The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin is a fine science fiction novel that thinks deeply about long-term implications of political trends. Written a few years after the upheavals of the 1960s, The Dispossessed contrasts a capitalist democracy, an authoritarian communist country, and most specifically (and most interestingly) an anarchist world built several generations after a hippie revolution of a sort. Pacifist, egalitarian, collaborative, and rooted in personal freedom, the anarchist planet eschews family structures and private property. The results are creative and fascinating, but not perfect. It's thrilling to read of an "ambiguous utopia" as LeGuin describes her world. I was engaged throughout.
Because it was written by LeGuin, The Dispossessed grapples with more than just politics. It's concerned with linguistics as well--how ideology shapes language. The novel also explores sexual mores, economics, educational philosophies, fashion, space travel, and, predominately, theoretical physics. There's a huge subplot involving the dual views of time, characterized as linear and circular, and it took me a while to get that LeGuin shaped her chapters to reinforce this point. There was a lot going on in this book, and while the characters were fleshed out and believable, some of the dialogue was a bit forced, preoccupied with the larger ideas at play. Still, The Dispossessed is a great achievement, another trophy in the case for LeGuin, one of the best writers the last century.
