I've only read The Ones Who Walk From Omelas for LeGuin so I knew that I had to read up on The Dispossessed when I was looking for a space opera.

It's hard to indicate how incredible The Dispossessed is. It is a dense book with a lot of references to various political movements and ideas but its nonlinear storytelling and characterization really makes it something special. Shevek the scientist slowly morphs into a man both cynical and idealist about the future of both his people and his ideology.

What really works about these worlds is that it critiques ideas of anarchist society without letting the "old ways" of capitalism and hierarchy exhibited in A-Io. LeGuin is careful not to simply wave away problems with equality-oriented ideologies.

I also appreciate two big "little things"--the cultural hallmarks of each society were both well-defined and treated with sincerity but still unique and alien. The bald culture of A-Io with the very hairy Anaressti, the depictions of parenthood in Anaressti society. I have to say as a new father, Sheveks excitement when it comes to seeing his daughter Sadik is very emotional and made me tear up a little bit--a resounding moment of humanity in an otherwise technical and rhetorical epic of a book. 

And that's the core of the book--epic political treatise that is profoundly human. 

The moral, political, and narrative complexity here. It was difficult to read, but a gift to me.

The Dispossessed is one that shines because of its message more than the plot or characterization. There are lots of long, philosophical conversations about ownership, capitalism, the inequality of gendered experience, and anarchism. The protagonist Shevek is a vessel for Le Guin's mind. 

Ursula K. Le Guin was one of the best of our time and her intellect being captured in her numerous works is the only solace for our loss. 

Warm-hearted, harrowing, inspiring, cynical, highly political and highly accessible. It's pretty extraordinary when a book makes you realise "oh, THIS is where that incredibly stirring quotation is from" - not just once but multiple times. 

Le Guin's capacity for imagining the true workings of an anarchocommunist society which is grounded and mundane and has, like any society, its flaws - while still highlighting, with jarring effect, the more hidden monstrosity of the alternative - is incredible. But more than that, and what makes it so winning, is the likeable and deeply engrossing personal narrative, with a protagonist who is an outsider in two societies and yet any reader cannot fail to warm to.

The only flaw for me was

the scene of sexual assault, which I don't think should have been excluded necessarily, but it reads on its surface as if Le Guin is suggesting any man getting too drunk, despite the better way that he was raised, would do such a thing, and I was expecting a reflection on this within the narrative afterwards which did not come - that felt odd.

 

Le Guin remains decades ahead of her contemporaries and modern writers alike in the thought she puts into the societies of her fictional worlds.  The dynamics of Urras and Anarres are fascinating, and the book turns an appropriately critical eye on both.  Unfortunately, all this is weighed down by a true clunker of a story.  Shevek is a boring and emotionally unconvincing main character; I didn't care about whether anything he did succeeded until the ending, which is far too late.  (Also, he's a rapist.  Fucking hooray.)  Huge chunks are him farting around in past or present while the book vaguely gestures at really intriguing conflicts it could explore and then doesn't.  The last 10% gets interesting just in time for the book to be over.  The side characters are complete blank slates, so it's nigh-impossible to get attached to them either.  I can see why some people love this book, because it does a few things exceptionally well.  It's a very cool story to talk about in abstract--but actually reading it is a monotonous slog peppered with occasionally compelling scenes and disturbing misogyny that the book never calls out.  Come for the ideas it posits and nothing else.

An incredible thought experiment about an anarchist civilization able to grow and thrive on a planet's moon. 

A mind-stretcher! I learned a lot reading this. Immense worldbuilding. I don't have the knowledge set to judge the fictional physics, however.