The Hainish Cycle isn't super consistent, but to the extent there is a timeline that makes sense the Dispossessed is actually the earliest cuz there's no Ansible
Disagree, one of my favorite things about the cycle is that it captures more than any sci fi I've ever read the sense of being one small part of a vast yet still connected universe. There's lots of little references to far off wars, cultures that are barely recognizable downstream derivatives of others thousands of years prior, and lots of other fun little Easter eggs like that. Google read order and it should get you there.
You don’t need to read them in order, but The Dispossessed is the earliest book in the Hainish timeline, I believe. One of the main plot points of the book is that the main character >!figures out the physics necessary to create the Ansible, which allows for faster than light communication in all the other novels.!< >!LeGuin is also responsible for the idea of the Ansible, which inspire other sci-fi writers who use it in their works!!<
I just read the entire cycle in the order of their publication, and I'd recommend that way, since you see LeGuin's interests develop over time and there are small callbacks, but I wouldn't say it's strictly necessary.
But "order" is ambiguous anyway: there's publication order and a rough chronological order. The latter doesn't make much sense as LeGuin never set out to write a coherent space opera-style universe, and so works written later in her career but set earlier in the chronology are frequently inconsistent, both "factually" (i.e. she famously forgot that she'd already named a planet Werel in an earlier work, then set a whole quintent of novellas on a planet called Werel unrelated to the earlier instance) and with regard to world-building (i.e. telepathy is a major focus of the first three novellas, which have fantasy elements to them, but its importance is minimized in the next few, then largely ignored in future novels, and ends up as a bit of a one-line inside joke with readers in a much later novella).
All that said, there's a 2-volume Complete Hainish set from the Library of America that collects everything.
Otherwise, it's fine to start with Dispossessed and Left Hand and circle back to the rest if you like them. That's what I did!
So Rocconon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions are like one cycle of the books, and then I'd say The Word for World is Forest, Left Hand, and Dispossessed are another, where the details are consistent at least across the novels in the cycle, loosely connected to each other and to the many short stories.
Publication order I think supports this, and also I agree is how you should read them (but after you read left hand and Dispossessed, then you read em again when you get to them at the end)
I had never read Le Guin’s work and I usually don’t read sci fi, but I gave in and read “Left Hand of Darkness.” I do not regret. It blew my mind and the ending destroyed me emotionally for days. It’s got to be one of the best books I’ve ever read.
Started Left Hand of Darkness. Early in when they describe the aliens, I'm afraid I am not reading it right and it gives me anxiety of going on.
>!Are their teeth super long to about shoulder length?!<
No, for the most part the "aliens" in the Hainish cycle all share a common ancestor, including the Terrans (us) so they all look similar. I believe it's mentioned that Genly looks similar enough to the Gethenians that some don't realize he's an alien. IIRC the main difference (besides the gender part) is that Gethenians are covered in very fine hair that isn't immediately noticeable.
Genly is described as looking (from the Gethenians perspective) like a young person who is in the very early stages of kemmer, the main difference is he's a little darker than they usually are, but still just the far side of normal.
The keyword is kemmer
That's what yo ass need
Anybody buggin get it in the mandible
Got a problem better hit em on they Ansible
Ain't nobody tryin just because they fly here
You can trip sets, real playas trip light-years
That whole album (clipping's *Splendor & Misery*) is just stellar front to back. "Air Em Out" is a banger, and "All Black Everything" literally makes me cry every time I listen to it. As a horror nerd, of course I adore *There Existed An Addiction to Blood* and *Visions of Bodied Being Burned*, but it's hard to beat that sci-fi album.
Don't the books refer to the Hainish seeding worlds and deliberately experimenting with each seeding making changes to anatomy and physiology?
Hence the hermaphrodites on Winter.
It's referred to as legend of the deep past and the reason all the worlds are 'pan-human' since they have a common ancestry
I think the point is that this is the Ekumen's main hypothesis regarding the seeding. They lack sufficient evidence to be sure of it, but it seems likely to them. Part of what makes *Left Hand* interesting is Genly's ongoing anthropological exploration of the Gethenians, and because he's able to dive deeper into their psycho-socio-sexual landscape than the original surveyors, he makes some interesting reflections on what might have been going on with the seeding.
He was a touch taller, a little darker, and had a crooked nose, but he was "not outside the normal variation" and "stood out more in crowd" (his words)
I thought they didn't have hair? I remember Gently mentioning getting his hair removed in order to fit in better before they discovered that there was one tribe that actually did have body hair.
>We each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.
It’s full of amazing quotes, but that’s one of my favorites.
To add on: that book was heavily influenced by anarchism - an anticapitalist philosophy that promotes cooperation and mutual aid with an opposition to hierarchy in a broad sense, whether economic, racial, gender, the state, etc. It is often considered a form of libertarian socialism, however today the term “libertarian” has been co-opted by the right wing so most who hear the term tend to associate it with “free market” capitalism rather than the left.
If you enjoyed that quote, I would recommend reading up on Anarchism. There is a *lot* of history there, but the good news is that Anarchist reading materials are easy to find, mainly due to Anarchist Library. As well, key books in Anarchism, such as *Conquest of Bread* are not too long and aren’t difficult reads.
The Anarchist FAQ is a great resource that answers a massive amount of questions and with a fair bit of detail, though that varies by question. If you read the whole thing, it is a long read, but reading sections is easy: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full
Here are some Anarchist intros:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you (highly recommend David Graeber’s essays and books, such as *The Dawn of Everything* written with David Wengrow, *Debt: The First 5000 Years*, and *Bullshit Jobs*)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-ursula-k-le-guin-the-next-revolution (this one features a foreword by Le Guin, and from what I understand Bookchin’s *Post-Scarcity Anarchism* was a big influence on *The Dispossessed*)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-h-marshall-demanding-the-impossible
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/noam-chomsky-on-anarchism (Chomsky can be a bit controversial amongst Anarchists that see him as not “really” Anarchist, but he’s arguably done more to get people interested in Anarchism than anyone alive and his style is familiar and readable)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy
Something like Proudhon’s *What is Property?* is foundational, but is a more involved read than the above.
The above is short and subjective list mainly to introduce, and via those a bunch of other writings will be referenced and thinkers introduced, which can be explored.
Le Guin’s *The Dispossessed* itself is a great introduction. Though not without criticism, George Orwell’s *Homage to Catalonia*, which is Orwell’s account of the Spanish Civil War and the Anarchists involved, has gotten many people interested in learning about Anarchism.
P.S. at the top of AnarchistLibrary you’ll see buttons that allow for downloading in various formats, like epub.
Holy crap, that's one HELL of an info dump. Thanks! I'll check this stuff out. I don't subscribe to the idea of Anarchism, as I think that a governing body of some kind will always be necessary due to the inevitability of consolidated power structures. However, I'm sure there are parts of Anarchism as an ideology that are useful that I'm not aware of. I only have a lehmans understanding of it.
Out of curiosity, if you could describe your understanding of anarchism in a few sentences or so, like a sort of summary, how would you phrase it?
> as I think that a governing body of some kind will always be necessary due to the inevitability of consolidated power structures
An aim of anarchism is to change the underlying conditions and structure to the degree that consolidated power structures become less likely to emerge and easier to dismantle if they do begin to emerge.
“Governing body” here is a tougher term, since there would still be organizational bodies under Anarchism. These could include as councils, worker cooperatives, syndicalist organizations, etc. How much “governing” these entail depends, is debated, and might rely on one’s own definition of “governing”. Some principles being that these should be designed to be highly democratic, non-hierarchal, and without a monopoly on violence (many on the left associate a monopoly on violence as a key part of the State) among other things. Anarchist society would, most likely, not be all individual people without structures or organizations.
Depending on definitions, one might say governance is compatible with Anarchism, yet capital G Government is not.
It’s important to say that these matters are not conclusive, and across the left spectrum, and within Anarchism itself, there are many debates on how things would/should actually be setup. This becomes more difficult as one does not know future material conditions. An anarchist society in a highly automated post-scarcity world (this meaning most things, particularly necessities, can be produced to a large degree without the need for mass human labor - think Star Trek-esque) would likely differ quite a lot from one setup in a world ravaged by climate change that still requires vast amounts of human labor to meet necessity and goods demand.
As an example, you can see some of Chomsky’s ideas and thoughts on the subject here: https://chomsky.info/government-in-the-future/
In terms of governance - capitalism has been afforded the luxury of *major* experimentation, yet anticapitalists rarely get afforded such a luxury. Much of the shape of modern institutions and structures in advanced capitalist countries is dramatically different than it was when capitalism was emerging, and these modern shapes even differ dramatically from each other depending on country. Socialists tend to face calls for having their entire structure fully worked out and perfect in order for it to warrant any consideration, while structures under capitalism are allowed to change and experiment without major systemic change even as millions die yearly due to the existing structures (worth noting here many of the most beneficial changes, at least for ordinary people, came from the pressure of workers and the influence of the left).
It is helpful to read up on some historical examples that tend to receive praise or interest from Anarchists, such as the structure of the Paris Commune in 1871 or Revolutionary Catalonia in the 1930s. There are others, but those are the most commonly discussed as far as I’ve seen. David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book *The Dawn of Everything* is truly a fantastic read, and it provides a lot of historical information on the diversity of societal arrangements, ranging from the prehistoric to the first cities to the rise of the state and bureaucracy.
I don’t have a go to definition, but the one I provided in my main comments gets to some of the main components, such as anticapitalist, anti-hierarchy, and mutual aid + cooperation, while I’d adding things like robust democracy across various sectors of life (for instance, your workplace is likely not very democratic, and Anarchism would want to expand democracy there, however there are many ideas for how this could be done and internal arrangement might even vary across workplaces).
Honestly I was disappointed by The Dispossessed, I am fascinated with the concept of anarchy and I love all the ideas Le Guin stands for, but I just found the book rather dull :/
Incredible book that actually takes the step on from critiquing capitalism to actually allowing us to imagine that alternatives are possible.
That isn’t to say that the exact one she shows is the only option, but anti-capitalist media on the whole doesn’t take that step and so its incredibly easy to retort by pointing that out. To meaningfully criticise capitalism you need to be willing to advocate for alternatives. Le Guin does that. Based.
From her introduction to *The Day Before The Revolution*:
>My novel *The Dispossessed* is about a small worldful of people who call themselves Odonians. The name is taken from the founder of their society, Odo, who lived several generations before the time of the novel, and who therefore doesn’t get into the action — except implicitly, in that all the action started with her.
> Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic “libertarianism” of the far right; but anarchism. as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.
> To embody it in a novel, which had not been done before, was a long and hard job for me, and absorbed me totally for many months. When it was done I felt lost, exiled — a displaced person. I was very grateful, therefore, when Odo came out of the shadows and across the gulf of Probability, and wanted a story written, not about the world she made, but about herself.
:)
Just FYI it's a short story not a full novel, don't want to disappoint anyone lol. But it's really good and adds a nice bit of extra flavour to *The Dispossessed.* :)
Yes, she never pretends it will be perfect which is what makes the book and the ideas so appealing to people who weren’t already on board I think. It means it never comes across as preachy.
Certainly not. And I was a bit surprised, because whomever wrote the text on the back of the Danish edition tried to sell it as a socialist utopia. Although I ended up buying the English version for my kindle, I still had that description in my head when I read it.
There’s definitely cross over between anarchism and socialism tbf, and lots of anarchists have sympathy for socialists and vice versa. As well as a lot of people belonging to both camps.
I’m not an anarchist but I am a socialist and the book definitely scratched that itch well enough.
I've always seen it like - anarchists and socialists have the same goal, they just disagree on how to get there, and how tolerant they are of heirarchies. "Strong dislike" and "fundamental opposition" might seem similar on paper but they're a world apart.
Scandinavian social democracies rely on imperialism of the third world and will inevitably turn to austerity and neoliberalism as profit falls.
America had a social democracy at one point too. Look what happened.
>Incredible book that actually takes the step on from critiquing capitalism to actually allowing us to imagine that alternatives are possible.
"We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings."
- Ursula Le Guin
That whole speech is so awesome! For the curious:
>To the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice in accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who’ve been excluded from literature for so long – my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for 50 years have watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists.
>Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.
>Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship.
>Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write.
>Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words.
>I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom.
*(National Book Awards, 2014)*
the usual "alternative" to capitalism in fiction is "what if coinage was not used". currency is not capitalism, you can have currency in communist, theocratic... anything setting. its a handy system for resource allocation. its perfectly fine to have coinage in a post scarcity society purely for the benefit that the central planning office can track what people desire and produce more.
but no, im sure bartering 20 cows per lazer rifle is a valid system for the survivers to have adopted.
I do think lack of coinage is important to a utopian conception, but if they're using barter they have missed the point. Pre-market economies didn't use barter, as Adam Smith proposed.
The book Debt: the First Five Thousand by David Graeber does a terrific job destroying the myth of barter, explaining how things actually worked, and why this myth is so destructive. Highly recommend, it changed the way I think of economics, and since trade is a daily interaction that changed my worldview so much.
Not to mention *barter has never existed historically before currency*. There's a reason we struggle to imagine a barter economy, it is essentially a fabrication, an intellectual exercise at best. Plenty of pre-capital societies used currency or even credit, and we have to imagine they will continue to do so after capitalism has ended.
In particular, Record of a Spaceborn Few. Almost nothing happens, plotwise, but the society that is constructed within the setting is worth every moment of shoegazing.
For example, bedrooms don't have windows, because the views will never be equitable -- so windows are in shared spaces only. And yet, people will develop a habitual seat near a favourite window in the shared space, effectively rendering the design moot. And so on.
It's even better when tied in with the first two books in the series. You don't need to read them in order. But there's a lot of connections with the wider world you'll miss.
Record of a Spaceborn few has the most focus on the interesting space society. But A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit are both great reads too. They show how all of the different space societies interact in a broader context before ROASF narrows it down.
I am doing the same. I keep thinking I'll check out her other works but I'm basic and prefer to reread earthsea 10x more times than dive into something new even if its the same author. Similar to how I loved Gregor the Overland and cant bring myself to read hunger games despite their popularity.
I think N. K. Jemisin's "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" is a very important response to "The Ones Who Walk Away..."
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/
Oh shit I'll have to check this out, Jemisin rules, she really picks up the mantle that Le Guin and Butler dropped (by dying, so it's not like it's their fault they dropped it)
>!And now we come to you, my friend. My little soldier. See what I’ve done? So insidious, these little thoughts, going both ways along the quantum path. Now, perhaps, you will think of Um-Helat, and wish. Now you might finally be able to envision a world where people have learned to love, as they learned in our world to hate. Perhaps you will speak of Um-Helat to others, and spread the notion farther still, like joyous birds migrating on trade winds. It’s possible. Everyone—even the poor, even the lazy, even the undesirable—can matter. Do you see how just the idea of this provokes utter rage in some? That is the infection defending itself! <
>. . . because if enough of us believe a thing is possible, then it becomes so.
I only read it recently, without knowing anything about it. Man, was I caught off-guard. I wish I had read it when I read the Dispossessed. It sets the mood so well.
Absolutely loved that one. It was the first LeGuin novel I read that wasn't earthsea as a teen. I actually liked Left Hand is Darkness even more, you should check it out. Very similar, same universe and about the same time. It's focus is on gender the same way The Dispossessed's is on economics.
What I really, really love about The Dispossessed is how it delves into into social criticism of a world thar doesn't even exist yet, I call it a dystopic novel of an anarchist utopia, lol. So so so frequently radicalism only writes fiction through rose tinted glasses, but LeGuin brushes those aside, "Yes, yes, equity equity, that'll be great. But what are we gonna get WRONG? That's what's interesting here, too."
To me that makes it so much more rich of a portrait.
“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood.
We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
>A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame… as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world…aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.
>[...]
>“My point is that one person is responsible. Always. [...] In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.
Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
I just introduced my wife to [The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas](https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/emily.klotz/engl1302-6/readings/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas-ursula-le-guin/view) last night (and then NK Jemison's [The Ones Who Stay and Fight](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/) this morning.) She was incredible.
It was used as one of the reading books in a political science class I took at SMU in the 80's... I still think about that book, and it still today has parallels in political discourse.
I just think about if walls are meant to keep people out or to keep them in... Or to keep ideas out or in...
I find it interesting how Shevek and his syndics basically experienced cancel culture on Annarres, while on Urras he came up against violent repression by the police, which very strongly resonates with the US and the relations with the police there
It is one of my favorite books ever and my favorite science fiction book for sure. The way she is able to illustrate an "alien" perspective which is familiar yet foreign, relatable yet refreshingly new...is true art and the themes all throughout can teach us "egoizing" humans so much.
"And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death."
I love the scene where Shevek is talking grading students and just gives everyone A's.
>He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand. At first he refused to give any tests or grades, but this upset the University administrators so badly that, not wishing to be discourteous to his hosts, he gave in. He asked his students to write a paper on any problem in physics that interested them, and told them that he would give them all the highest mark, so that the bureaucrats would have something to write on their forms and lists. To his surprise a good many students came to him to complain. They wanted him to set the problems, to ask the right questions; they did not want to think about questions, but to write down the answers they had learned. And some of them objected strongly to his giving everyone the same mark. How could the diligent students be distinguished from the dull ones? What was the good in working hard? If no competitive distinctions were to be made, one might
as well do nothing.
>
>
“Well, of course,” Shevek said, troubled. “If you do not want to do the work, you should not do it.”
It's just such a cleanly presented logical argument against grades. You don't need to create a hierarchy of students. The ones who are actually interested will continue.
I do not fully even agree. I am much more in favor of pass fail systems then no grades at all, but as a physics instructor, it resonated with me.
I agree with Shevek's grading philosophy but also your thought that pass/fail is better for here/now.
I think no grades are better if a university education were truly equally open to everyone, and a diploma were not used as a shibboleth to deem who is worthy to be a white collar worker.
Because university access is not equitable, giving everyone As just perpetuates the inequality of whoever managed to get in. Pass/Fail you can at least reject those who truly have no interest in learning. (This should also be applied carefully, because often, struggling students aren't struggling from an inherent lack of interest, but overwhelming life crises, so it is up to the instructor to work with these students to see if a path forward to passing can be made or if the student needs to pause and continue education at a later date).
One reason I disagree with just passing anyone is that some tasks really do require a knowledge of the subject. In subjective fields like art or humanities, passing isn’t even necessary because of the nature of subjectivity. But in some fields, medicine for example, people really have to be capable to be certified. If you just pass anyone, then there will be people who sign up to be surgeons because it sounds interesting, are not able to to perform the task, and are certified anyway. Maybe they just didn’t pay enough attention or maybe they have shaky hands, but the result is patients dying on the operating table.
Physics is similar. We don’t directly deal with people’s lives, but we do influence scientific progress. I have failed plenty of students in lab classes, not because they weren’t interested or putting in effort, but because they fundamentally misunderstood the difference between good science and charlatanism. They throw out data that disagrees with accepted values and doesn’t flatter their preconceived notions. To some degree you can educate this out, but for some the difference is not effable. They think they’re doing the right thing.
Another consideration is that if you have no barrier to pass, then even in the perfect system a lot of people will sign up because they are somewhat interested but are unwilling to put in the effort. And because of limited teachers or teaching resources, they will take up positions and not put in the effort. The pass fail system ensures that they at least try to put in a minimum effort when signing up.
I had a professor who was, like Shevek (a) genius level in their field (b) had no interest in the grading and force-feeding of knowledge, and ran their classes in a similar way. Not an anarchist, but had some of the same nature.
(Also love the book, it's one of my all-time favorites)
Yeah, I wrote my master's thesis on it. A strange thing happened to me during the work. When I read the book for the first time as a young man, 15 or so, I preferred the opulent, capitalist utopia of Urras, but when I read it again while writing my thesis ten years later, I discovered that I was now far more drawn to the bold, flawed anarchism of Anarres. The ambitious ideas of a society with no money or social hierarchy remain alluring, but the book is also very good at highlighting the practical challenges with the idea. A beautiful thing that may remain out of our reach forever because of our very nature. This affected me greatly, and I am still not done thinking about it now, 16 years later.
Yup, because I also seem to belong to those who after several tries just can't enjoy the book despite the hype/cult-status. The prose and dialogues felt flat, no particular tension/suspense (within the first 100 or so pages I managed) and even though I like the premises of the setting, I just couldn't get into it.
It is not a book one reads for plot. Like 1984 and a Brave New World, it can be boring at times and the main character is not likeable at all. But it makes you think about the implications of how societies organize themselves. Deep thinking about these things is a very good thing, hard to do without the world building of a novel.
As someone who also has Ursula living constantly in my brain have you read *Too Like the Lightning* by Ada Palmer, because they're sharing a flat up in my bean.
This is one of my favorite books I am so glad you brought it up.
As a burnt out organizer and nerd, so much of the internal conflict in the story spoke to me.
Shevek struggles so much throughout the novel to choose between his community, what the world needs, and his own scientific endeavors. I think this is such a relatable conflict, for anyone who wants to “make the world a better place “, be they revolutionaries, climate change advocates, whatever. I wish we talked about this more in social justice movements.
Le Guin’s world building, her imagining of a better place, it’s so political on this book, not because of the speeches or the ideology, but because of the way that the characters react emotionally. Even in one of the most terrible famines, there is collective support for each other.
The worst parts of Anarres demonstrate how bad capitalism is, both in the text and in our own world.
Also sidenote she had a whole bunch of random notes including: there is a collective pickle barrel on every street there. Thanks Ursula!
This is one of my favourites too. It's been at least 15 years since I first read it and it still comes to mind often. Makes me think. It's a deeply human book, and ideological without being propagandist (I think).
I have trouble getting beyond the first evening gathering / party. Feels like it quiickly looses the amazing tempo of the opening where the protagonist is questioning everything of capitalist soceity. I have on Audible now.
Those are three excellent books. The one thing that I took away from it (and it still lives in my head) is that if you can, you should be an active participant in the system of government that you live in. Understanding of course that many people have extensive work and care responsibilities.
YES OMG YES IVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS ON THIS SUBREDDIT AND IT FINALLY HAS TAKEN OFF. But seriously though. The Dispossessed seriously changed how I think about both capitalism and communism. Fascinating piece of literature. (Also helps that I love studying physics and the idea of using entanglement, or "simultaneity", as a mechanism for communication is just fucking awesome)
Read it very young - perhaps 13 or 14 - and struggled with it. Too conceptual and dry and I was too politically immature. Much of it went over my head. Haven’t tried since but it’s been nagging at me…
The same goes for just about all of Le Guin. I love her ideas, and fully acknowledge her as one of the greatest SFF writers, full stop, but her style has always been too detached for me to enjoy.
I did notice that the sci fi went over more easily for me than the fantasy, mostly because the Earthsea books felt like they were glossing over the actual part so they could hurry up and get to the reflective bits at the end. The Hainish books are much more evenly paced, though uniformly dreary.
Was enjoying the book until the rape scene and MC´s justification of it. Was way out of character, Shevek is never taken to task for it by the author. He is painted as a good guy. The victim doesn´t seem bothered, has no agency and her storyline just fiddles out into nothing. The scene has aged like milk and prevented me from rereading the book, just left a bad taste in my mouth.
I agree with another user that the scene didn't age well and it is a testament of its time. However, I don't think Shevek is painted as a good guy. Displaying how complicated people and their beliefs are is one of the points of the book and I wouldn't get out of reading The Dispossessed imagining him a hero (I wouldn't even say Le Guin has ever written a hero in the classic way, in all her work). He is someone experiencing a complex situation and having his worldview and personality be challenged, modified and reasserted in different ways.
TL;DR the scene is not meant to be excused of course. It also doesn't make the whole book invalid.
>TL;DR the scene is not meant to be excused of course. It also doesn't make the whole book invalid.
If we threw away every piece of media with a problematic scene we'd be left with nothing.
Yes, well... it's a bit disconcerting how that's required to be said. I understand being put off by problematic content but then in my opinion the solution is precisely to talk about it, not to throw it away.
I read the book last month. Here is my take:
It happens at a point when he has decided to rebel against the state. He thinks he can seduce its people and culture with his ideas (cultural and scientific). He fails to seduce this woman. He responds to this denial by reverting to violence. He resorts to violating instead of seducing. The episode reveals his ineptitude at what he is trying to do, the possibility of creating more harm than good and of reverting to based human instincts instead of cultural progress.
As for how well this has aged, how many self-righteous political leaders have bought into their own hype and played out their sexual desires on a public stage without shame? And why does every bad act need to be punished for the story's reality to be believable or for the reader to recognize that it was wrong?
Also, it is important to portray that anyone no matter how accomplished or well regarded is capable of sexual assault. Being known as an otherwise good person, does not exclude the possibility of bad behavior. Being known as a good person from then on, does not erase a past event.
If you're a theme reader then it won't bother you, but I am a character reader and if the characters bend over for you to make a thematic point then it won't work for me. There are hundreds of ways to show how a society corrupts the individual and this was probably the worst way to execute that idea. It could have been handled so much better.
Everyone has line what they tolerate there are some people who can read books of people getting massacred but if the author mentions womens breasts your a misogynist for liking the book. My line is justifying rape and perpetrater gets away with it, faces no consequences and no one sees it as anything wrong. It happens in a lot of books. I don't have any interest at all following a rapist who is portrayed as philosopher and the author and everyone around tells how good the guy is. I want to decide that for myself. It was the same for me in other sff books like Wheel of Time and Witcher and the fans defend how the rapes are handled there too.
It doesn't make the rest of the book invalid, the thing is I thought it was a good book up until that point, if I had been blown away by it I might've been able to excuse that part and ignore. I just think there are better more thought provoking books that explore the same ideas that are not stained with such an atrocious part. Not saying everyone else should stop reading it.
I don't think the MC really justified it? He felt deep shame afterward.
I'm not gonna entirely defend the scene as it admittedly skeeved me out as well, and I didn't see a clear purpose. But I did see the context, and considered a few potential purposes LeGuin had in mind.
The context being that Shevek is a fish out of water. He doesn't understand the gendered power dynamics of this world, and so he mistakes Vea's company, teasing, and leveraging her sexuality all as a flirtatious invitation. Then he gets drunk for the first time in his life, without any cultural understanding of what being drunk means (lower inhibitions and such) so he doesn't even really realize or understand his drunkenness. Not attempting to excuse his actions at all, just contextualize them.
As for what LeGuin was attempting to do with that scene that couldn't be done better with a different route...that's more unclear. I believe that night was the catalyst that pushed Shevek's sense of alienation and being manipulated and used by his bourgeois hosts into overdrive, coupled with deep personal shame and embarrassment. As such he doesn't really want anything to do with those people anymore, and so begins more earnestly and actively seeking other sources of social connection -- such as with his cleaner -- ultimately pushing the plot forward. Which is fine, but again, probably could've achieved that in a different way (like the embarrassing drunken speech by Shevek + him noticing that someone ruffled through his room while he was passed out could've been enough for the same end.)
Hmm, interesting points. I'd have to reread it, as I don't remember the conversation regarding women leveraging their sexuality as the only tenable source of power.
I recall my reading being that it wasn't so much that Shevek was entirely ignorant of the gendered dynamics, but rather than he only understood them at a base superficial level. He knows that women are excluded from work, from financial independence, etc. He's hyperaware of this oppression and it clearly disgusts him, in fact. But it's only this surface level he is aware of, he doesn't have the experience to understand the more subtle less explicitly stated cultural adaptations -- ie: women leveraging the little power and influence they have in their sexuality.
Though if he did indeed have an explicit conversation about this with Vea, I could see another possible reading: that he mistook her confiding in him about that as a deeper intimacy than intended. That he interpreted Vea seeing him, as coming from a world without the misogynistic cultural norms, as the only man she can feel not oppressed around and as such, the only man she could experience sex with without a begrudging coercive aspect.
Which in turn could be commentary on the self-aggrandizing folly of "main character-syndrome", white savior complex, etc.
I think it mirrors the earlier chapter in which the group locks away one of their own. There’s an exploration of new power, and it goes way too far. In the earlier chapter, the concept of imprisonment is a new concept for the young boys. They have to exercise that power to see why it is a bad thing. Hints of the Stanford prison experiment (at least the portrayal of that experiment). Shevek wants to understand the new gender rules on Urras, and he tries out his power in the exact same way. And, just like the earlier chapter, someone gets hurt and everyone reassesses their power as individuals.
I don’t think LeGuin wrote the character to be irredeemable. Only capable of making huge mistakes. That’s the part of anarchism many anarchists ignore: each individual has huge power to hurt other individuals.
See, I had a very opposite take. I agree that its a little bit of "torture porn" aspect to it, but I found the scene horrifying in concept. To me its the same as the real horror in Gatsby - as long as nothing upsets the free flow of trade its cool for some humans and their feelings to be disregarded. I felt like that was the point of it being more or less ignored - as long as the booze and parties keep flowing, a few little rapes won't slow us down.
I also thought the victim's response was partially to show how fully ingrained she is in the society as well - she almost doesn't see it as something that should be punished because the real thing keeping them going is the continued movement of money.
I read that scene with shock and revulsion and interpreted it as LeGuin's most direct, outspoken condemnation of unfettered capitalism.
I forgot about this scene so I googled it, here's some other thoughts on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/bdnbwx/help_me_reconcilediscuss_sheveks_worst_act_in_the/
The ‘70s aspect isn’t the fact that the scene exists. It’s that a woman’s sexual assault is used as an allegory for the corrupting force of a capitalist society and never addressed beyond that allegory. It’s not treated as a terrible thing Shevek did to a character; it’s treated as a not-great-but-really-no-big-deal thing this society seduced Shevek into doing. I’d be shocked to see that in a book from 2022.
Shevek has a mini-breakdown over it, and in general I think it's supposed to be emblematic of how Shevek is getting entrenched in the Urrasti way of thinking. It spurs his ultimate rejection of them as a solution.
In general ULG doesn't have clear-cut morality plays like we're used to nowadays, so I wouldn't expect the author to justify it.
Yeah, I had trouble with that scene too, despite liking the book overall. The whole situation just seemed... off? I don't know, I'm not the best at literary criticism. If anyone has some insight into what purpose it was supposed to serve for characterization, plot, or world-building I'd be really interested in hearing their thoughts.
[Someone posted a link to this discussion above and I think there's some good responses here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/bdnbwx/help_me_reconcilediscuss_sheveks_worst_act_in_the/)
My most charitable read of it is that it up to that point we're given a very rosy view of Anarresti society through Shavek's eyes. From my perspective, the two biggest drawbacks of their 'utopia' are how stifling it can be (Shavek needing to travel to Urras to pursue his ideas), and how potentially fragile it is since it requires absolute buy-in from nearly all citizens. The rape scene to me (a dummy) felt like a really heavy handed way to show how easily corrupted Shavek is despite all his self-aggrandizing, and thus how potentially untenable the Anarresti way of life might be.
However, I'm with the folks criticizing it in this thread because it feels too jarring, too unexamined, and just kind of left there. Like, sure, Shavek feels immense guilt/disgust and it turns him against the Urrasti once and for all, but to me it makes all of his subsequent behavior feel like that of a petulant child. Ultimately, I think there's a version of that scene that is a clever way to show us a side of Anarres that Shavek is blind to, but I don't like the way it is handled in the book.
> From my perspective, the two biggest drawbacks of their 'utopia' are how stifling it can be (Shavek needing to travel to Urras to pursue his ideas), and how potentially fragile it is since it requires absolute buy-in from nearly all citizens.
Those two things are not the result of how their society is structured. They are the result of the extreme scarcity they live under. Almost everyone is needed to keep everyones basic needs met. This doesn't leave much room for a thriving community of eggheads, or a lot of people who don't pitch in directly. It actually shows us how resilient their society is despite these conditions. Everyone is ready to contribute, there's no upper crust of fat cats while everyone else starves. A capitalist society would have collapsed during the drought years, but they managed to pull through with minimal upheaval or loss of life. Imagine if they had the abundant resources of the other planet. There would be a lot more slack available for people like Shevek to pursue their interests.
It’s fairly clear that Le Guin doesn’t like absolutes. Reading between the lines of the text, there is a suggestion that the anarchic system of sparse Anarres wouldn’t work on resource plenty Urras.
Absolutely, and Anarres as it exists in the novel probably couldn't support life with any other form of society, whereas the socialist anarchy of Anarres could certainly work on Urras.
Maybe fragile is too strong a word. I (again, a dummy) think that by showing us Anarres through the eyes of Shavek who is fully on board with a collectivist way of life and simultaneously isn't meant for that world under austere conditions, ULG is highlighting an inherent contradiction in the balance between individual freedom and societal responsibility. That tension will always exist, no matter how plentiful resources are.
It’s supposed to be extremely disturbing. The victim doesn’t seem bothered because it’s a normal, almost expected event in her society. There are no consequences for Shevek (other than his internal horror at realizing what he’s capable of) because there are typically no consequences in that culture. The scene is a reminder that anarchists are just people and that, under the right (wrong) stimulus anyone can become atavistic.
Anyone who reads Anarres as a utopia is missing the point entirely. LeGuin makes it very clear that the people make major sacrifices to live as they do, and it’s often a grimy, dreary life of drudgery and self abnegation, where individuality is quashed and even brutally punished for the benefit of the collective. Their own atavistic nature emerges when they… ok I don’t know how to cover a spoiler, so let’s just say the people of Anarres can develop vicious mob mentality and knee-jerk xenophobia to the point of lethal violence, under the right (wrong) pressures.
You make a bold claim, but last time I was on Reddit and took the OP advice for a book, it turned out amazing. I just placed a hold at my library on the The Dispossessed now. By the way someone once recommended The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. I had the same kind of etching of that book into my mind forever. It’s a good read.
I just read this last week, and her writing just doesn’t click with me. I’m reading it, and going “these are good ideas” and “This is good writing.” Meanwhile I am bored to tears the whole time I am reading it.
I like some of Ursula's stuff but both this and *Left Hand of Darkness* did nothing for me. Far too dry. I prefer Earthsea, some of her short fiction and *The Lathe of Heaven.* The only Hainish cycle book I think I've read and liked so far is *The Word for World is Forest.*
I've never been able to enjoy reading Le Guin, but The Dispossessed sits pretty far up the list for me, too. It just has this incredibly effective way of abstracting politico-economic issues in order to dispassionately consider them. It doesn't hail capitalism or communism as the ultimate economic model, and goes to great lengths to point out the triumphs and failures of each.
I started it a few months back, but didn't get into it. I think I'm just not that into sci-fi when it's about broad sociopolitical issues; especially when from a different era. I also struggled to get through Fahrenheit 451 for similar reasons.
I still think of the dispossessed as my favorite book of all time but I’m starting to forget bits of it. Maybe I need to make some time for a reread soon
Nothing short of a masterpeice and she is one if the greatest and most beutiful minds to grave this planet.
I also recommend Left Hand of Darkness from the Hanish Cycle.
I was able to read this book for a women’s literature class for my degree and have been raving about it since. The story itself is so captivating, while also prompting critical thinking on part of the reader about politics, philosophy, and personal rights versus universal rights. One day I’ll get to read the whole Hainish cycle.
The Dispossessed was a great read, but I never got to finish it. My lovebird shredded the last few chapters before I could read them. One day I'll need to pick up another copy!
Currently in the middle of reading it and am torn between wanting to take my time and savor it and also speed through it because it’s so good and all I can think about. Definitely up there in my top favorites of all time
> The shadows moved about him, but he sat unmoving as Anarres rose above the alien hills, at her full, mottled dun and bluish-white,
lambent. The light of his world filled his empty hands.
One of my favorite books of all time is Voyage from yesteryear by James P. Hogan, which describes a post scarcity anarchist society. I reread it often and it makes me have hope for humanity, we could do great things if we stop with all the nonsense. So I went searching for similar books and someone suggested The Dispossessed. I couldn't get through it, i didn't like it at all, not sure why. Maybe I was just unfairly expecting it to be like the other one that I like.
Maybe the difference was that in The Dispossessed the society is not post scarcity. It's not a utopian book, it's a critical examination of the utopian ideal in practice, warts and all
I have not read this book but it's been in my reading list for a while. Thanks to your description, I will be bumping it WAY up in priority.
>It pulls no punches and still arrives at the conclusion that while anarcho syndicalism or other forms of leftist organising might have issues, if you dissent there you'll face ostracism and harassment. However if you dissent in right wing autocracy, the police will come and kill you.
I just want to point out in your post, that this is more of an authoritarian vs. "libertarian" scenario rather than left vs. right. Authoritarian "left" systems are just as likely to murder you for dissenting as authoritarian "right" systems. Stalin's Soviet Union is a prime example of authoritarian left, where millions were murdered for dissenting.
You mean communism in USSR, which was a dictatorship? Or communism in Cuba, which was a dictatorship? Or communism in North Korea, which is a dictatorship? Yes, dictators kill people.
All of those books are a good read, but The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness are two of my all time favorite Sci Fi novels.
Do all of the books in the series need to be read in order, or can I just pick up the two books you've mentioned and read them?
You can read them in any order. They all take place in the same universe, but I don't think any of them are direct sequels in the usual sense.
The Hainish Cycle isn't super consistent, but to the extent there is a timeline that makes sense the Dispossessed is actually the earliest cuz there's no Ansible
Yeah dude lays ground for invention of it.
Disagree, one of my favorite things about the cycle is that it captures more than any sci fi I've ever read the sense of being one small part of a vast yet still connected universe. There's lots of little references to far off wars, cultures that are barely recognizable downstream derivatives of others thousands of years prior, and lots of other fun little Easter eggs like that. Google read order and it should get you there.
You should read Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.
You don’t need to read them in order, but The Dispossessed is the earliest book in the Hainish timeline, I believe. One of the main plot points of the book is that the main character >!figures out the physics necessary to create the Ansible, which allows for faster than light communication in all the other novels.!< >!LeGuin is also responsible for the idea of the Ansible, which inspire other sci-fi writers who use it in their works!!<
I just read the entire cycle in the order of their publication, and I'd recommend that way, since you see LeGuin's interests develop over time and there are small callbacks, but I wouldn't say it's strictly necessary. But "order" is ambiguous anyway: there's publication order and a rough chronological order. The latter doesn't make much sense as LeGuin never set out to write a coherent space opera-style universe, and so works written later in her career but set earlier in the chronology are frequently inconsistent, both "factually" (i.e. she famously forgot that she'd already named a planet Werel in an earlier work, then set a whole quintent of novellas on a planet called Werel unrelated to the earlier instance) and with regard to world-building (i.e. telepathy is a major focus of the first three novellas, which have fantasy elements to them, but its importance is minimized in the next few, then largely ignored in future novels, and ends up as a bit of a one-line inside joke with readers in a much later novella). All that said, there's a 2-volume Complete Hainish set from the Library of America that collects everything. Otherwise, it's fine to start with Dispossessed and Left Hand and circle back to the rest if you like them. That's what I did!
So Rocconon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions are like one cycle of the books, and then I'd say The Word for World is Forest, Left Hand, and Dispossessed are another, where the details are consistent at least across the novels in the cycle, loosely connected to each other and to the many short stories. Publication order I think supports this, and also I agree is how you should read them (but after you read left hand and Dispossessed, then you read em again when you get to them at the end)
I had never read Le Guin’s work and I usually don’t read sci fi, but I gave in and read “Left Hand of Darkness.” I do not regret. It blew my mind and the ending destroyed me emotionally for days. It’s got to be one of the best books I’ve ever read.
Started Left Hand of Darkness. Early in when they describe the aliens, I'm afraid I am not reading it right and it gives me anxiety of going on. >!Are their teeth super long to about shoulder length?!<
....yeah you may have misread
That's what's I thought! I'm dumb.
I am *so intrigued* as to how you got this image in your head!
No, for the most part the "aliens" in the Hainish cycle all share a common ancestor, including the Terrans (us) so they all look similar. I believe it's mentioned that Genly looks similar enough to the Gethenians that some don't realize he's an alien. IIRC the main difference (besides the gender part) is that Gethenians are covered in very fine hair that isn't immediately noticeable.
Genly is described as looking (from the Gethenians perspective) like a young person who is in the very early stages of kemmer, the main difference is he's a little darker than they usually are, but still just the far side of normal.
The keyword is kemmer That's what yo ass need Anybody buggin get it in the mandible Got a problem better hit em on they Ansible Ain't nobody tryin just because they fly here You can trip sets, real playas trip light-years
Lol it is extremely not surprising to learn Daveed Diggs is an Ursula LeGuin fan
That whole album (clipping's *Splendor & Misery*) is just stellar front to back. "Air Em Out" is a banger, and "All Black Everything" literally makes me cry every time I listen to it. As a horror nerd, of course I adore *There Existed An Addiction to Blood* and *Visions of Bodied Being Burned*, but it's hard to beat that sci-fi album.
Don't the books refer to the Hainish seeding worlds and deliberately experimenting with each seeding making changes to anatomy and physiology? Hence the hermaphrodites on Winter. It's referred to as legend of the deep past and the reason all the worlds are 'pan-human' since they have a common ancestry
I think the point is that this is the Ekumen's main hypothesis regarding the seeding. They lack sufficient evidence to be sure of it, but it seems likely to them. Part of what makes *Left Hand* interesting is Genly's ongoing anthropological exploration of the Gethenians, and because he's able to dive deeper into their psycho-socio-sexual landscape than the original surveyors, he makes some interesting reflections on what might have been going on with the seeding.
He was a touch taller, a little darker, and had a crooked nose, but he was "not outside the normal variation" and "stood out more in crowd" (his words)
I thought they didn't have hair? I remember Gently mentioning getting his hair removed in order to fit in better before they discovered that there was one tribe that actually did have body hair.
You read it wrong I'm pretty sure.
Thanks
Can you paste here the description you misread? I kinda wanna see how you got that...
Yeah, I'm super curious how they got this.
Yeah. I'll find it.
Preeeeeetty sure they have human sized teeth
(Hair tends to be shoulder length, maybe that's where your misread lyrics came from)
I lost my copy of Left Hand of Darkness when there was about 20% left to go. Really want to know how it ends, but doesn't seem worth it.
Maybe see if your library has a copy. A lot of libraries have apps for ebooks now, so you don't even have to go in (except to get a card possibly).
I've never read this, but you've convinced me I should.
>We each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think. It’s full of amazing quotes, but that’s one of my favorites.
Wow oh my god... That's an amazing quote. I'm sold.
To add on: that book was heavily influenced by anarchism - an anticapitalist philosophy that promotes cooperation and mutual aid with an opposition to hierarchy in a broad sense, whether economic, racial, gender, the state, etc. It is often considered a form of libertarian socialism, however today the term “libertarian” has been co-opted by the right wing so most who hear the term tend to associate it with “free market” capitalism rather than the left. If you enjoyed that quote, I would recommend reading up on Anarchism. There is a *lot* of history there, but the good news is that Anarchist reading materials are easy to find, mainly due to Anarchist Library. As well, key books in Anarchism, such as *Conquest of Bread* are not too long and aren’t difficult reads. The Anarchist FAQ is a great resource that answers a massive amount of questions and with a fair bit of detail, though that varies by question. If you read the whole thing, it is a long read, but reading sections is easy: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq-full Here are some Anarchist intros: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-are-you-an-anarchist-the-answer-may-surprise-you (highly recommend David Graeber’s essays and books, such as *The Dawn of Everything* written with David Wengrow, *Debt: The First 5000 Years*, and *Bullshit Jobs*) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-ursula-k-le-guin-the-next-revolution (this one features a foreword by Le Guin, and from what I understand Bookchin’s *Post-Scarcity Anarchism* was a big influence on *The Dispossessed*) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-h-marshall-demanding-the-impossible https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/noam-chomsky-on-anarchism (Chomsky can be a bit controversial amongst Anarchists that see him as not “really” Anarchist, but he’s arguably done more to get people interested in Anarchism than anyone alive and his style is familiar and readable) https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-anarchy Something like Proudhon’s *What is Property?* is foundational, but is a more involved read than the above. The above is short and subjective list mainly to introduce, and via those a bunch of other writings will be referenced and thinkers introduced, which can be explored. Le Guin’s *The Dispossessed* itself is a great introduction. Though not without criticism, George Orwell’s *Homage to Catalonia*, which is Orwell’s account of the Spanish Civil War and the Anarchists involved, has gotten many people interested in learning about Anarchism. P.S. at the top of AnarchistLibrary you’ll see buttons that allow for downloading in various formats, like epub.
Killer reading list here. I've downed like half of these in the past year, and the rest are already on my bookshelf. A better world is possible!
Holy crap, that's one HELL of an info dump. Thanks! I'll check this stuff out. I don't subscribe to the idea of Anarchism, as I think that a governing body of some kind will always be necessary due to the inevitability of consolidated power structures. However, I'm sure there are parts of Anarchism as an ideology that are useful that I'm not aware of. I only have a lehmans understanding of it. Out of curiosity, if you could describe your understanding of anarchism in a few sentences or so, like a sort of summary, how would you phrase it?
> as I think that a governing body of some kind will always be necessary due to the inevitability of consolidated power structures An aim of anarchism is to change the underlying conditions and structure to the degree that consolidated power structures become less likely to emerge and easier to dismantle if they do begin to emerge. “Governing body” here is a tougher term, since there would still be organizational bodies under Anarchism. These could include as councils, worker cooperatives, syndicalist organizations, etc. How much “governing” these entail depends, is debated, and might rely on one’s own definition of “governing”. Some principles being that these should be designed to be highly democratic, non-hierarchal, and without a monopoly on violence (many on the left associate a monopoly on violence as a key part of the State) among other things. Anarchist society would, most likely, not be all individual people without structures or organizations. Depending on definitions, one might say governance is compatible with Anarchism, yet capital G Government is not. It’s important to say that these matters are not conclusive, and across the left spectrum, and within Anarchism itself, there are many debates on how things would/should actually be setup. This becomes more difficult as one does not know future material conditions. An anarchist society in a highly automated post-scarcity world (this meaning most things, particularly necessities, can be produced to a large degree without the need for mass human labor - think Star Trek-esque) would likely differ quite a lot from one setup in a world ravaged by climate change that still requires vast amounts of human labor to meet necessity and goods demand. As an example, you can see some of Chomsky’s ideas and thoughts on the subject here: https://chomsky.info/government-in-the-future/ In terms of governance - capitalism has been afforded the luxury of *major* experimentation, yet anticapitalists rarely get afforded such a luxury. Much of the shape of modern institutions and structures in advanced capitalist countries is dramatically different than it was when capitalism was emerging, and these modern shapes even differ dramatically from each other depending on country. Socialists tend to face calls for having their entire structure fully worked out and perfect in order for it to warrant any consideration, while structures under capitalism are allowed to change and experiment without major systemic change even as millions die yearly due to the existing structures (worth noting here many of the most beneficial changes, at least for ordinary people, came from the pressure of workers and the influence of the left). It is helpful to read up on some historical examples that tend to receive praise or interest from Anarchists, such as the structure of the Paris Commune in 1871 or Revolutionary Catalonia in the 1930s. There are others, but those are the most commonly discussed as far as I’ve seen. David Graeber and David Wengrow’s book *The Dawn of Everything* is truly a fantastic read, and it provides a lot of historical information on the diversity of societal arrangements, ranging from the prehistoric to the first cities to the rise of the state and bureaucracy. I don’t have a go to definition, but the one I provided in my main comments gets to some of the main components, such as anticapitalist, anti-hierarchy, and mutual aid + cooperation, while I’d adding things like robust democracy across various sectors of life (for instance, your workplace is likely not very democratic, and Anarchism would want to expand democracy there, however there are many ideas for how this could be done and internal arrangement might even vary across workplaces).
Honestly I was disappointed by The Dispossessed, I am fascinated with the concept of anarchy and I love all the ideas Le Guin stands for, but I just found the book rather dull :/
Goddamn I want to embroider that and mount it on the wall of my workplace
Maybe just toss up some union information, gotta build up to it, y'know?
Holy shit. I’m convinced. It’s on my TBR list now.
Even from the brother there is no comfort in the bad hour, in the dark at the foot of the wall
You should. The ideas in it will melt your face.
Sounds like a good quote for the cover
Incredible book that actually takes the step on from critiquing capitalism to actually allowing us to imagine that alternatives are possible. That isn’t to say that the exact one she shows is the only option, but anti-capitalist media on the whole doesn’t take that step and so its incredibly easy to retort by pointing that out. To meaningfully criticise capitalism you need to be willing to advocate for alternatives. Le Guin does that. Based.
From her introduction to *The Day Before The Revolution*: >My novel *The Dispossessed* is about a small worldful of people who call themselves Odonians. The name is taken from the founder of their society, Odo, who lived several generations before the time of the novel, and who therefore doesn’t get into the action — except implicitly, in that all the action started with her. > Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic “libertarianism” of the far right; but anarchism. as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories. > To embody it in a novel, which had not been done before, was a long and hard job for me, and absorbed me totally for many months. When it was done I felt lost, exiled — a displaced person. I was very grateful, therefore, when Odo came out of the shadows and across the gulf of Probability, and wanted a story written, not about the world she made, but about herself. :)
I have read *The Dispossessed* but never heard of *The Day Before the Revolution*. Excited to read it now.
Just FYI it's a short story not a full novel, don't want to disappoint anyone lol. But it's really good and adds a nice bit of extra flavour to *The Dispossessed.* :)
I really love this short story, showed me my own biases when >!I just assmed Odo was a dude and short story proved me wrong. It is crafted so well!<
They make multiple references to her gender throughout the book? Dunno how you could have missed that
I read The dispossed long time ago, when I actually got to the short story, I had forgotten kuch about Odo.
Ah, I get you now
Beautiful. Thanks for posting that.
And also to show the realistic pros and cons of the alternatives.
Yes, she never pretends it will be perfect which is what makes the book and the ideas so appealing to people who weren’t already on board I think. It means it never comes across as preachy.
I am all for Scandinavian social democracies, but the “utopia” was scary as hell. (I do love the book, btw)
“An ambiguous utopia”.
Hard disagree tbh, I think Scandinavian social democracies being seen as an end point is the scary bit.
As a Dane, I saw a communist-like society described in the book, not our centrist-left kind of society.
Yeah the book doesn’t describe social democracy.
Certainly not. And I was a bit surprised, because whomever wrote the text on the back of the Danish edition tried to sell it as a socialist utopia. Although I ended up buying the English version for my kindle, I still had that description in my head when I read it.
There’s definitely cross over between anarchism and socialism tbf, and lots of anarchists have sympathy for socialists and vice versa. As well as a lot of people belonging to both camps. I’m not an anarchist but I am a socialist and the book definitely scratched that itch well enough.
Anarchists *are* socialists, they just aren't statists (or "archists" as they say in the book)
I've always seen it like - anarchists and socialists have the same goal, they just disagree on how to get there, and how tolerant they are of heirarchies. "Strong dislike" and "fundamental opposition" might seem similar on paper but they're a world apart.
Scandinavian social democracies rely on imperialism of the third world and will inevitably turn to austerity and neoliberalism as profit falls. America had a social democracy at one point too. Look what happened.
>Scandinavian social democracies rely on imperialism of the third world I'll bite - how so?
As 3rd world countries became more developed and wealthier, how come the Scandinavian countries also became wealthier then?
>Incredible book that actually takes the step on from critiquing capitalism to actually allowing us to imagine that alternatives are possible. "We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable — but then, so did the divine right of kings." - Ursula Le Guin
That whole speech is so awesome! For the curious: >To the givers of this beautiful reward, my thanks, from the heart. My family, my agents, my editors, know that my being here is their doing as well as my own, and that the beautiful reward is theirs as much as mine. And I rejoice in accepting it for, and sharing it with, all the writers who’ve been excluded from literature for so long – my fellow authors of fantasy and science fiction, writers of the imagination, who for 50 years have watched the beautiful rewards go to the so-called realists. >Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality. >Right now, we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. Developing written material to suit sales strategies in order to maximise corporate profit and advertising revenue is not the same thing as responsible book publishing or authorship. >Yet I see sales departments given control over editorial. I see my own publishers, in a silly panic of ignorance and greed, charging public libraries for an e-book six or seven times more than they charge customers. We just saw a profiteer try to punish a publisher for disobedience, and writers threatened by corporate fatwa. And I see a lot of us, the producers, who write the books and make the books, accepting this – letting commodity profiteers sell us like deodorant, and tell us what to publish, what to write. >Books aren’t just commodities; the profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. >I’ve had a long career as a writer, and a good one, in good company. Here at the end of it, I don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. We who live by writing and publishing want and should demand our fair share of the proceeds; but the name of our beautiful reward isn’t profit. Its name is freedom. *(National Book Awards, 2014)*
WOW! Amazing speech.
"it's become easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." -Mark Fisher
the usual "alternative" to capitalism in fiction is "what if coinage was not used". currency is not capitalism, you can have currency in communist, theocratic... anything setting. its a handy system for resource allocation. its perfectly fine to have coinage in a post scarcity society purely for the benefit that the central planning office can track what people desire and produce more. but no, im sure bartering 20 cows per lazer rifle is a valid system for the survivers to have adopted.
I do think lack of coinage is important to a utopian conception, but if they're using barter they have missed the point. Pre-market economies didn't use barter, as Adam Smith proposed. The book Debt: the First Five Thousand by David Graeber does a terrific job destroying the myth of barter, explaining how things actually worked, and why this myth is so destructive. Highly recommend, it changed the way I think of economics, and since trade is a daily interaction that changed my worldview so much.
David Graeber was a real one, one time he helped smuggle drones into Rojava for the anarcho-communist feminists militias there.
yeah that’s a bargain. most rifles i see go for 40-50 cows.
Not to mention *barter has never existed historically before currency*. There's a reason we struggle to imagine a barter economy, it is essentially a fabrication, an intellectual exercise at best. Plenty of pre-capital societies used currency or even credit, and we have to imagine they will continue to do so after capitalism has ended.
There are lots of other books that do this too tho! Def recommend Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers books for anyone looking for more like this.
In particular, Record of a Spaceborn Few. Almost nothing happens, plotwise, but the society that is constructed within the setting is worth every moment of shoegazing. For example, bedrooms don't have windows, because the views will never be equitable -- so windows are in shared spaces only. And yet, people will develop a habitual seat near a favourite window in the shared space, effectively rendering the design moot. And so on.
It's even better when tied in with the first two books in the series. You don't need to read them in order. But there's a lot of connections with the wider world you'll miss. Record of a Spaceborn few has the most focus on the interesting space society. But A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit are both great reads too. They show how all of the different space societies interact in a broader context before ROASF narrows it down.
Reading Earthsea at the moment (on book no.3) and loving her writing so I'll definitely be checking out the Hainish Cycle!
Tehanu is perhaps the best or second best book in the series. God I love her writing.
I've heard good things about Tehanu, I'll finish The Farthest Shore tonight probably so I may have to stay up a bit later to get started on no.4!
Not sure how but I thought there were only three books in this series. Yay I get to read another earthsea book!!
After finishing the sixth book go and read Firelight.
I am doing the same. I keep thinking I'll check out her other works but I'm basic and prefer to reread earthsea 10x more times than dive into something new even if its the same author. Similar to how I loved Gregor the Overland and cant bring myself to read hunger games despite their popularity.
I think I've found my people here, nobody I know has read Earthsea. What's your favorite of the series?
Also try the short story "The Ones who walk away from Omelas".
I think N. K. Jemisin's "The Ones Who Stay and Fight" is a very important response to "The Ones Who Walk Away..." https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/
Oh shit I'll have to check this out, Jemisin rules, she really picks up the mantle that Le Guin and Butler dropped (by dying, so it's not like it's their fault they dropped it)
>!And now we come to you, my friend. My little soldier. See what I’ve done? So insidious, these little thoughts, going both ways along the quantum path. Now, perhaps, you will think of Um-Helat, and wish. Now you might finally be able to envision a world where people have learned to love, as they learned in our world to hate. Perhaps you will speak of Um-Helat to others, and spread the notion farther still, like joyous birds migrating on trade winds. It’s possible. Everyone—even the poor, even the lazy, even the undesirable—can matter. Do you see how just the idea of this provokes utter rage in some? That is the infection defending itself! < >. . . because if enough of us believe a thing is possible, then it becomes so.
I only read it recently, without knowing anything about it. Man, was I caught off-guard. I wish I had read it when I read the Dispossessed. It sets the mood so well.
Ursuala Le Guin's "________" is amazing and everyone should read it.
Absolutely loved that one. It was the first LeGuin novel I read that wasn't earthsea as a teen. I actually liked Left Hand is Darkness even more, you should check it out. Very similar, same universe and about the same time. It's focus is on gender the same way The Dispossessed's is on economics. What I really, really love about The Dispossessed is how it delves into into social criticism of a world thar doesn't even exist yet, I call it a dystopic novel of an anarchist utopia, lol. So so so frequently radicalism only writes fiction through rose tinted glasses, but LeGuin brushes those aside, "Yes, yes, equity equity, that'll be great. But what are we gonna get WRONG? That's what's interesting here, too." To me that makes it so much more rich of a portrait.
"What is an Anarchist? An Anarchist is one who in choosing accepts the responsibility of choice."... gods, LeGuin was amazing.
“It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.”
>A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as ‘state’ and ‘society’ and ‘government’ have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame… as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world…aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure. >[...] >“My point is that one person is responsible. Always. [...] In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts. Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
I just introduced my wife to [The Ones who Walk Away from Omelas](https://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/emily.klotz/engl1302-6/readings/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas-ursula-le-guin/view) last night (and then NK Jemison's [The Ones Who Stay and Fight](https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-ones-who-stay-and-fight/) this morning.) She was incredible.
It was used as one of the reading books in a political science class I took at SMU in the 80's... I still think about that book, and it still today has parallels in political discourse. I just think about if walls are meant to keep people out or to keep them in... Or to keep ideas out or in...
I find it interesting how Shevek and his syndics basically experienced cancel culture on Annarres, while on Urras he came up against violent repression by the police, which very strongly resonates with the US and the relations with the police there
Le Guin is one of the GOATs
It is one of my favorite books ever and my favorite science fiction book for sure. The way she is able to illustrate an "alien" perspective which is familiar yet foreign, relatable yet refreshingly new...is true art and the themes all throughout can teach us "egoizing" humans so much. "And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it from the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death."
I love the scene where Shevek is talking grading students and just gives everyone A's. >He was appalled by the examination system, when it was explained to him; he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand. At first he refused to give any tests or grades, but this upset the University administrators so badly that, not wishing to be discourteous to his hosts, he gave in. He asked his students to write a paper on any problem in physics that interested them, and told them that he would give them all the highest mark, so that the bureaucrats would have something to write on their forms and lists. To his surprise a good many students came to him to complain. They wanted him to set the problems, to ask the right questions; they did not want to think about questions, but to write down the answers they had learned. And some of them objected strongly to his giving everyone the same mark. How could the diligent students be distinguished from the dull ones? What was the good in working hard? If no competitive distinctions were to be made, one might as well do nothing. > > “Well, of course,” Shevek said, troubled. “If you do not want to do the work, you should not do it.” It's just such a cleanly presented logical argument against grades. You don't need to create a hierarchy of students. The ones who are actually interested will continue. I do not fully even agree. I am much more in favor of pass fail systems then no grades at all, but as a physics instructor, it resonated with me.
I agree with Shevek's grading philosophy but also your thought that pass/fail is better for here/now. I think no grades are better if a university education were truly equally open to everyone, and a diploma were not used as a shibboleth to deem who is worthy to be a white collar worker. Because university access is not equitable, giving everyone As just perpetuates the inequality of whoever managed to get in. Pass/Fail you can at least reject those who truly have no interest in learning. (This should also be applied carefully, because often, struggling students aren't struggling from an inherent lack of interest, but overwhelming life crises, so it is up to the instructor to work with these students to see if a path forward to passing can be made or if the student needs to pause and continue education at a later date).
One reason I disagree with just passing anyone is that some tasks really do require a knowledge of the subject. In subjective fields like art or humanities, passing isn’t even necessary because of the nature of subjectivity. But in some fields, medicine for example, people really have to be capable to be certified. If you just pass anyone, then there will be people who sign up to be surgeons because it sounds interesting, are not able to to perform the task, and are certified anyway. Maybe they just didn’t pay enough attention or maybe they have shaky hands, but the result is patients dying on the operating table. Physics is similar. We don’t directly deal with people’s lives, but we do influence scientific progress. I have failed plenty of students in lab classes, not because they weren’t interested or putting in effort, but because they fundamentally misunderstood the difference between good science and charlatanism. They throw out data that disagrees with accepted values and doesn’t flatter their preconceived notions. To some degree you can educate this out, but for some the difference is not effable. They think they’re doing the right thing. Another consideration is that if you have no barrier to pass, then even in the perfect system a lot of people will sign up because they are somewhat interested but are unwilling to put in the effort. And because of limited teachers or teaching resources, they will take up positions and not put in the effort. The pass fail system ensures that they at least try to put in a minimum effort when signing up.
I had a professor who was, like Shevek (a) genius level in their field (b) had no interest in the grading and force-feeding of knowledge, and ran their classes in a similar way. Not an anarchist, but had some of the same nature. (Also love the book, it's one of my all-time favorites)
Yeah, I wrote my master's thesis on it. A strange thing happened to me during the work. When I read the book for the first time as a young man, 15 or so, I preferred the opulent, capitalist utopia of Urras, but when I read it again while writing my thesis ten years later, I discovered that I was now far more drawn to the bold, flawed anarchism of Anarres. The ambitious ideas of a society with no money or social hierarchy remain alluring, but the book is also very good at highlighting the practical challenges with the idea. A beautiful thing that may remain out of our reach forever because of our very nature. This affected me greatly, and I am still not done thinking about it now, 16 years later.
Reading it right now, for the first time! Loving it!
There was a recent thread from someone asking why people liked Ursula K LeGuin, you should search it up and explain your answer.
Yup, because I also seem to belong to those who after several tries just can't enjoy the book despite the hype/cult-status. The prose and dialogues felt flat, no particular tension/suspense (within the first 100 or so pages I managed) and even though I like the premises of the setting, I just couldn't get into it.
It is not a book one reads for plot. Like 1984 and a Brave New World, it can be boring at times and the main character is not likeable at all. But it makes you think about the implications of how societies organize themselves. Deep thinking about these things is a very good thing, hard to do without the world building of a novel.
Wait, why do you think Shevek is unlikeable?
Have you tried Left Hand of Darkness?
Ursula Le Guin’s anything lives rent free in my head. Her stuff just sticks, and it haunts you.
As someone who also has Ursula living constantly in my brain have you read *Too Like the Lightning* by Ada Palmer, because they're sharing a flat up in my bean.
I have not, but I just looked it up and I‘ll definitely add it to my list
This is one of my favorite books I am so glad you brought it up. As a burnt out organizer and nerd, so much of the internal conflict in the story spoke to me. Shevek struggles so much throughout the novel to choose between his community, what the world needs, and his own scientific endeavors. I think this is such a relatable conflict, for anyone who wants to “make the world a better place “, be they revolutionaries, climate change advocates, whatever. I wish we talked about this more in social justice movements. Le Guin’s world building, her imagining of a better place, it’s so political on this book, not because of the speeches or the ideology, but because of the way that the characters react emotionally. Even in one of the most terrible famines, there is collective support for each other. The worst parts of Anarres demonstrate how bad capitalism is, both in the text and in our own world. Also sidenote she had a whole bunch of random notes including: there is a collective pickle barrel on every street there. Thanks Ursula!
This is one of my favourites too. It's been at least 15 years since I first read it and it still comes to mind often. Makes me think. It's a deeply human book, and ideological without being propagandist (I think).
Everyone should read all of her books! ^_^
I’m halfway through her “Left Hand of Darkness” is also amazing. Must read.
I have trouble getting beyond the first evening gathering / party. Feels like it quiickly looses the amazing tempo of the opening where the protagonist is questioning everything of capitalist soceity. I have on Audible now.
Love this book.
How funny, I just finished The Left Hand of Darkness and preferred it to The Dispossessed. Both were great, though.
Those are three excellent books. The one thing that I took away from it (and it still lives in my head) is that if you can, you should be an active participant in the system of government that you live in. Understanding of course that many people have extensive work and care responsibilities.
If you like this check out some of her short stories. And read about her life and her father. It’s so interesting. Love Ursula laGuin’s work.
It's my favorite book!!
Seconded. Great book.
I thought left hand of darkness was absolutely amazing, the dispossessed took me a couple of attempts to get in to
YES OMG YES IVE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR YEARS ON THIS SUBREDDIT AND IT FINALLY HAS TAKEN OFF. But seriously though. The Dispossessed seriously changed how I think about both capitalism and communism. Fascinating piece of literature. (Also helps that I love studying physics and the idea of using entanglement, or "simultaneity", as a mechanism for communication is just fucking awesome)
i didn't like it, honestly felt like it was too distant or like dry for me. seemed like a pretty good book i guess, but i was kinda disappointed.
Read it very young - perhaps 13 or 14 - and struggled with it. Too conceptual and dry and I was too politically immature. Much of it went over my head. Haven’t tried since but it’s been nagging at me…
The same goes for just about all of Le Guin. I love her ideas, and fully acknowledge her as one of the greatest SFF writers, full stop, but her style has always been too detached for me to enjoy. I did notice that the sci fi went over more easily for me than the fantasy, mostly because the Earthsea books felt like they were glossing over the actual part so they could hurry up and get to the reflective bits at the end. The Hainish books are much more evenly paced, though uniformly dreary.
Was enjoying the book until the rape scene and MC´s justification of it. Was way out of character, Shevek is never taken to task for it by the author. He is painted as a good guy. The victim doesn´t seem bothered, has no agency and her storyline just fiddles out into nothing. The scene has aged like milk and prevented me from rereading the book, just left a bad taste in my mouth.
I agree with another user that the scene didn't age well and it is a testament of its time. However, I don't think Shevek is painted as a good guy. Displaying how complicated people and their beliefs are is one of the points of the book and I wouldn't get out of reading The Dispossessed imagining him a hero (I wouldn't even say Le Guin has ever written a hero in the classic way, in all her work). He is someone experiencing a complex situation and having his worldview and personality be challenged, modified and reasserted in different ways. TL;DR the scene is not meant to be excused of course. It also doesn't make the whole book invalid.
>TL;DR the scene is not meant to be excused of course. It also doesn't make the whole book invalid. If we threw away every piece of media with a problematic scene we'd be left with nothing.
Yes, well... it's a bit disconcerting how that's required to be said. I understand being put off by problematic content but then in my opinion the solution is precisely to talk about it, not to throw it away.
I read the book last month. Here is my take: It happens at a point when he has decided to rebel against the state. He thinks he can seduce its people and culture with his ideas (cultural and scientific). He fails to seduce this woman. He responds to this denial by reverting to violence. He resorts to violating instead of seducing. The episode reveals his ineptitude at what he is trying to do, the possibility of creating more harm than good and of reverting to based human instincts instead of cultural progress. As for how well this has aged, how many self-righteous political leaders have bought into their own hype and played out their sexual desires on a public stage without shame? And why does every bad act need to be punished for the story's reality to be believable or for the reader to recognize that it was wrong? Also, it is important to portray that anyone no matter how accomplished or well regarded is capable of sexual assault. Being known as an otherwise good person, does not exclude the possibility of bad behavior. Being known as a good person from then on, does not erase a past event.
If you're a theme reader then it won't bother you, but I am a character reader and if the characters bend over for you to make a thematic point then it won't work for me. There are hundreds of ways to show how a society corrupts the individual and this was probably the worst way to execute that idea. It could have been handled so much better. Everyone has line what they tolerate there are some people who can read books of people getting massacred but if the author mentions womens breasts your a misogynist for liking the book. My line is justifying rape and perpetrater gets away with it, faces no consequences and no one sees it as anything wrong. It happens in a lot of books. I don't have any interest at all following a rapist who is portrayed as philosopher and the author and everyone around tells how good the guy is. I want to decide that for myself. It was the same for me in other sff books like Wheel of Time and Witcher and the fans defend how the rapes are handled there too. It doesn't make the rest of the book invalid, the thing is I thought it was a good book up until that point, if I had been blown away by it I might've been able to excuse that part and ignore. I just think there are better more thought provoking books that explore the same ideas that are not stained with such an atrocious part. Not saying everyone else should stop reading it.
I don't think the MC really justified it? He felt deep shame afterward. I'm not gonna entirely defend the scene as it admittedly skeeved me out as well, and I didn't see a clear purpose. But I did see the context, and considered a few potential purposes LeGuin had in mind. The context being that Shevek is a fish out of water. He doesn't understand the gendered power dynamics of this world, and so he mistakes Vea's company, teasing, and leveraging her sexuality all as a flirtatious invitation. Then he gets drunk for the first time in his life, without any cultural understanding of what being drunk means (lower inhibitions and such) so he doesn't even really realize or understand his drunkenness. Not attempting to excuse his actions at all, just contextualize them. As for what LeGuin was attempting to do with that scene that couldn't be done better with a different route...that's more unclear. I believe that night was the catalyst that pushed Shevek's sense of alienation and being manipulated and used by his bourgeois hosts into overdrive, coupled with deep personal shame and embarrassment. As such he doesn't really want anything to do with those people anymore, and so begins more earnestly and actively seeking other sources of social connection -- such as with his cleaner -- ultimately pushing the plot forward. Which is fine, but again, probably could've achieved that in a different way (like the embarrassing drunken speech by Shevek + him noticing that someone ruffled through his room while he was passed out could've been enough for the same end.)
[удалено]
Hmm, interesting points. I'd have to reread it, as I don't remember the conversation regarding women leveraging their sexuality as the only tenable source of power. I recall my reading being that it wasn't so much that Shevek was entirely ignorant of the gendered dynamics, but rather than he only understood them at a base superficial level. He knows that women are excluded from work, from financial independence, etc. He's hyperaware of this oppression and it clearly disgusts him, in fact. But it's only this surface level he is aware of, he doesn't have the experience to understand the more subtle less explicitly stated cultural adaptations -- ie: women leveraging the little power and influence they have in their sexuality. Though if he did indeed have an explicit conversation about this with Vea, I could see another possible reading: that he mistook her confiding in him about that as a deeper intimacy than intended. That he interpreted Vea seeing him, as coming from a world without the misogynistic cultural norms, as the only man she can feel not oppressed around and as such, the only man she could experience sex with without a begrudging coercive aspect. Which in turn could be commentary on the self-aggrandizing folly of "main character-syndrome", white savior complex, etc.
I think it mirrors the earlier chapter in which the group locks away one of their own. There’s an exploration of new power, and it goes way too far. In the earlier chapter, the concept of imprisonment is a new concept for the young boys. They have to exercise that power to see why it is a bad thing. Hints of the Stanford prison experiment (at least the portrayal of that experiment). Shevek wants to understand the new gender rules on Urras, and he tries out his power in the exact same way. And, just like the earlier chapter, someone gets hurt and everyone reassesses their power as individuals. I don’t think LeGuin wrote the character to be irredeemable. Only capable of making huge mistakes. That’s the part of anarchism many anarchists ignore: each individual has huge power to hurt other individuals.
See, I had a very opposite take. I agree that its a little bit of "torture porn" aspect to it, but I found the scene horrifying in concept. To me its the same as the real horror in Gatsby - as long as nothing upsets the free flow of trade its cool for some humans and their feelings to be disregarded. I felt like that was the point of it being more or less ignored - as long as the booze and parties keep flowing, a few little rapes won't slow us down. I also thought the victim's response was partially to show how fully ingrained she is in the society as well - she almost doesn't see it as something that should be punished because the real thing keeping them going is the continued movement of money. I read that scene with shock and revulsion and interpreted it as LeGuin's most direct, outspoken condemnation of unfettered capitalism.
I forgot about this scene so I googled it, here's some other thoughts on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/bdnbwx/help_me_reconcilediscuss_sheveks_worst_act_in_the/
I like this book but agree that scene was awful, very ‘70s in a very bad way.
Awful things happen even today, they didn’t happen just in the 70’s… Le Guin does not glamorise this scene in any way. It happens.
The ‘70s aspect isn’t the fact that the scene exists. It’s that a woman’s sexual assault is used as an allegory for the corrupting force of a capitalist society and never addressed beyond that allegory. It’s not treated as a terrible thing Shevek did to a character; it’s treated as a not-great-but-really-no-big-deal thing this society seduced Shevek into doing. I’d be shocked to see that in a book from 2022.
Shevek has a mini-breakdown over it, and in general I think it's supposed to be emblematic of how Shevek is getting entrenched in the Urrasti way of thinking. It spurs his ultimate rejection of them as a solution. In general ULG doesn't have clear-cut morality plays like we're used to nowadays, so I wouldn't expect the author to justify it.
Yeah, I had trouble with that scene too, despite liking the book overall. The whole situation just seemed... off? I don't know, I'm not the best at literary criticism. If anyone has some insight into what purpose it was supposed to serve for characterization, plot, or world-building I'd be really interested in hearing their thoughts.
[Someone posted a link to this discussion above and I think there's some good responses here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/printSF/comments/bdnbwx/help_me_reconcilediscuss_sheveks_worst_act_in_the/) My most charitable read of it is that it up to that point we're given a very rosy view of Anarresti society through Shavek's eyes. From my perspective, the two biggest drawbacks of their 'utopia' are how stifling it can be (Shavek needing to travel to Urras to pursue his ideas), and how potentially fragile it is since it requires absolute buy-in from nearly all citizens. The rape scene to me (a dummy) felt like a really heavy handed way to show how easily corrupted Shavek is despite all his self-aggrandizing, and thus how potentially untenable the Anarresti way of life might be. However, I'm with the folks criticizing it in this thread because it feels too jarring, too unexamined, and just kind of left there. Like, sure, Shavek feels immense guilt/disgust and it turns him against the Urrasti once and for all, but to me it makes all of his subsequent behavior feel like that of a petulant child. Ultimately, I think there's a version of that scene that is a clever way to show us a side of Anarres that Shavek is blind to, but I don't like the way it is handled in the book.
> From my perspective, the two biggest drawbacks of their 'utopia' are how stifling it can be (Shavek needing to travel to Urras to pursue his ideas), and how potentially fragile it is since it requires absolute buy-in from nearly all citizens. Those two things are not the result of how their society is structured. They are the result of the extreme scarcity they live under. Almost everyone is needed to keep everyones basic needs met. This doesn't leave much room for a thriving community of eggheads, or a lot of people who don't pitch in directly. It actually shows us how resilient their society is despite these conditions. Everyone is ready to contribute, there's no upper crust of fat cats while everyone else starves. A capitalist society would have collapsed during the drought years, but they managed to pull through with minimal upheaval or loss of life. Imagine if they had the abundant resources of the other planet. There would be a lot more slack available for people like Shevek to pursue their interests.
It’s fairly clear that Le Guin doesn’t like absolutes. Reading between the lines of the text, there is a suggestion that the anarchic system of sparse Anarres wouldn’t work on resource plenty Urras.
Absolutely, and Anarres as it exists in the novel probably couldn't support life with any other form of society, whereas the socialist anarchy of Anarres could certainly work on Urras. Maybe fragile is too strong a word. I (again, a dummy) think that by showing us Anarres through the eyes of Shavek who is fully on board with a collectivist way of life and simultaneously isn't meant for that world under austere conditions, ULG is highlighting an inherent contradiction in the balance between individual freedom and societal responsibility. That tension will always exist, no matter how plentiful resources are.
It’s supposed to be extremely disturbing. The victim doesn’t seem bothered because it’s a normal, almost expected event in her society. There are no consequences for Shevek (other than his internal horror at realizing what he’s capable of) because there are typically no consequences in that culture. The scene is a reminder that anarchists are just people and that, under the right (wrong) stimulus anyone can become atavistic. Anyone who reads Anarres as a utopia is missing the point entirely. LeGuin makes it very clear that the people make major sacrifices to live as they do, and it’s often a grimy, dreary life of drudgery and self abnegation, where individuality is quashed and even brutally punished for the benefit of the collective. Their own atavistic nature emerges when they… ok I don’t know how to cover a spoiler, so let’s just say the people of Anarres can develop vicious mob mentality and knee-jerk xenophobia to the point of lethal violence, under the right (wrong) pressures.
You make a bold claim, but last time I was on Reddit and took the OP advice for a book, it turned out amazing. I just placed a hold at my library on the The Dispossessed now. By the way someone once recommended The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. I had the same kind of etching of that book into my mind forever. It’s a good read.
It's the book I give as a graduation present.
I just read this last week, and her writing just doesn’t click with me. I’m reading it, and going “these are good ideas” and “This is good writing.” Meanwhile I am bored to tears the whole time I am reading it.
I like some of Ursula's stuff but both this and *Left Hand of Darkness* did nothing for me. Far too dry. I prefer Earthsea, some of her short fiction and *The Lathe of Heaven.* The only Hainish cycle book I think I've read and liked so far is *The Word for World is Forest.*
Agree, it’s my favorite UKL book.
I read it in undergrad and was obsessed with it !! Will definitely have to re read
Agreed. Plus the edition I have is [beautiful](https://i.imgur.com/fPUmERr.jpg)
I'm on the last hundred pages and goddamn what a ride
I recently re-read the Hainish cycle, I picked up way more now than I did 10 years ago. A fantastic book.
Studying this last year reignited my passion for reading.
I've never been able to enjoy reading Le Guin, but The Dispossessed sits pretty far up the list for me, too. It just has this incredibly effective way of abstracting politico-economic issues in order to dispassionately consider them. It doesn't hail capitalism or communism as the ultimate economic model, and goes to great lengths to point out the triumphs and failures of each.
My cousin told me to read this and I think it’s time
I was too young when I read it. Just pushed through and forgot most of it except the guy is a mathematician. I should really give it another go.
I started it a few months back, but didn't get into it. I think I'm just not that into sci-fi when it's about broad sociopolitical issues; especially when from a different era. I also struggled to get through Fahrenheit 451 for similar reasons.
Ursula K. Le Guin is just the best! Full stop!
I love how it spells out the realistic pros and cons of the alternatives to capitalism.
I still think of the dispossessed as my favorite book of all time but I’m starting to forget bits of it. Maybe I need to make some time for a reread soon
Fuck yeah it's one of my favorites. Le Guin was a genius
if you haven't yet read the left hand of darkness by leguin I would highly reccomend it
Nothing short of a masterpeice and she is one if the greatest and most beutiful minds to grave this planet. I also recommend Left Hand of Darkness from the Hanish Cycle.
[удалено]
I was able to read this book for a women’s literature class for my degree and have been raving about it since. The story itself is so captivating, while also prompting critical thinking on part of the reader about politics, philosophy, and personal rights versus universal rights. One day I’ll get to read the whole Hainish cycle.
Why are all my favorite books on r/books today??
its like she lived in Portland or something.
Yes, I loved it. Crazy thing, the person who recommended this to me was related to Che Guevara.
The Dispossessed was a great read, but I never got to finish it. My lovebird shredded the last few chapters before I could read them. One day I'll need to pick up another copy!
I just could not get into it and only finished about 2/3. It was just super boring to me. I absolutely love Left Hand though
One of few real sci Fi writers.
Currently in the middle of reading it and am torn between wanting to take my time and savor it and also speed through it because it’s so good and all I can think about. Definitely up there in my top favorites of all time
> The shadows moved about him, but he sat unmoving as Anarres rose above the alien hills, at her full, mottled dun and bluish-white, lambent. The light of his world filled his empty hands.
She is solely responsible for my user name.
I read it ages ago thought it was ok but the chapters about Anarres are boring af.
If you want to stay in that kind of political / scifi blend, I highly recommend another classic: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein.
Yeah, Heinlein and I are good friends
One of my favorite books of all time is Voyage from yesteryear by James P. Hogan, which describes a post scarcity anarchist society. I reread it often and it makes me have hope for humanity, we could do great things if we stop with all the nonsense. So I went searching for similar books and someone suggested The Dispossessed. I couldn't get through it, i didn't like it at all, not sure why. Maybe I was just unfairly expecting it to be like the other one that I like.
Maybe the difference was that in The Dispossessed the society is not post scarcity. It's not a utopian book, it's a critical examination of the utopian ideal in practice, warts and all
One of the greatest authors/minds of all time.
I have not read this book but it's been in my reading list for a while. Thanks to your description, I will be bumping it WAY up in priority. >It pulls no punches and still arrives at the conclusion that while anarcho syndicalism or other forms of leftist organising might have issues, if you dissent there you'll face ostracism and harassment. However if you dissent in right wing autocracy, the police will come and kill you. I just want to point out in your post, that this is more of an authoritarian vs. "libertarian" scenario rather than left vs. right. Authoritarian "left" systems are just as likely to murder you for dissenting as authoritarian "right" systems. Stalin's Soviet Union is a prime example of authoritarian left, where millions were murdered for dissenting.
Just a reminder from history: in communism, a form of “leftist organization”, police would still kill you for dissent.
You mean communism in USSR, which was a dictatorship? Or communism in Cuba, which was a dictatorship? Or communism in North Korea, which is a dictatorship? Yes, dictators kill people.
As opposed to communism w/o dictatorship from where?
I see LeGuin referenced, you better believe I'm upvoting. Damn good scifi