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The Dispossessed

Ursula Le Guin

Hugo 1975, Nebula & Locus 1974, Internet Top 100

No flipant flight of fantasy ­ a deeply penetrating look into common preconceptions, unconscious assumptions, politics, and social order. Actually, quite a courageous look at subjects most often avoided in favor of more "entertaining" escapisms. Brave enough to peer into our most cherished preconceptions of government, society, family and other forms of ego-clinging. Subjects like suffering, meaningfulness, personal freedom within controlling social conventions and governmental forms.

Exemplifies the real strength of the SF/Fantasy format: the ability to create a totally different culture/world/mind-set by which to compare and contrast contemporary institutions, psychology, and values. In this case, a deep look a the different sides without a black-and-white allegiance to any particular point of view.

Two intertwined stories. One a look at late 1960's Berkeley, California radical polities from the view of a society that has embraced those ideals and values for 170 years. The other a microscopic, very personal examination of relationship, sex roles, freedom, and equality.

Deep, thought-provoking philosophy in a wide range of fields. Intense enviornmental concern and attitude, "Excess is excremental."; spirituality, "the reality­the truth that I recognize in suffering as I don't in comfort and happiness­that the reality of pain is not pain. If you can get through it. If you can endure it all the way."; education, "he could not imagine a greater deterrent to the natural wish to learn than this pattern of cramming in information and disgorging it at demand."; ethics, "To say that a good end will follow from a bad means is just like saying that if I pull a rope on this pulley it will lift the weight on that one. To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past; therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future."; politics, "Sacrifice might be demanded of the individual but never compromise: `for though only the society could give security and stability, only the individual, the person, had the power of moral choice­the power of change, the essential function of life."

Rare combination of serious thinking and entertaining story. Recommended.

Parental discression: nothing objectionable for any age but probably not interesting or comprehensible for younger than mid-high school. Politics radical enough to satisfy the most alienated adolescent yet with an emphasis on the "revolution within".

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