First Published: 1974

Rating: Excellent

"There was a wall."

This book is beautiful. It is. You should read it.

Okay, I can do a little bit more than that toward convincing you.

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, is a slow read. The plot is far from action-packed, the text occasionally borders on didactic, and the conclusion, true to the pace of the story, is not the blowout you'd find in a typical sci-fi novel.

But it's not a typical sci-fi novel. It's more like a philosophical treatise on the nature of society.

Shevek is a brilliant temporal physicist, born and raised in the anarchist society of the moon Anarres, who returns to the mother planet of Urras in an attempt to break down the walls of hate that have built up between the two worlds.

That's pretty much the book in one sentence. The first chapter details Shevek's departure from Anarres and journey to Urras on The Mindful. After that, the novel tells two stories in parallel, alternating by chapter.

One story starts from where the first chapter ends and follows Shevek during his time on Urras, where he must deal for the first time with a society which values property. There he's free to do the work that he was blocked from doing on Anarres--completing the theories of simultaneity that will revolutionize how people talk and travel between worlds. He wants to use his theories to unite people, but the longer he stays on Urras, the more he becomes convinced that the corruption he was always told existed there is true--corruption that will make him a pawn in Urrasti politics with drastic consequences for other worlds.

The second story ends at the first chapter, telling about Shevek's life on Anarres and how he went from being a proponent of Anarresti society to one of its most hated citizens. He experiences both the highs and the lows of what anarchist society has to offer--Le Guin is not afraid to expose the flaws in the world she has created, and Shevek finds first himself and later his family in danger as he struggles with the moral and political mores of a lawless society.

As The Dispossessed unfolds, Le Guin reveals two complex societies that are not what they initially appear, and her willingness both to praise and criticize them is what makes this novel work. She presents in Anarres a revolutionary society where people labor together willingly because anything less means death on the bleak moon. Then, just as she's convinced the reader that Anarres is the place to be, Le Guin turns the tables and suddenly not everything looks so wonderful.

Often in science fiction or fantasy the author will develop a society that operates outside the norm, then write revolutionist characters that don't seem much affected by that society. Le Guin's Shevek, on the other hand, embraces all aspects of his society, and in doing so she creates something personal and relevant in a world that is perhaps not so unlike ours.

There are little touches all over that show just how much the characters are a part of their society: no one on Anarres uses possessive language (except in rare cases of reprimand), because no one really owns anything. Shevek gets antsy on Urras because its classism provides people to do all the things he used to do for himself on Anarres; he lets people do their jobs, but always with the feeling that something's not right.

I think what got to me the most was a certain scene--I won't say which one, lest I spoil it for you--in which Shevek knowingly performs a little, inconsequential act that's contrary to his beliefs because he knows it will bring someone close to him joy sometime in the future. I can't tell you why, but this scene both fascinated and touched me. It stayed in the back of my mind as I read the novel and left me wondering if Le Guin was going to mention what had happened in those few lines again. Imagine my surprise when I got to the last page of the book and there it was--the inconsequential scene that had affected me so much rendered consequential within the last lines of the book. I think that's what made this novel for me--Le Guin, in the midst of an already wonderful story about the complexities of society and human nature, put in one last personal touch, and it was the very touch I'd been waiting for.

I'll warn you--if you're looking for something fast-paced with spaceships and ray guns and interstellar war, The Dispossessed is not it. But if you liked Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or are looking for a novel that digs a little deeper than most science fiction these days, or if you just want to try something different, The Dispossessed might be right up your alley.