Book Review - Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Published by: Gateway
Publication Date: 1974
Format: Kindle, 403 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)
Anarres and Urras are the twin inhabited worlds of Tau Ceti. Anarres is barren. Nothing more than a planet to be mined. Yet around two hundred years previously The Odonian Revolution saw Urrasti anarchists settle on Annarres in a peace treaty of sorts. Since then life has been hard for the Annarresti. But they have eked out a living free of the constraints of the capitalist patriarchy on Urras. There is no contact between the two planets except for once a year when Anarres ships Urras their consignment of precious metals. The two planets live in unwavering ignorance. They might need each other, but they will never talk about it. Which is where Shevek enters. Shevek has spent his entire life on Annarres. Despite the hardships of his existence he has a family and a career. He is a physicist attempting to create a General Temporal Theory. He believes that this will revolutionize life for the Annarresti. Yet there is pushback within academic circles. His duty to the Annarresti should come before anything else, before personal power or glory. Therefore Shevek must perform his civic duties, putting the society's needs ahead of his own. For four long years he does punishing physical labor. At the end of that time he gets to return to his true calling. His theory has won him a prestigious award and he has decided to go to Urras to accept it and finish his work. This decision alone causes political unrest. His mentor claims that he is being selfish and threatening the stability of the political separation of the two worlds. And yet Shevek goes. He makes the journey, he gets his vaccinations, he arrives in A-lo and is feted like a returning hero. After all, he is technically coming home. But if he thought he was going to a utopic society he is sadly mistaken. All the troubles that led his ancestors to flee still exist. He's disillusioned by the Ieu Eun University. Will his work really help his people or will it be exploited by the Urrasti? Perhaps it's best for him to just go home. If he can.
I believe as it stands my book club has now read more books by Ursula K. Le Guin than any other author. Getting to discuss so many books of hers with a small group of friends lets us get into the wide variability of her work. Therefore there are hits and there are misses and then there's this. Commies in Space! Yes, yes, I know, perhaps referencing The Muppet Show isn't the most academic or done thing, but, seriously, that's what this book is. But taken to eleven. Yes, I know I've moved onto Spinal Tap, I just can't help myself. The Dispossessed is the sixth book in Le Guin's loosely connected Hainish Cycle. Seeing as I haven't read any of the previous volumes I don't know if they'd add any depth to my understanding of this volume, but I doubt it. It's pretty straightforward if taken to a comical degree. The series started at the height of the sixties when people became disillusioned with American society, so it makes sense that Le Guin would try to work out her feelings about socialism versus capitalism in the far reaches of outer space, which oddly is also where Andy Weir set his book Project Hail Mary. The problem I have is her exaggeration of these two societies. Annarres with it's socialism is like Russia in the bleakest of bleak midwinters only with dust instead of snow. Urras is oddly, kind of like the opulence of the Zamundan court of King Jaffe Joffer from Coming to America. There's pageantry, there's sex, there's lots of female flesh on display. I mean, seriously, what is going on in Urras Le Guin!?! The way you describe female fashion for the upper class I kept envisioning some weird Time Lord getup where the women's breasts were on full display. I mean, what's that about!?! I get the whole, women as property and the men wanting to show them off, but this is a step too far. If it wasn't so serious I'd almost think this was a parody like The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, released the same year as Rocannon's World. But the sad fact is this wants to be "serious literature" and the execution makes it a depressing slog.
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