Product Description

The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous communication. It is the life work of Shevek, a brilliant physicist from the arid anarchist world of Anarres. But Shevek's work is being stifled by jealous colleagues, so he travels to Anarres's sister-planet Urras, hoping to find more liberty and tolerance there. But he soon finds himself being used as a pawn in a deadly political game.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21944 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-12
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Most of Le Guin's science fiction is set in a human galaxy where the distance of time and space imposed by relativity is mitigated by instantaneous transmission of information through a gadget called the ansible. The Dispossessed, famous for being Ken Livingstone's favourite science fiction novel, was the book in which she told us of Shevek, the ansible's inventor, and the ironies of his career. Shevek is a loyal citizen of a poor anarchist world, Anarres, which finds frills like research hard to afford; he travels to the neighbouring world of Urras, to find that unbridled capitalism is not much fun either. "Nio Esseia, a city of four million souls, lifted its delicate glittering towers across the green marshes of the Estuary as if it were built of mist and sunlight...Was all Nio Esseia this? Huge shining boxes of stone and glass, immense, ornate, enormous packages, empty, empty." At once one of the greatest of SF novels about political ideas and idealism, and a stunning novel of character, The Dispossessed has at its centre Shevek, scientist and near-saint, a flawed human being whom we come to know as we know few characters in modern science fiction. --Roz Kaveney

Synopsis
The Principle of Simultaneity is a scientific breakthrough which will revolutionize interstellar civilization by making possible instantaneous communication. It is the life work of Shevek, a brilliant physicist from the arid anarchist world of Anarres. But Shevek's work is being stifled by jealous colleagues, so he travels to Anarres's sister-planet Urras, hoping to find more liberty and tolerance there. But he soon finds himself being used as a pawn in a deadly political game.

About the Author
SALES POINTS * #16 in the Millennium SF Masterworks series, a library of the finest science fiction ever written * Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards *'Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power. She sets up enormous challenges and meets them fully; she invites, as Tolkien does, total belief' Observer * 'To be read again and again' -- The Times

Customer Reviews

One of those books that never leaves you
On the cover of my old seventies paperback copy is a brief quote from a Science Fiction Monthly review which says `destined to become a classic,' which it undoubtedly did.
Set against the backdrop of LeGuin's Hainish universe (in which Earth is just one of an unknown number of planets which the Hainish seeded with Humanity over a million years ago) we follow the life of scientist Shevek, a citizen of the anarchist moon Anarres, which orbits the parent world of Urras. Anarres has survived as a communist/anarchist state - based on the teachings of Odo - for a hundred and seventy years, and has had little contact with the parent world. Now, Shevek, on the verge of discovering a Universal Temporal Theorem (which will, among other things, allow instantaneous communication throughout the universe) finds his work hampered by jealous colleagues and the very nature of Odonian politics.
In fact, lack of communication is a recurring theme throughout the novel. Some of the young scientists face stiff opposition from the other anarchists when they begin to engage in radio dialogue with scientists on Urras.
Shevek, realising that the scientific community on Anarres will never allow his work to be published, arranges to travel to Urras in the trade freighter that occasionally lands on the moon, at the risk of being labelled a traitor and never allowed to return.
Thus, we then see Urras through the eyes of Shevek, a man unaccustomed to the concept of money or class systems. Ultimately Shevek's presence gives impetus to the downtrodden masses of Urras who have already staged uprisings against the military government in another part of the world.
There are deep flaws in both of LeGuin's societies. Shevek's world, ostensibly an anarchist/communist state without laws, has evolved its own innate laws of rigidity. Avante garde composers are witheld teaching or composing posts, for instance, because their work doesn't fit an acceptable Odonian aesthetic. Shevek himself finds it impossible to work at pure scientific research without political considerations and his colleagues' rather selfish motives getting in the way. One feels that the Odonian dream has only survived on Anarres because resources are so scarce that no one could get rich even if they wanted to.
The story alternates between Shevek's experiences on Urras and flashbacks of how life brought him to the point of leaving Anarres. The contrast works very well and LeGuin skilfully paints a dual portrait of the younger and older Shevek.
The societies are exquisitely realised and rendered in such believable detail one is drawn immediately into the dust and sweat of Anarres and the decadent pomp of Urras.
It's a wonderful book, and one that will stay with you.

a book that changed my life
This is a treasure. In one concise volume it creates a whole new world with a truely 'complete' future-society. It questions how idealism can create a utopia, and the world it describes is flawed and plausible. It is a great story of scientific endeavour and discovery and deals with its central character and his work in a way that is neat and interesting, and never bogged down in irrelevant detail. The device he invents has become a standard fixture in subsequent science fiction. It is a book that was innovative and hugely influential and I hope will remain so because it it profoundly compassionate and thoughtful - SF as it should be.

I was sad when it ended and I had no more of it to read.
Though this book is often criticised as not deserving to be classed as science fiction, I really enjoyed it. I think mainly because I waited until I was old enough to really understand it. I bought it when I was in my mid to late 20's when what I really liked was hard sci fi; Peter F Hamilton, Vernor Vinge, Iain Banks etc. So it sat on the shelf for a few years waiting it's turn. I recently got round to reading it and yes, there are no space battles, laser guns or fights in cyberspace.

That's not what you get. What you do get is a beautiful story, complex politics and an entire WORLD that is both alien and familiar. The writing in this novel is of a quality that you rarely see in science fiction. It is no accident that this book is rated highly by science fiction and mainstream critics.