Le Guin's brilliance is in her examination of humanity. Not the human who tends to adventure, or boredom. Not the human who has an inny or an outy. Not the human who places themselves either above or below other humans. The human behind these adornments, the raw essentialism of humanity before we place identifying characteristics on them. Of course each of her characters are always adorned already, but those adornments are displayed in a way in which we, the reader, can see behind them, and in so doing see the sameness of every individual. She's certainly one of my favourite Sci-Fi writers precisely for this reason, and this book cemented that position for her. While 'The Left Hand of Darkness' gave us an examination of the human stripped of gender, 'The Dispossessed' strips away ideology and custom. It does so, by establishing it's protagonist as an outsider in two opposing systems of ideology and custom.
Shevek is a scientist from Anarres, a world twinned with Urras, each world seeing the other as their moon. While Urras might be considered a world of powerful nation states much like our own, Anarres is an anarchical society created by settlers from Urras less than 200 years previous, who follow a philosophy known as Odonianism. The settlement agreement made between the two worlds has prevented much contact between the worlds since that time and so distrust is rife between them. Shevek, discouraged away from his theories by an emerging stifling bureacracy in the young anarchy heads to Urras to meet with the physicists there who may be more receptive to his ideas.
His theory is of temporal physics, a unifying theory combing the separate theories of simultaneity and of sequential time. It reminded me a lot of when I was reading Bergson and William James a couple of years ago, and I wouldn't be surprised if they'd been an inspiration for the idea. The unifying theory would allow for matter transfer at great distances, essentially faster than light communications. It turns out, then, that this is a back story to the 'ansible' device that is a feature of the other stories in this series.
Anyway, over time Shevek becomes more aware of his position in Urras as a trap, useful for the state-sponsored academics to keep around so that they may seize upon this new theory when it is fully worked out. He is kept in glorious ivory towers among the rich and powerful, and away from the poor of the society. At least, that is, until the end of the book where he manages to find other Odonians among the poor in this society, stumbles rather haphazardly and naively in to making revolutionary statements at a general strike, and then is witness to the violent opporession that keeps the power structures in place. At the conclusion he finds himself in a Terran embassy where he offers the now-completed unified theory on the condition that it will be relayed for free to all worlds to avoid being appropriated for power, and with the trade of being taken home.
Throughout the book, alongside his time on Urras, we are given the outline of Shevek's history on Anarres. There is a definite idealism in the portrayal of this anarchic world at times, although I don't think it necessarily indicates a clear preference by Le Guin, only that this is the framing of the native Shevek. But cracks are also certainly becoming evident. A bureacracy is being built up where petty power struggles are being propped up by ideological orthodoxy, the charge of 'egoist' being a common insult to those who seem to show personal ambition. The 'continuous revolution' is becoming a stale edict of petty oppressions that translates to gatekeeping of ideas that may threaten the structures of power that are not supposed to exist. It's subtle and perhaps nascent but the suggestion is that its there, and to add vitalism back in to the anarchic revolution, then Shevek and some allies 'rock the boat' and this eventually leads to Shevek's journey to Urras.
Le Guin doesn't baby her readers and is happy to give you some really meaty ideas to ponder even just as an aside, and I really appreciate her for that. The worlds of Anarres and Urras are so different yet both so well thought out, with characters that are believably born in to the system of traditions that each isolated world, with their beliefs and mannerisms being believable reflections of the relative ideologies. She's great, and so is this book. I'm thinking I should see if there wasa film made of any of her books. This one would make for a great movie.
Finished reading - 27/03/26