SF Signal: REVIEW: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

REVIEW: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

REVIEW SUMMARY: A political book that appeals to apolitical readers.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A brilliant physicist named Shevek tries to reunite the anarchist world of Anarres with its sister planet Urras.

MY REVIEW:
PROS: Thought-provoking; alternating story lines were both interesting.
CONS: Writing sometimes dry; some parts slower than others; other than Shevek, characters were not very memorable.
BOTTOM LINE: A thought-provoking tale of politics and change.

I don't consider myself one of those people who are constantly trying to examine themselves. (I wonder why I'm like that? Oh, never mind! ) For example, I never really gave much thought to the statement I frequently make that "I don't like politics in my science fiction. Bah!" What, exactly, is it that I don't like? Usually it bores me. A few stories even stand out in my mind as having been killed by politics. (Robinson's Red Mars and MacLeod's "The Human Front" - bored me senseless.) I do like political intrigue - the backstabbing, the changing allegiances…you know…the soap opera stuff - but I guess it's the preaching about this or that ideology that makes me run for my pillow. It reminds me too much of social studies class, I guess. The end result is that I've always written off politics as an automatic story killer.

It was to my pleasant surprise, then, that The Dispossessed, winner of both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards in 1975, made me take stock of my own personal feelings towards politics in science fiction, if not politics itself. Here's a book steeped in politics that I found to be not only readable, but actually enjoyable.

The plot concerns scientific genius named Shevek who lives on the dry, Utopian world of Anarres which was settled by people seeking personal freedom from the twin planet of Urras. Shevek dreams of reuniting his people with their sister planet Urras, a lush green world where possession is everyone's goal. His vehicle for doing so is the Principle of Simultaneity whose theories will allow instantaneous communication between all populated worlds.

The main thrust of the book is the comparison between the different political views of the anarchist world of Annares and the "propertarian" world of Urras. (This is a philosophical examination, not a rip-roaring action-adventure.) What I liked about the story is that even with its extra-huge helping of politics, it does not preach. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that if it did preach it did so in such a way that I didn't notice. Instead of preaching, I got an interesting philosophical comparison between two vastly different worlds - their culture, outlook, motivations and desires. It was this comparison between Anarres and Urras that was appealing. The two planets were so different that Shevek's fish-out-of-water viewpoint was simply engrossing. Each society was equally shown to have both good and bad characteristics, the examination of which was nothing less than though-provoking.

The structure of the book also helped keep interest levels up. The chapters alternate between two threads. The first begins with Shevek's arrival on Urras and follows his journey of discovery and understanding. The other thread starts early in Shevek's life and shows how his views were shaped and how he came to leave Anarres for Urras, which is where the first thread begins. Each alternating chapter adds a little more to the complete story that made it interesting to read even though I thought the prose was dry and slow to read at times.

The characters, while not particularly memorable for me, were believable and true to their beliefs. I did have trouble remembering some of the made-up character names other than Shevek, but their consistency with their beliefs made it easy to rat-hole them into the Anarres or Urras camp. I actually found myself rooting for Shevek to break down the oft-used metaphoric wall that separates the two cultures.

To its credit, The Dispossessed made this apolitical reader stop and think (if not about politics itself) about why I usually don't like politics in fiction. It turns out that it's not the politics I don't like; it's in the presentation of its ideas. The Dispossessed is a rare find in that it managed to keep up my interest throughout the story.