Paperback, 382 pages
Spanish language
Published Aug. 15, 1983 by Minotauro.
La historia ocurre en el planeta doble Urras / Anarres. Los habitantes de Anarres son los descendientes de exiliados de Urras a causa de su participación en una revolución anarquista doscientos años antes de los sucesos que se relatan en el libro. Su régimen político es una especie de anarquismo taoísta, en un mundo extremadamente pobre en recursos. Los habitantes de Urras, por el contrario, han desarrollado una cultura urbana capitalista en un mundo que no impone tantos rigores para la supervivencia.
El protagonista, Shevek, es un científico anarquista que pretende desarrollar una teoría que permita la construcción de un ansible: un dispositivo de comunicación interestelar que supere las limitaciones de la física relativista y la velocidad de la luz. Shevek decide embarcarse en un arriesgado viaje hacia Urras con el objetivo de contactar con otros matemáticos y físicos que puedan hacer realidad las implicaciones prácticas de la misma.
Le Guin was put the light on the despicable society whom is ours by describing through the eyes of an anarchist.
L'autrice met la lumière sur la méprisable société qui est la notre en décrivant à travers les yeux d'un anarchiste.
I mean, everybody has read it already over here, right? The only thing I would "criticise" are some outdated and not very inclusive ideas/concepts. However, this is only pushing me to find more queer and contemporary fiction. Or, worst case scenario, write it myself. :P
Una obra que vuelve a usar la ciencia ficción como entrada pero que es un análisis y una reflexión sobre la sociedad, desde la luna Anarres, donde la sociedad se organiza en un modo anarquista/socialissta al planeta Urras, donde tras un conflicto estos últimos fueron expulsados y donde el planeta se organiza en base a oligopolios y un capitalismo salvaje. Como nexo entre ambos mundos el protagonista intenta establecer un diálogo, intentando propiciar el desarrollo de ambas sociedades con la colaboración científica. Un libro que no deja de ser una reflexión y un golpe sobre la mesa sobre la política, la sociedad y el papel de la ciencia y los científicos.
I first read this book 20 years ago in a German translation and liked it a lot, but I didn't get a lot of it. Now, reading the English original and having had more of a political education, at first I was: "Is this book as good as I remember it?", but then, I enjoyed it even more.
I love that it's not an unbroken utopia and the ending leaves some things open. I also liked how it shows how power-laden relationships and positions can inadvertently creep back into a society that's not supposed to have them.
very deep personal relationship with this book
I read The Dispossessed when I was way too young to "get it" and I honestly remembered very little except for the scene at the beginning where Shevek lands on Urras and the guard getting hit in the head and killed by a rock. I'm glad I decided to pick it up this time around - at the end of last week, students were asking me about some positive/utopian sci-fi that wasn't all about battles and/or white dudes, and this one immediately came to mind.
I've been thinking about the relationship of individual to larger collective/org and how that relates to work for a while as I've been trying to navigate some personnel matters that come down to trying to get staff to stop thinking about their individual fulfillment/sense of purpose and start thinking about the collective fulfillment/purpose of the library+college. MPOW is also going through an organizational restructuring right …
I read The Dispossessed when I was way too young to "get it" and I honestly remembered very little except for the scene at the beginning where Shevek lands on Urras and the guard getting hit in the head and killed by a rock. I'm glad I decided to pick it up this time around - at the end of last week, students were asking me about some positive/utopian sci-fi that wasn't all about battles and/or white dudes, and this one immediately came to mind.
I've been thinking about the relationship of individual to larger collective/org and how that relates to work for a while as I've been trying to navigate some personnel matters that come down to trying to get staff to stop thinking about their individual fulfillment/sense of purpose and start thinking about the collective fulfillment/purpose of the library+college. MPOW is also going through an organizational restructuring right now, and it's been a wild ride to see where the past is copied and pasted on the present even as we hear about an orientation to the future. The discourse about work, time, and perception in this book were weirdly calming and relevant to this ongoing stuff (similar to The Seep and its meditations on change).
Anyway, many smarter people have had smarter things to say about this book than I do. It's interesting to think about Anarres as a possible partial model for what life might look like in a society as automated as the technosolutionists tell us we're going to have. Not that THEY care, but maybe someone else can, lol.
