The Dispossessed

First of all if you haven t already read The Dispossessed, then do so Somehow, probably because it comes with an SF sticker, it isn t yet officially labeled as one of the great novels of the 20th century They re going to fix that eventually, so why not get in ahead of the crowd It s not just a terrific story it might change your life Ursula Le Guin is saying some pretty important stuff here.So, what is it she s saying that s so important I ve read the book several times since I first came across [...]

Oh, Ursula No longer will I love you in a vaguely ashamed manner, skulking through chesty women blow shit up also monster book covers in the sci fi fantasy aisles with a moderate velocity as though I am actually trying to find Civil War biographies but am amusingly lost amongst all these shelves, that s so like me, need a GPS for Borders Today, I will begin loving you publicly, proudly, for you are the Anti Ayn Rand You do not skullf k Ayn Rand and make her your bitch, no, too easy You take her [...]

There are some books that even with my untrained, unskilled and inexperienced eye can detect and confirm are true works of art, mastery in literature Other works, perhaps less skillfully written or not as masterfully created, still strike a chord within me and I can grasp the vision and voice of the author as if we were friends, as if we shared a thought It is truly rare when I can see that a book is both a work of art and that also touches me in a way that leaves a mark on my soul, perhaps even [...]

Why America Is Full of Toxic Bullshit and Why Ambiguous Utopias Need to Check Themselves Before They Wreck Themselves Going Down the Same Fucked Up Path by Ursula K Le Guinis excellent novel cum political treatise cum extended metaphor for the States lays its thesis out in parallel narratives in the present day far, far, far in the future , heroically thoughtful protagonist Shevek visits the thinly veiled States of the nation A Io on the planet Urras in order to both work on his Theory of Simult [...]

When I started this novel I was a little worried because the prose seemed clunky and I was having a hard time settling into the novel After a few pages that all changed, either I adjusted to her writing style or the writing smoothed out If you experience this, hang in there, it is well worth sticking with this book.I see some reviewers think of The Dispossessed as an anti Ayn Rand book I didn t come away with that impression at all I thought LeGuin did an excellent job of showing the fallacies o [...]

More than two months have passed since I ve closed this book While my traditional reviewing habit was one of immediately rushing to the closest laptop after reading the last line and sharing my excitement or the lack thereof in some hopefully original way, I felt a need to really let Le Guin s words sink fully into my mind and make them my own Actually, I ve mostly just been very lazy in the reviewing department lately, but letting words sink in just sounds a little better But when it comes to m [...]

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As a semi retired actor, there are many literary characters I d love to play, and for all kinds of reasons Cardinal Richelieu and D Artagnan spring immediately to mind, but there are countless others Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin Perdido Street Station , Oedipus, Holmes or Watson I d take either , Captain Jack Aubrey I d rather Stephen, but I look like Jack , Heathcliff, Lady Macbeth yep, I meant her , Manfred, Indiana Jones But none of them are people who I would actually like to be.That I reserve [...]

This is one of my favorite books if not THE favorite and on third read I like it even since I notice details I haven t first time around I feel I should say something about the book but I m not sure I can do this book justice Review hopefully might come at some point.

4, maybe 4.5 stars This classic SF novel kept me glued to my chair all yesterday Granted, I was on a cross country airplane flight from Washington DC back home to Utah, but still It s very thought provoking SF, set in the same universe as Le Guin s The Left Hand of Darkness, but even politically inclined Almost 200 years earlier, a group of rebels left a highly capitalistic society on the planet Urras, to form their utopian government on the moon Annares Now a man named Shevek, a physicist fro [...]

The first time I read this book back in the early nineties, I would have given it a four star rating because I was slightly annoyed with the prose and the steadily boring pace where nothing really big happens mostly except a general living of a life This is despite our following a very interesting character escaping his pragmatic moon to gift his very advanced physics that would lead to not only an ansible for faster than light communications but also faster than light travel.The world building [...]

You cannot buy the revolution You cannot make the revolution You can only be the revolution Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed le Guin s The Dispossessed represents the high orbit of what SF can do Science Fiction is best, most lasting, most literate, when it is using its conventional form s to explore not space but us When the vehicle of SF is used to ask big questions that are easier bent with binary planets, with grand theories of time and space, etc we are able to better understand both the [...]

Human nature tends towards, not entropy, but bureaucracy.I fear my review might focus on Anarres and less on Urras, as it was the Anarrian sections that interested me , the attempts to sustain founding was the easy part an anarcho syndicalist society over a long period of time For Urras, I thought that Urras was painted in clear terms, and avoided a polemic, although it did have very pointed things to say about class, and war, and conscription, and property, and the gendering thereof Note The r [...]

Thoughts on The DispossessedOf the various layers of content in The Dispossessed, the most obvious is the socio political capitalism vs anarchistic communism The claim often made is that, even though her heart is with the latter, she nonetheless treats the two structures impartially The claim or presumption is to be found in the reviews of fantasy science fiction devotees, those with a particular interest in anarchism and, I suspect, also those who simply read it with an uncritical eye.I don t s [...]

I ve gotta admit, I was initially a little wary of The Dispossessed I was worried that it might prove to be one of those godawful books whose sole purpose in life is to peddle insipidly idealistic ideology The derisive cynic in me was prepared for the worst, ready to swoop in with some aggressively bratty eye rolling and loud, obnoxious sighing at the first sign of trouble I mean, is there anything worse than those agenda pushing heaps of garbage that masquerade as literature Seriously, who want [...]

He has power over you Where does he get it from Not from vested authority, there isn t any Not from intellectual excellence, he hasn t any He gets it from the innate cowardice of the average human mind Public opinion That s the power structure he s part of, and knows how to use I have decided this won t be a proper review, but rather a short, focused comment.The Dispossessed is one of those books written not to make you lose yourself in the story, but to make you yourself in your thoughts The ai [...]

So good Maybe I ll write a review when I manage to find some free time.

Fulfillment, Shevek thought, is a function of time The search for pleasure is circular, repetitive, atemporal The variety seeking of the spectator, the thrill hunter, the sexually promiscuous, always ends in the same place It has an end It comes to the end and has to start over It is not a journey and return, but a closed cycle, a locked room, a cell.Outside the locked room is the landscape of time, in which the spirit may, with luck and courage, construct the fragile, makeshift, improbable road [...]

This discourse on dystopias won Hugo, Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and National Book awards, and almost every single one of my friends that has read it has it tagged with a 4 or 5 star rating So clearly, the problem here is with me, because I really hated this book and it isn t because this book is dated or aged poorly, because the Cold War era slant of this book plays perfectly to a modern audience considering the current state of Russian U.S relations I m giving it two stars because I do appr [...]

The Dispossessed Not simply an anarchist utopia capitalist dystopiaOriginally posted at Fantasy LiteratureThe Dispossessed is a perfectly achieved thought experiment, perhaps Ursula K Le Guin s greatest work, but there is little I can say that hasn t been said eloquently, forcefully, thoroughly, or knowledgeably by other reviewers It transcends the genre as a Novel of Ideas It explores with great intelligence anarchism socialism vs capitalism freedom slavery in terms of politics, economics, soc [...]

My hero David Mitchell frequently mentions The Dispossessed as one of his favourite books, and it is regularly described as one of the most significant sci fi novels of all time So I just HAD to see what all the fuss was about.The story revolves around two distant planets, Urras and Annares Years ago a rebellion brewed on Urras and in order to avoid conflict, the anarchists left to start a new life on Annares Urras is a bountiful place with a capitalist, patriarchal society, whereas Annares is a [...]

Excellent book, and I ve dog eared about a third of its pages too many messages, too little brain room left Review to follow.It s always easier not to think for oneself Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in Don t make changes, don t risk disapproval It s always easiest to let yourself be governed.

It s really weird to me that, even though I m totally drunk, I can still type just a s well as usual I might not be able to make it down the hall without running into walls, but I can still compose a review without a problem Anyway, I m here today to talk about The Dispossessed It is a book by Ursula K Le Guin, who is badass If it hadn t taken me like four mouths to read this book, I would ve probably given it five stars Unfortunately, it took me almost a complete semester to read the damned thi [...]

I read Le Guin s Earthsea trilogy way back when I was a kid, but I am abashed to say that until now I had never read any of her adult SF novels.The Dispossessed holds up amazingly well for a book written nearly forty years ago In fact, forget about the publication date and it could have been written this year Except that hardly anyone writes this kind of slow moving, thoughtful, idea heavy science fiction any The Dispossessed won a Hugo, a Nebula, a World Fantasy Award, and the National Book Aw [...]

Something that strikes me about this book is the old cover blurb that this is about an ambiguous Utopia Because really all the cultures that we meet are engaged in a kind of the grass is greener on the other plant exercise Each stands as a Utopia to another world and each looks elsewhere for its own It is a novel of discontent.For the crewman from the planet Hain at the end his own culture is a burden It has experienced everything, while personally he has experienced nothing The opportunity to e [...]

4.0 to 4.5 stars A truly exceptional novel and one of the best explorations of political theory and individual freedom ever in science fiction Too often, an author will beat you over the head with their beliefs and make thinly disguised speeches through cardboard characters that leave no doubt that one side is very right and the other side is very wrong Not so in this novel LeGuin s ultimate message is that individual freedom is the most important commodity in the universe In conveying that mess [...]

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4.25 Kitap iki farkl d nyay anlat yor Anarres ve Urras ki gezegende birbirinin ay Urras tan y llar nce Anarres e gelen Odocular burada kendilerine Urras takinden ok farkl bir hayat kurmu lard r Ya am n ne kadar g zel oldu unu g rmenin yolu l m n bak a s ndan bakmaktan ge iyor.Anarres anar izmin hayata ge ti i sosyalizmden izler ta yan bir gezegen ve halk n ya am bi imi de pragmatik Her ey olmas gerekti i kadar ve olmas zorunlu oldu u i in, l ks ya da a r l k yok Herkes e it, herkes zg r Urras is [...]

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Re reading for book club August 2015 I first read this book in middle school, and was blown away by it It introduced so many new to me ideas brilliant ideas but then, rather than just presenting those ideas as a utopia, did everything it could to explore them further, and to explore their flaws and weaknesses.I was very proud that I got my teacher that year to include this book on our summer reading list, so that everyone else would have to read it too Of course, re reading after so long, I wasn [...]