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Ursula Le Guin thread

captainbrasscaptainbrass
edited 2011-10-20 14:29:40 in Media

I've just finished reading ULG's novel "The Dispossessed" and wondered what others thought of her/her works, since she's up there with Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov as a sci-fi writer who is quite well-known by even people who don't usually read SF.

If you don't know "The Dispossessed", it's basically the story of a physicist with controversial ideas which may enable travel at speeds faster than light. He lives in an anarchist, stateless society on a moon circling a larger planet from which the anarchists broke away. Basically, half the book is him deciding that the society he lives in isn't as free as it claims and is stifling his ideas; in the other half he moves to the main planet and eventually decides that its capitalist society is actually worse and less free-thinking.

I ended up enjoying "The Dispossessed", since Le Guin pulls off a believable anarchist culture and aliens that are believably alien in their culture, whilst pointing out the limitations of freedom in all societies and that the other person's grass is always greener. I also have to admit I was amused by the idea of some online "anarchists" ending up on Anarres and finding out that they've been randomly allocated by computer to six months' heavy labour in the fields.  Following my HP Lovecraft thread any news of movie adaptations or plans to turn The Wizard of Earthsea into a video game is fine. 

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