The dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin is one of the most comprehensive descriptions of an alien world ever achieved in a single book.

We follow the story of Shevek, theoretical physicist, who has spent most of his life developing a root equation for the nature and meaning of timespace. Shevek is an inhabitant of the planet Anarres. Anarres is bleak and arid, and its inhabitants are the product of a 170 year-old experiment in non-authoritarian communism.

The experiment was set up based on the writings of one "Odo", a woman of that previous time who was an anarchist revolutionary. Planet Anarres has a twin planet, each planet orbiting the other....it is from this other world, Urras, that Odo and her band of social experimenters arrived to Anarres to start afresh. They were disillusioned with the Planet Urras, where society and culture are much like our own Earth, riddled with inequalities and selfish sub-cultures. It is a wealthy, lavish industrialised planet. But the wealth is in the hands of the few.

Shevek comes to Urras, as the first invited visitor from Anarres in all the years since the division of cultures, to complete his theory. Anarres has cut itself off from the rest of a community of planets, and he was unable to communicate and disseminate his theory whilst there. Sheveks aim is to give his theory into the common good. The government of Urras , of course, has different ideas, but Shevek is too Naive in the ways of dominator/possessor culture to see this.

Shevek is involved in a quandry as he comes to realise this...although there are no laws to break on Anarres, he has, by going to Urras, broken a custom. This has made him as much of a outcast revolutionary on his homeworld as Odo was originally on Urras. Unable, seemingly to go forward or backward, Shevek must determine how to find the true freedom of speech and action that he craves.

This book is for those lovers of "other worlds" (myself included) who delight to see a fictional society well described. The Planet Urras, is, as I have said, basically Earth by any other name. The planet Anarres, on the other hand, is a wonderful, strange planet; part utopia, part barren hell, LeGuin excruciatingly points up the contrast between a rich inner-life and a life rich in worldly goods by this contrast.

The inhabitants of Anarres are without material possessions and hold all in the common good. They are raised to lean away from personal ego, even so far as having a language which is without indicators of possession....when an Anarresti has a cold "the nose is running", not "my nose is running". This makes for a pretty different bunch of characters, and some very interesting explorations of culture. The love affair between Shevek and his monogamous partner is a good case-in-point. LeGuin describes a way of love which I found reminiscent of that described by Kahlil Gibran in "The Prophet"...."Love one another, but make not a bond of love".

It is well crafted, I often found myself thinking it would be pleasant to live amongst the peoples of Anarres.

There is copious discussion of the mixed virtues of communism. LeGuin illustrates a society which could be formed by this system in its non-authoritarian form, i.e. without centralised government. I have heard and read people criticising the book for this, saying she is idealising communism, but I didnt read it that way. In fact, many times the writer goes out of her way to pass comment on how you cant take the urge to be possessive, selfish, and bureaucratic out of some people!

As a point of interest and reference, this book is set in the same universe as LeGuins' "Left Hand of Darkness", but at an earlier time. We know the time to be earlier, since Sheveks' slowly-evolving theory will, we learn, lead to an instant communication device called the Ansible, a device in wide use in "Left Hand". You can read my review of that book under "amazing world, amazing humans, top class book" here on epinions.

I really devoured this book. I love works of this kind.... for me, this is where speculative fiction is at its best, taking us somewhere completely made up, but minutely described. Well done, Ursula Leguin!

This book contains graphic violence, sexual content and reference. I would recommend it for an adult audience.

Some of my other science fiction book reviews:

Rama Revealed
Prelude to Space
Stand on Zanzibar
The Demolished Man
The Stars my Destination
Cat's Cradle
The Gods Themselves
Watchmen
A Canticle for Leibowitz
The Hammer of God
The Left Hand of Darkness
Flowers for Algernon
Lord of Light
Rendevous with Rama
The Tombs of Atuan
The Dispossessed
I am Legend
The Einstein Intersection
Earth Abides
Peace on Earth
The Farthest Shore
Methuselah's Children
A Call to Arms
To your Scattered Bodies Go
The Lion of Comarre / Against the Fall of Night
To Say Nothing of the Dog
The Doomsday Book
Frankenstein Unbound
Batman - The Dark Knight Returns
Imperial Earth
A Case of Conscience
Solaris
The Sands of Mars
The Land of Laughs
Eden
His Masters Voice
Citizen of the Galaxy
King David's Spaceship
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
Double Star
The Fabulous Riverboat
Songs of Distant Earth
Way Station
The Fountains of Paradise
The Long Tomorrow
Lincolns Dreams
Alas Babylon
More Than Human
1984
The Forever War
All the Myriad Ways
I Sing the Body Electric
Gateway
Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said
This Immortal
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress






Recommended: Yes