Chapter 1-3

[Sam]

First discussion thread

[Sam]

So there's these two worlds, Anarres and Urras, Anarres being the moon of Urras. Anarres was colonized a couple hundred years ago by a group of anarchists from Urras. Urras seems to have been inhabited for some time. The inhabitants seem to be human, but it doesn't seem like the planet was colonized by humans from Earth since there are hints that the civilization of Urras is thousands of years old, but the technology is not much more advanced than ours.

The story is following a physicist from Anarras, Shevek. At this point not much has happened. Shevek has left Anarras for Urras, which is no one has done for some time. We've leanred some of his story, and the culture of the Odonists, the people who settled the moon. We see how they view the culture that they left behind on Urras, and how they anarchist society of Anarras works.

It's interesting that the Urras/Anarras system seems to be a parody of our own Earth/Moon. There are two nation-states on Urras that seem very similar to the US and the USSR (A-Io and Thu), and the relative sizes of the planet/moon seem to be similar to Earth and the Moon.

I hope something happens soon.