{"id":8684,"date":"2025-08-04T00:03:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T05:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/?p=8684"},"modified":"2025-06-26T18:55:55","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T23:55:55","slug":"ursula-k-le-guins-prometheus-winning-the-dispossessed-honored-and-probed-on-its-50th-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/ursula-k-le-guins-prometheus-winning-the-dispossessed-honored-and-probed-on-its-50th-anniversary\/","title":{"rendered":"Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s Prometheus-winning The Dispossessed honored and probed on its 50th anniversary\u2028"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg<\/a><\/p>\n

Many bestsellers or award-winning books or plays or movies or record albums tend to fade over the years, but a few manage to pass the test of time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>In that latter category is Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s 1974 novel The Dispossessed<\/i><\/a>, inducted in 1993 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

Recently honored on its 50th anniversary with a Harper\u2019s 50th Anniversary Edition, Le Guin\u2019s novel contrasts two alleged utopian worlds.<\/p>\n

One human-settled planet is anarchist (but without property rights and with mob rule and group think); the other is mostly capitalist (but with recurrent wars and extremes of wealth and poverty.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The central story focuses on Shevek, a brilliant Anarres physicist intent on challenging the calcified assumptions of both worlds and reuniting them after centuries of mistrust. Often taking immense risks to spark change, the ambitious scientist visits Urras to teach and learn.<\/p>\n

LeGuin\u2019s thought-provoking, wise and sober critique of assumptions by both Left and Right is freshly examined in Jonathan Bolton\u2019s fascinating and illuminating review-essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books.<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ursula K. Le Guin (Creative Commons license)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201c<\/i>Among political novelists, Le Guin stood out for her ability to blend different\u00a0kinds\u00a0of politics. She was fascinated by the grand politics of class and revolution\u2014her novels are full of parliamentary factions, court intrigue, diplomats, spies, and rebels. As the Thuvian ambassador tells Shevek, \u201cYou have got to understand the powers behind the individuals,\u201d\u2019 Bolton writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut as a feminist and skilled imaginer of everyday life, she also had a sensitive eye for the mundane power struggles of \u201cthe personal is political.\u201d Nor did she ignore the cruel paradoxes and structural violence of imperialism, playing out in both colony and metropole. Through it all, she maintained a keen sense of the pure force of ideas to move back and forth among these three political worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dispossessed<\/i>\u00a0is a running political conversation\u2014full of intrigue and drama, to be sure\u2014 in which Shevek is forced to test and develop his anarchist ideals against a range of friendly and hostile interlocutors on both Anarres and Urras. These varied conversations leave no political idea unchallenged, even as Shevek preserves his ever-evolving anarchist ideals,\u201d Bolton writes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One interesting tidbit that I learned from Bolton\u2019s intelligent and learned essay is the source of Le Guin\u2019s title. Turns out Le Guin was creating a nice pun based on the English translation of the title of Dostoevsky\u2019s 1872 novel Bessy<\/em> into The Possessed.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cDostoevsky portrays his amoral Russian revolutionaries as \u201cpossessed\u201d by the devils of revolution; they are willing to sacrifice any principle to further a supposedly higher end, one that grows foul and corrupt in their hands. By contrast, Le Guin respects her anarchists, who have been \u201cdispossessed\u201d of the demons of revolution; they are also (the real meaning of the title) frugal, ascetic, and often hungry. Poor, they inhabit a barren planet, but they are rich in the spirit of self-sacrifice and cooperation,\u201d Bolton explains.<\/p>\n

Bolton\u2019s analysis of The Dispossessed<\/em> is so good that it makes me want to reread Le Guin with the reasonable hope of appreciating her deeper meanings than I had grasped before.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Ursula Le Guin in 2014 (Creative Commons License)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe Dispossessed <\/i>abandons the idea of a \u201cprison planet\u201d and replaces it with a thought experiment: what would a world run on anarchist principles\u2014with no government, army, laws, or police\u2014look like? When a revolution nearly overthrows one of the countries on the prosperous planet of Urras, the Council of World Governments allows the revolutionaries\u2014followers of an anarchist visionary named Odo\u2014to settle on the moon, \u201cbuying them off with a world, before they fatally undermined the authority of law and national sovereignty on Urras.\u201d Over the next 20 years, a million Odonians migrate to the dusty, arid moon, named Anarres, until \u201cthe port [i]s closed to immigration and left open only to the freight ships of the Trade Agreement.\u201d Henceforth, Anarres exists in conditions of near-isolation, the Odonians striving to set up a new society without government or state,\u201d Bolton writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe novel proper begins some 150 years later, with the earnest and brilliant physicist Shevek preparing to journey to Urras to conduct, and possibly share, his research on instantaneous communication. A child of Anarres, Shevek is a sincere believer in anarchism\u2014indeed, he knows no other system\u2014but he is also a brilliant thinker who feels stifled by its social pressures. He thinks it is time to reopen communication with Urras.\u201d<\/p>\n

Le Guin interweaves her story in two threads told in alternating chapters – one following Shevek\u2019s coming of age on Anarres, the other following his year-long stay on Urras conducting research as a visiting professor – roughly analogous as Bolton explains, to Shevek\u2019s research on temporal sequentiality and simultaneity.<\/p>\n

Through Shevek\u2019s eyes, Le Guin herself wrestles with two alternate and partly conflicting visions of societies – one anarchist, one \u201carchaist\u201d but materially prosperous – in which human beings might flourish, amid ongoing problems and perennial human failings.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bolton\u2019s L.A. Review <\/i>essay<\/a> is worth reading in full because it offers many more insights in the complexities and subtleties of the novel and especially of Le Guin\u2019s less-than-ideal portrait of anarchism.<\/p>\n

Today, both The Dispossessed <\/i>and Le Guin\u2019s other anthropology-influenced science fiction (especially in her Hainish novels and stories, which includes The Dispossessed)<\/em> are widely recognized and hailed as classics in the evolving genre.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Victoria Varga, who served as LFS Director from the mid-1980s through 1998<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Yet, The Dispossessed <\/i>was one of the most controversial Prometheus Award picks during the first decade or so of the Libertarian Futurist Society, dividing opinion among members as it was nominated, renominated and considered for induction into the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

Read the Prometheus Blog report on the controversy<\/a>, as it revolved around Reason magazine and LFS Director Victoria Varga.<\/p>\n

Read the Prometheus Blog Appreciation<\/a> of The Dispossessed.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

ABOUT THE LFS AND PROMETHEUS AWARDS:<\/b><\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us!<\/b> To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, \u00a0join<\/a> the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n

Libertarian futurists believe that culture matters. We understand that the arts and literature can be vital in envisioning a freer and better future – and in some ways can be even more powerful than politics in the long run, by imagining better visions of the future incorporating peace, prosperity, progress, tolerance, justice, positive social change, and mutual respect for each other\u2019s rights, human dignity, individuality and peaceful choices.<\/p>\n

* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/b>For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced\u00a0Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards\u2019 distinctive dual focus on both quality and liberty.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Watch videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies, Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/a><\/p>\n

* Read \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/a> an essay in the international|magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/i>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society\u2019s Facebook page<\/a> for comments, updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Grossberg Many bestsellers or award-winning books or plays or movies or record albums tend to fade over the years, but a few manage to pass the test of time. In that latter category is Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s 1974 novel The Dispossessed, inducted in 1993 into the Prometheus Hall of Fame. Recently honored … Continue reading Ursula K. Le Guin\u2019s Prometheus-winning The Dispossessed honored and probed on its 50th anniversary\u2028<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,1585,2561],"tags":[799,279,2562,268,794,2533],"class_list":["post-8684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-updates","category-fiction-in-the-news","category-ursula-k-le-guin","tag-anarchism","tag-capitalism","tag-la-review","tag-prometheus-hall-of-fame","tag-the-dispossessed","tag-ursula-k-le-guin"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-2g4","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8684"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9474,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8684\/revisions\/9474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}