unfit, but the very line of his argument had forced him to concede the effectiveness of guerrillas, organized from below, self-disciplined. “But that only works when the people think they're fighting for something of their own — you know, their homes, or some notion or other,” the old man had said. Shevek had dropped the argument. He now continued it, in the darkening basement among the stacked crates of unlabeled chemicals. He explained to Atro that he now understood why the Army was organized as it was. It was indeed quite necessary. No rational form of organization would serve the purpose. He simply had not understood that the purpose was to enable men with machine guns to kill unarmed men and women easily and in great quantities when told to do so. Only he still could not see where courage, or manliness, or fitness entered in. ...more
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Read in August, 2008
This book is so dense with ideas about humanity and civilization, our obligations to one another, and the importance of eternal vigilance in any ideals-based civilization that I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around it.
Shevek, our hero, is a revolutionary on a planet of revolutionaries, anarchists, who are tolerated and mostly ignored by their wealthy, powerful, capitalist neighbors.
Ursula K. Le Guin begins her portrayal of this anarchist world with Shevek as a baby in diapers. A...more
Shevek, our hero, is a revolutionary on a planet of revolutionaries, anarchists, who are tolerated and mostly ignored by their wealthy, powerful, capitalist neighbors.
Ursula K. Le Guin begins her portrayal of this anarchist world with Shevek as a baby in diapers. A...more
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recommended to Manky by:
Hugo Award Winning List
recommends it for: no one
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
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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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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Read in September, 2008
What does anarchy mean to most people? Some mix of that circle-with-an-A-in-it symbol and lawless rape and pillage, right? Most of us don't give much thought to what an anarchic society would actually be like, and if we do it's probably something like Visigoths rampaging through the ruins of Rome.
Leave it to Ursula K. Le Guin to give us a fascinating and shockingly plausible take on what a society of anarchists might look like. And then making an actual good story out of it. The Disposse...more
Leave it to Ursula K. Le Guin to give us a fascinating and shockingly plausible take on what a society of anarchists might look like. And then making an actual good story out of it. The Disposse...more
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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
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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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 ...more
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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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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
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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Read in August, 2008
recommends it for:
people who don't think John Lennon was a crazy or unrealistic
Urras is a planet sort of like earth. A bunch of people find a way to leave it and start a society on a moon called Anarres where everyone is responsible to each other, with no central government. It sounds far-fetched, but she's really thought it out. I believed it, was lured by the day to day of "imagine no possessions" and working at what one feels called to do, by food provided by all for all (am I going to get arrested for this?)and by the idea that human beings could live SO diff...more
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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
When I read it I was a teenager who was an avowed ana...more
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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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Read in September, 2008
recommended to Karen by:
Cait
Shevek is more real and relatable than most of the Ursula K. LeGuin characters I'd encountered before. I anticipated meeting him back at the book in the same way I knew I would meet friends in the cafeteria when I was in college, a simple and satisfying kind of taking-for-granted of those who populate your life. I think the metaphor makes sense considering the particular set-up of the Annaresti society, with such emphasis on the commons. That said, I loved to re-discover with him the basic jo...more
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2 comments
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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Read in April, 2008
recommended to Joolie by:
everyone
i know i'm in the minority of sci-fi fans, when i say that i've never been that impressed with our dear friend Ursula. I know folks who know her in Portland, some who have been her maid, and many who LOVE her books. Dispossessed is the one that everyone says you,"Have to read!" and well, i think i could have gotten through life without this book. I was talking to a friend about Ursula and how i can't quite get my finger on what i don't like about her books. i'm a fan of utopic upris...more
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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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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
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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Read in June, 2008
recommended to Joel by:
Penelope of Red Wheelbarrow Books in Parisrecommends 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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