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: #38084 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-12
• Original language: English
• 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

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

The Dispossessed is what science-fiction should be.
I was surprised to see that no one had reviewed The Dispossessed on this website, given that it is probably one of the best science fiction novels ever written, therefore I am submitting this review as a recommendation.

I think Le Guin has an undeserved stigma of being a 'soft fantasy' author and she never seems to get a high placement in book shops or bestseller lists. This is strange, given that she is still writing now at a reasonable high level although I think even her die hard fans would admit that her heyday is probably over. She's not a prolific author but that makes her all the more impressive given that her titles are of a consistently high quality. I would also recommend The Word for World is Forest, The Left Hand of Darkness and the Earthsea Trilogy. However, although these are all fine titles, I think The Dispossessed is her best novel.

The plot begins on Anarres, the moon of the planet Urras, where a colony of anarchists (following the precepts of a female philosopher named Odo) have built their own society. Despite spartan conditions and a strictly ethical lifestyle the Anarresti consider that they have found paradise here and pity the 'profiteering' Urrasti for their material comforts. This is the basic setting but the story takes place in Ursula Le Guin's commonly used sci-fi universe in which advanced civilisations (headed by the Terrans and the Hainish) have formed a loose knit trading alliance and are slowly spreading world of their existence across the galaxy hampered only by the problems of communicating over relativistic distances. It has been a hundred and seventy years since Urras allowed the problematic Society of Odonians to settle the moon and in that time little has changed for them. Their society is roughly comparable to that of present-day earth: the world itself divided into a number of different power blocs and the culture a mixed bag of capitalism, communism and all the other philosophies in between. Historically their tyrants have been bloodier and more grasping than our own and present day Urras is perhaps materially richer than Earth and more misogynist but otherwise it's similar enough to be comprehensible.

However, it is through the eyes of Shevek, an anarchist from this Odonian colony of Anarres, that we see Urras and with his point of view the reader is offered his value system. The structure of the narrative is skilful. The novel begins halfway through the story with Shevek becoming the first Anarresti to visit Urras. It then moves back in time in the next chapter to begin the story with Shevek's childhood. Throughout the book Le Guin progresses each half of the story so that Shevek's journey to maturity (as a person, a scientist and as a rational entity capable of ethical decisions) is intercut with the main act of his life: his visit to Urras. In the last few chapters this concludes beautifully as the reader sees how Shevek makes the decision to go and the outcome of the visit in short succession. There's nothing confusing about the movement of the plot but this elegant structural twist adds a depth of interest to each different dimension of the story.

Shevek, the central character, is beguiling. He is a great physicist, the only such on Anarres, and at the point of his journey to Urras has been working on a theory of the general field in temporal physics: the Principle of Simultaneity. In short it is Shevek who will invent the 'ansible' - a Le Guin invention which allows instantaneous communication between vast stellar distances.

I shall briefly digress to say that Le Guin rarely goes into detail about the mechanics of her universe in any of her science-fiction novels. But she has a grasp of how to present a world to the reader which means that her science appears elegantly simple and unobtrusive. In her other fiction the idea of the ansible has often been significant in the plot. Her federation of planets is not rapacious because they are separated in space but the ansible permits them to form a coherent society and culture despite this. Orson Scott Card found the idea so attractive he picks it up in the sequels to Enders Game and discusses it in detail in his book on how to write science-fiction and fantasy.

Back to The Dispossessed and to Shevek, it's important to add that Shevek is an attractive as well as interesting protagonist. To a certain extant all Anarresti are philosophers; they are very much engaged in living a philosophical premise - that of erasing a concept of ownership from their hearts and minds. Unfortunately, in the years since the Settlement, the Odonian ideal has slipped a bit and many Anarresti have got out of the habit of anarchism. This is not true of Shevek whose dedication to, what is on Anarres, an obscure science has forced him to reassess the basic premises of his culture as he struggles to do the work he knows he is meant to do without compromising the rigid ethical standards of his society.

Despite the depth of information Le Guin includes, this book is not an arid treatise on philosophy, politics and physics. The characterisation is masterful, the plot is gripping and the background fascinating. It is truly what science-fiction should be: a believable story of an alien world. I give The Dispossessed the highest mark available to me on the Amazon ratings scale: five stars. There can be few pieces of fiction in any genre that are better than this. I certainly don't believe that I've ever encountered a book more deserving than this one of any accolade bestowed upon it. If The Dispossessed has a flaw it is that it ends.

Ideas not action
This is absolutely not a book I would have picked up in a bookshop (It was a reading group choice): the cover illustration of a he-man in a plastic suit seems irrelevant to put it mildly. To be honest I did not find it a fast read: it is very densely written and sombre in tone, and the fractured chronology takes some concentration. I take my hat off to the Amazon reviewer who read it at the age of 10. But it is an extraordinarily intense book. Le Guin's depiction of an Anarchist society combines meticulous intellectual analysis and passionate feeling. You are never likely to see anyone chuckling over this book on a train, but I can guarantee that the last page will be followed by a long, thoughtful silence.

Excellent book
This boook is my all time favourite. This is the way I think science fiction should be written - i.e. use distant times or planets to give a message about human society, not a mountain of muscles saving the Universe (yuck!). The book deals with two planets- Urras, which can be considered a parallel Earth, and Anarres - anarchist society. The physicist Shevek comes from Anarres to Urras in order to work on a theory which he could not develop in his society. I found it fascinating to explore the idea that even in the absence of laws and regulations, human beings influence one another in such a way to ensure compliance with generally accepted values.