7 ms·

RIP. The Dispossessed is one of my favorite books.

• nickbauman 9y ago
  There are few books that have a single sentence or two that change you utterly. The Dispossessed has that for me.
  • laretluval 9y ago
    What were the sentences? The book also had a big effect on me.
    • nickbauman 9y ago
      Took me a while to find one near the very end, where Ketho, a Hainishman, member of the oldest sentient race in the universe, decided to risk his life with Shevefc on his return to Anarres: "[Ketho] looked at him gravely, as if he was not sure what happiness was, and yet recognized or perhaps remembered it from afar. He stood beside Shevefc as if there was something he wanted to ask him. But he did not ask it “It will be early morning at Anarres Port,” he said at last, and took his leave, to get his things and meet Shevek at the launch port."
  • pasquinelli 9y ago
    me too. when talking about the prison odo was held in, she describes it as sitting there as if to say, "i've been here for a long time, and i'm still here." when i read that first i had to put the book away and walk around a minute.
• jlebar 9y ago
  Likewise. Frankly I didn't enjoy The Left Hand of Darkness when I read it, but I think about The Dispossessed all the time.
• stcredzero 9y ago
  I enjoyed reading The Dispossessed, though I have also been known to characterize it as, "A Sci-Fi universe where communism actually works, hence the 'Fi' part." However, I've recently read Thomas Sowell's book about the original formulation of Marxian economics and philosophy, and I've come to the conclusion that the technology of the late 21st century might possibly enable a viable communal society through the replacement of the distributed optimization of the market with AI, as Ursula K. LeGuin presaged in The Dispossessed.
  • autarch 9y ago
    But the whole point of the novel is that neither system really works very well! I think you're doing it a disservice to characterize it in that way. She did her best to imagine a communist system that was nearly ideally designed and it still fails in so many ways.
    • stcredzero 9y ago
      But the whole point of the novel is that neither system really works very well! I think you're doing it a disservice to characterize it in that way. Given the tremendous increase in the standard of living of so many people, Capitalism does a pretty darn good job. I think in that by grouping it in a pair where "neither system really works very well," you and LeGuin would be "doing it a disservice to characterize it in that way." One major weakness of Capitalism, due in part to Pareto, is the perception of relative disparity. Psychological research indicates that such perception is a basic reality of the human condition. We should regard the bitterness of have-nots as real, even if the have-nots are fabulously well off in a global and historical sense. Any system which is forward thinking should take that into account, or fail to do so at its own peril. (One of Basic Income's biggest problems is that it does nothing to alleviate the problems relative disparity, so plants the seeds for its own political instability.) She did her best to imagine a communist system that was nearly ideally designed and it still fails in so many ways. Any system which isn't perfect is going to fail in innumerable ways, in that countless instances of terrible tragedy and injustice will exist within it, and no system is going to be perfect. Re: Your user name: I once came up with an acronym for a sensor-network Internet thing. BACON: Basic Autarchic Communication/Observation Network.