"C'era un muro... Come ogni altro muro, anch'esso era ambiguo, bifronte. Quel che stava al suo interno e quel che stava al suo esterno dipendevano dal lato da cui lo si osservava." Sui dei fronti del muro, due pianeti gemelli, Urras e Anarres, illuminati da uno stesso sole ma divisi da una barriera ideologica antica di secoli. Urras è fittamente popolato, tecnologicamente avanzato, ricco, florido, retto da un'economia liberista. Da qui sono partiti nella notte dei tempi i seguaci di Odo che hanno colonizzato l'arido Anarres, fondandovi una comunità anarchico-collettivista che non conosce concetti come proprietà, governo, autorità. In questa società apparentemente perfetta nasce Shevek, genio della fisica alle prese con un'innovativa teoria del tempo, un vero "cittadino del cosmo" che dedicherà la vita ad abbattere il muro che separa da sempre i pianeti gemelli. Un'ambigua utopia, come recita il sottotitolo originale del romanzo, "I reietti dell'altro pianeta" è una …
"C'era un muro... Come ogni altro muro, anch'esso era ambiguo, bifronte. Quel che stava al suo interno e quel che stava al suo esterno dipendevano dal lato da cui lo si osservava." Sui dei fronti del muro, due pianeti gemelli, Urras e Anarres, illuminati da uno stesso sole ma divisi da una barriera ideologica antica di secoli. Urras è fittamente popolato, tecnologicamente avanzato, ricco, florido, retto da un'economia liberista. Da qui sono partiti nella notte dei tempi i seguaci di Odo che hanno colonizzato l'arido Anarres, fondandovi una comunità anarchico-collettivista che non conosce concetti come proprietà, governo, autorità. In questa società apparentemente perfetta nasce Shevek, genio della fisica alle prese con un'innovativa teoria del tempo, un vero "cittadino del cosmo" che dedicherà la vita ad abbattere il muro che separa da sempre i pianeti gemelli. Un'ambigua utopia, come recita il sottotitolo originale del romanzo, "I reietti dell'altro pianeta" è una narrazione che, fingendo di parlare del futuro, racconta il mondo di oggi.
Esse é um livro que faz pensar, faz questionar várias coisas e refletir se elas vão poderiam ser diferentes. Tudo que Shevek tem é uma ideia, e quem espera muita ação vai ser decepcionar, pois tudo que ele tem é uma ideia. Uma ideia que, de certa forma é parresiasta, apostando a vida dele contra a sua.
Demorei uns seis meses para ler o livro, mas acredito que ele irá reverberar por muito mais tempo comigo. Vale a pena.
This book blew. My. Mind.
I'm serious, for this alone Ursula K Le Guin became my fav sci-fi author, leaps and bounds above anybody else.
She showed me what you can do with science fiction, how you can break the limits of the imagination.
It is the first time I actually managed to picture a non-hierarchical society and it is so real, so visceral, that things clicked and I realized that "wait, this is possible!?"
And she does that with a completely made up story set in two completely made up societies, both fleshed out with their greatness and infamy, their ideologies and contradictions.
It is NOT an easy read: Le Guin happily forces your brain to do some mental gymnastic, where things don't make any sense until a few pages later when they suddenly, perfectly do, things click in place and your mind is blown.
It is the book …
This book blew. My. Mind.
I'm serious, for this alone Ursula K Le Guin became my fav sci-fi author, leaps and bounds above anybody else.
She showed me what you can do with science fiction, how you can break the limits of the imagination.
It is the first time I actually managed to picture a non-hierarchical society and it is so real, so visceral, that things clicked and I realized that "wait, this is possible!?"
And she does that with a completely made up story set in two completely made up societies, both fleshed out with their greatness and infamy, their ideologies and contradictions.
It is NOT an easy read: Le Guin happily forces your brain to do some mental gymnastic, where things don't make any sense until a few pages later when they suddenly, perfectly do, things click in place and your mind is blown.
It is the book that made me understand how the limits of our current society are, first and foremost, limits of our imagination, and I don't say this lightly.
This book blows our minds, because we have been robbed of the ability to imagine a better, if imperfect, world.
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.
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.
A lovely exploration of a utopia that Le Guin managed to make seem both appealing and plausible without shrinking from the sacrifices that it entailed.
At times the weird temporal structure of the book confused me, though it does make sense given the principal character's work. And there are moments when the utopians' political talk starts to feel like author lecturing reader - though really only moments, this isn't one of those books that bludgeons you with its rhetoric. It is one of those that I've spent as long thinking about after finishing as I had spent reading it, because there's more substance and subtletly to its politics and sociological observation than you might expect after I've thrown the "utopia" label at it.
