5 ms·

I read ULG's 'The Dispossessed' and while the writing is great, it more feels like social commentary with a mild flavour of sci-fi. I suppose am struggling to

I read ULG's 'The Dispossessed' and while the writing is great, it more feels like social commentary with a mild flavour of sci-fi. I suppose am struggling to articulate this better. To give you a contrast, take Arthur C Clarke, a contemporary of hers. Consider his book 'A Fall of Moondust' (one of my favourites). In ACC's book, there is some core peculiarity of the fundamental nature of the world that the story is entirely based on. The possibilities stemming from that one oddity is interesting from a scientific perspective. Having said that, the characters in that book are nothing to write home about. They serve the necessary function for the plot but nothing too memorable. ULG's plot on the other hand has no distinctive scientifically interesting peculiarity that it seems to be built on. It might as well have occurred on Earth just as it does in 'Anarres' or 'Urras'. It feels like ULG's book is more about people/political theory/social commentary/human condition than any scientifically intriguing theory. It's still a good read I guess, but it didn't scratch my sci-fi itch.

bawolff 3y ago
I feel like the core idea of sci-fi is - imagine the world, but with some specific thing different. What would the consequences be? Le guin does it with social issues. Someone like Greg Egan does it with laws of physics. The formula is both oddly similar yet totally different. P.s. i'm not sure i would consider Clarke exactly a contemporary of Le Guin. They certainly heavily overlap, but i think Clarke kind of belongs to the previous generation - at least stylistically wise.
the_af 3y ago
> It feels like ULG's book is more about people/political theory/social commentary/human condition than any scientifically intriguing theory. Agreed that on the spectrum of politics/society to scientific theory/gizmo, Le Guin leans heavily towards politics/society. Whether that is one's cup of tea is a different matter. It sometimes is for me, and sometimes not; depends on the mood. For an author who was also into societal issues, I prefer James Tiptree Jr (Alice Sheldon), because she injected more of the alienness/weirdness I tend to seek when reading scifi. I do like Ursula, don't get me wrong! I'm just not always in the mood for reading her, while I'm almost always in the mood to read more James Tiptree Jr! (On that note, I just realized back in 2019 they renamed the "James Tiptree Jr Award" to "Otherwise", for disappointing reasons. Oh, well)
- Jun8 3y ago
  Hi fellow JTJr fan! She was never mainstream after her death but it seems her readership is dwindling by the decade. She corresponded with Le Guin. It’s a pity about the award, that’s how I first found out about her. And for the stupidest reason, too.
- kps 3y ago
  Tiptree was one of the greats. Those commenting on LeGuin's heavy-handed The Word for World is Forest might like Brightness Falls From the Air, when they get to the end. (Tiptree herself did have at least one Forest-grade cringy polemic short story, Morality Meat, paired against Phillip K Dick's The Pre-Persons. Maybe writers can't help themselves, but editors should know better.)
  - the_af 3y ago
    Haven't read Morality Meat, but PKD's The Pre-persons isn't great either. I truly love PKD but it's one of his weakest, I-am-on-a-soapbox short stories. (In the notes for this story, PKD claims Joanna Russ offered to "beat him up" as a reaction, which in itself is an overreaction!)
int_19h 3y ago
Le Guin is certainly on the softer side of the sci-fi scale of hardness. That said, there's plenty of sci-fi (and by that I mean books that have been categorized as such for so long, it's generally considered undisputed - like, say, pretty much all of Bradbury and most of Simak) that are much softer.
lproven 3y ago
> ULG's plot on the other hand has no distinctive scientifically interesting peculiarity that it seems to be built on. It might as well have occurred on Earth just as it does in 'Anarres' or 'Urras'. How bizarre. My reading -- and I was a kid, it was so long ago -- is this: Communism is inherently flawed because if resources can be accumulated then some will rise in wealth and power. If that country lacks the resources, then there are other countries from which they can be taken. But in the Disposessed this cannot happen. It is a thought experiment: how could one set up a communist society that would be stable and work? If you have a whole planet that has few resources, but it's colonized by another which has many. But planets are far apart. So instead, it's a moon. Moons are relatively close. Earth humans got there in the 1960s, almost without computers, without microprocessors. But why? OK, we have a big rich parent planet with lots of resources, but a troublesome political minority who aren't happy with the distribution of resources. That's certainly plausible. So they ship them offworld to the marginally-habitable moon. It needs help to get going but it's so bleak nobody wants it. (So no territory need be taken from anyone.) There can be no acquisition of external resources; it's too far away. There can be no emigration back to a better life, unless they build spacecraft. They're stuck there, but they wanted to be, to show that their system could work. (Though the children have no choice.) So they do. It's a beautiful carefully and minutely calculated model of how communism could be made to work, and it couldn't hang together unless it were a habitable moon of a more-habitable planet. It's perfect. It's flawless. It has to be how it is. It couldn't happen here or anywhere else.

bawolff 3y ago

I feel like the core idea of sci-fi is - imagine the world, but with some specific thing different. What would the consequences be? Le guin does it with social issues. Someone like Greg Egan does it with laws of physics. The formula is both oddly similar yet totally different. P.s. i'm not sure i would consider Clarke exactly a contemporary of Le Guin. They certainly heavily overlap, but i think Clarke kind of belongs to the previous generation - at least stylistically wise.

the_af 3y ago

> It feels like ULG's book is more about people/political theory/social commentary/human condition than any scientifically intriguing theory. Agreed that on the spectrum of politics/society to scientific theory/gizmo, Le Guin leans heavily towards politics/society. Whether that is one's cup of tea is a different matter. It sometimes is for me, and sometimes not; depends on the mood. For an author who was also into societal issues, I prefer James Tiptree Jr (Alice Sheldon), because she injected more of the alienness/weirdness I tend to seek when reading scifi. I do like Ursula, don't get me wrong! I'm just not always in the mood for reading her, while I'm almost always in the mood to read more James Tiptree Jr! (On that note, I just realized back in 2019 they renamed the "James Tiptree Jr Award" to "Otherwise", for disappointing reasons. Oh, well)

Jun8 3y ago
Hi fellow JTJr fan! She was never mainstream after her death but it seems her readership is dwindling by the decade. She corresponded with Le Guin. It’s a pity about the award, that’s how I first found out about her. And for the stupidest reason, too.
kps 3y ago
Tiptree was one of the greats. Those commenting on LeGuin's heavy-handed The Word for World is Forest might like Brightness Falls From the Air, when they get to the end. (Tiptree herself did have at least one Forest-grade cringy polemic short story, Morality Meat, paired against Phillip K Dick's The Pre-Persons. Maybe writers can't help themselves, but editors should know better.)
- the_af 3y ago
  Haven't read Morality Meat, but PKD's The Pre-persons isn't great either. I truly love PKD but it's one of his weakest, I-am-on-a-soapbox short stories. (In the notes for this story, PKD claims Joanna Russ offered to "beat him up" as a reaction, which in itself is an overreaction!)

int_19h 3y ago

Le Guin is certainly on the softer side of the sci-fi scale of hardness. That said, there's plenty of sci-fi (and by that I mean books that have been categorized as such for so long, it's generally considered undisputed - like, say, pretty much all of Bradbury and most of Simak) that are much softer.

lproven 3y ago

> ULG's plot on the other hand has no distinctive scientifically interesting peculiarity that it seems to be built on. It might as well have occurred on Earth just as it does in 'Anarres' or 'Urras'. How bizarre. My reading -- and I was a kid, it was so long ago -- is this: Communism is inherently flawed because if resources can be accumulated then some will rise in wealth and power. If that country lacks the resources, then there are other countries from which they can be taken. But in the Disposessed this cannot happen. It is a thought experiment: how could one set up a communist society that would be stable and work? If you have a whole planet that has few resources, but it's colonized by another which has many. But planets are far apart. So instead, it's a moon. Moons are relatively close. Earth humans got there in the 1960s, almost without computers, without microprocessors. But why? OK, we have a big rich parent planet with lots of resources, but a troublesome political minority who aren't happy with the distribution of resources. That's certainly plausible. So they ship them offworld to the marginally-habitable moon. It needs help to get going but it's so bleak nobody wants it. (So no territory need be taken from anyone.) There can be no acquisition of external resources; it's too far away. There can be no emigration back to a better life, unless they build spacecraft. They're stuck there, but they wanted to be, to show that their system could work. (Though the children have no choice.) So they do. It's a beautiful carefully and minutely calculated model of how communism could be made to work, and it couldn't hang together unless it were a habitable moon of a more-habitable planet. It's perfect. It's flawless. It has to be how it is. It couldn't happen here or anywhere else.