Don’t Stop Believing: Utopian Sci-Fi and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed

Wed
Jun 23 2010 5:05pm

Don’t Stop Believing: Utopian Sci-Fi and Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed

I am about to embark on a bit of a series of sorts. Or, at least a generically linked set of posts revolving around utopian fiction—I feel this post is more overview than insight because I want to get the ball rolling, but if utopian fiction is supposed to do anything it is supposed to illuminate and challenge the limits of our imagination: So too, speculative fiction. I want to think about ways that utopian fiction inspires us to re-imagine our lives, if only for a moment. Furthermore, no other genre is as adept at mapping the world we live in by trying to imagine a world we would rather live in.

I want to begin with the book that was certainly the beginning for me. Bored by, and moving away from humor sci-fi and fantasy (Harry Harrison…well, certain Harry Harrison…or Piers Anthony for example) I decided I wanted to read something challenging, daring, adult. The sci-fi fantasy section in the used bookstore by my house was so daunting that I rushed passed the beginning (missing Asimov and Bradbury for instance) and blindly stumbling to Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed.

I thought there were a bunch of cool things about this book from the get go: 1.) The binding was destroyed. It was a complete wreck. Someone had loved this book the way that I loved books: sleeping on them, throwing them at the walls when I was angry, writing marginalia in my dopey elementary school cursive, etc. 2.) It was only fifty cents. 3.) It was by a woman! Other than the Wrinkle in Time books I hadn’t read any science fiction by women before. 4.) It was by a woman who lived in my town! And finally 5.) Its title sounded like how I felt. The Dispossessed.

This was the book for me. I tore through it with the kind of zeal Bastion displays in The Never Ending Story. Although thank god I never had to run to the window during a dreary Portland rain storm and yell BLAAAAAARRAAAAAAGHHHHHHAAAAHHHHHHGGHHHH to save the main character’s world, and, by extension, our imaginations, childhood, sense of goodness in the face of the brutal excess of the 1980s, etc. etc. At the very least it would save us from those raw egg health smoothies.

Though my copy wasn’t the first edition, the first edition does sport a pretty terrible hat. He’s an anarchist from the moon Anarres, not the Count of Monte Cristo.

Ambivalence holds a certain charm; ambiguity instead of moral clarity is comforting. I mean does anyone really want to get saved from the tenacious and highly sexy grasp of the brides of Dracula? No! This might be the central yet seemingly tangential reason Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed utterly enchants me still.

The universe of The Dispossessed is split into a series of worlds. The main character Shevek has grown up on the nearly desolate anarchist moon Anarres orbiting the planet Urras divided between a capitalist government and a socialist one. Yes, the metaphors are heavy handed, but as the story progresses we see the breakdown between the reified and hardline positions readers—not used to dealing in nuance—both expect, and as such, find in the text.

But in reality, Shevek is trapped between his actual anarchist beliefs—his desire to experiment with physics—and the oily and Dickensianly grotesque head of the physics guild, Sabul. Everything Sabul touches is befouled—each page is slimed. After every moment of their interaction I can only imagine Shevek declaring that he, a la Peter Venkman, “feels so funky.” In fact, each painful scene of the head physicist denying Shevek’s brilliance reminds me of the eviction of Peter, Egon, and Ray from Columbia University.

Le Guin juxtaposes two different historical narratives: one, a bildungsroman where we learn Shevek has always thought outside of the officially accepted (and oxymoronic) anarchist terms; and the other narrative where Shevek travels to the enemy planet to practice physics and expose himself to the difficulties and dangers of a capitalist system. As a child this was my favorite part; watching Shevek’s discomfort at how to deal with servants. As an adult however, the dissonance between social mores creates one of the most cringingly uncomfortable sex scenes I’ve ever read.

Yet, when reading customer reviews of the book (not really a trusted source for much), people seem to think Shevek’s anarchic moon of Anarres is somehow a good place. It’s not. It has been overrun by bureaucrats who have tarnished the idea of what anarchism might be like while simultaneously declaring the impossibility of bureaucracy. On paper everyone is free to do whatever he or she wants, but in reality small groups have banded together and collected what little power or influence they can and are just as competitive as the dirty propertarians. (The foulest slang word in the text). The wonder of this book is that no one is right. Shevek can’t live up to his ideals; each world either wants to bury him, exploit him, or both; and in the end there is very little that a reader looking for a blue print about socio-political action can hold on to. We see the decadence and brutal class divisions of Urras, but we also see how in this society Shevek is actually appreciated (albeit only for his ability to make Urras more competitive).

When I first read this book I blazed through it happy to read about the seeming anarchic world so at odds with the rigid hierarchy of grade school. What if I didn’t want to play tetherball? Seemingly, according to The Dispossessed I didn’t have to. But actually taking the book fully into account now it’s painfully obvious that I’d probably still have to play tetherball.

Sean Grattan is a voracious consumer of fiction and a deadly big buck hunter.

1. Chris Johnstone

Wednesday June 23, 2010 07:28pm EDT

I'd have to hunt down the interview (perhaps the ABC radio national one from 2008?), but Le Guin herself seems to react quite negatively when people call the Dispossessed 'Utopian fiction'.

It's one of those odd places where the writer seems to disagree with most of their readers.

Always Coming Home is much more in the tradition of classical late-1800's early-1900's Utopian fiction--that is, it presents an idealised (and probably unrealistic) view of one possible utopia. I guess I also feel that 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' and 'Lathe of Heaven' are more concerned with the foolishness and pitfalls of Utopian ideas than the 'Dispossessed' is, per se. The Dispossessed is closer in theme to 'Left Hand of Darkness' (contrasting and comparing preconceptions and expectations about people, society, how to be personally strong etc).

The thing with the Dispossessed is that it seems that Le Guin never intended Anarres to be read as Utopian. Yet, you're completely right that most people seem to read a Utopian message into the text--trying to impose 'good' and 'bad' on a book that works very hard to throw off those ideas.

The complexity in the book, and the way in which the societal problems are presented as real--not easily solved nor easily absolved--are what make it both a fascinating read and a fundamentally honest book. I guess this is also the reason why 'The Dispossessed' is hard to pin down as either very definitely Utopian fiction or very definitely not Utopian fiction. It walks that grey middle-ground of honesty in which definite categories are not so easy to apply.

2. jasonhenninger

view all by jasonhenninger | Wednesday June 23, 2010 07:43pm EDT

Not that it has anything to do with your main point, but my sisters and I used to argue about what the hell it is Bastian yells. I believe my youngest sister thought it was "Mariah-Hulk." I don't think she's right, but it's a good name for an empress.

3. SeanGrattan

view all by SeanGrattan | Thursday June 24, 2010 12:03pm EDT

@ Chris Johnstone: Thank you for pointing out Le Guin's reaction to people considering The Dispossessed a utopian novel. Her comments open up an entirely different can of worms where we have to adjudicate between whether what the author intends is more important than what we, as readers, derive from their work. Tricky territory, indeed!

You also point out, along with me, that The Dispossessed is hard to pin down. What I hope to get at through this series of posts is that *every* piece of utopian literature is hard to pin down. From Thomas More on, utopia is in the eye of the beholder. (and as a die hard AD&D geek I can say this is never a good thing).

The genre itself has a long and interesting history as popular fiction. "Looking Backwards" by Edward Bellamy, for instance, was the second highest selling book after Uncle Tom's Cabin during the 19th century. It lies all but forgotten now. I think more than any other kind of fiction each utopia is particular to its time.

Anyway, I hope to continue a conversation where we can explore what it means that our attempts at imagining a better world swerves into ambivalence.

@jasonhenninger: I once found myself having drinks with the woman who played the child-like empress. After an untold amount of cajoling she remained tight-lipped about what Bastian yells. As such, I'm going with your youngest sister on this one and declaring Mariah-Hulk as clearly the best possible name for an empress.

4. EliBishop

view all by EliBishop | Thursday June 24, 2010 01:52pm EDT

"...people seem to think Shevek’s anarchic moon of Anarres is somehow a good place. It’s not."

I think you've gone too far there. Le Guin and Shevek clearly agree that Anarres is somehow a good place. It's good in obvious ways, like people never getting shot by riot police and never starving unless there's a general disaster; and in some less obvious ones that take Shevek longer to figure out, having to do with the potential for recreating the revolution in each generation, even if they often fall short. Many of the people on Anarres are jerks, but they have something we don't have and can barely imagine.

I, as a 21st-century American, have some major bones to pick with my society, but I also have a degree of freedom that most people 400 years ago could hardly imagine. I want to do my bit to make it more like our ideal of ourselves, and less like Urras. It's hard to keep that in mind though, when you're immersed in what you know. Stepping outside the world might help.

Shevek starts the book in a disillusioned state, thinking that all the bullshit he's seen back home means maybe Urras isn't so much worse. But pretty much everything he sees works against that, and he comes full circle back to an idealism that's stronger for having been earned rather than just inherited.

So where you see the book's ambiguity as being sort of negative (people can be crappy in utopia, so it's not really utopia), I see it as positive: if you build a better world, and keep building it, you'll have something real despite the crappy bits, and your dissatisfaction will actually be helpful.

5. dankness

Thursday June 24, 2010 02:13pm EDT

I absolutely hated this book. Every metaphor was so incredibly heavy handed, every point was dropped with so little subtlety, every character was such a caricature of their role, and the story was so incredibly irrelevant. If LeGuin wanted to write a political essay, why did she bother surrounding it with the guise of fiction?

6. N. Mamatas

Thursday June 24, 2010 02:59pm EDT

Cuz SF is the literature of ideas, maybe?

7. SeanGrattan

view all by SeanGrattan | Thursday June 24, 2010 06:10pm EDT

EliBishop, I'm interested in your assertion that I go too far. I feel, perhaps, I have not gone far enough. It's really the despicable Sabul who shows the dark underside of Anarres. (I think we would both agree here). But what really comes through with Anarres is an enjoyment of the self-congratulatory and knee-jerk ideological assumptions. This is Shevek's position for most of the text as well...if it's not too polemical, let me quote for a second. To set the scene, Shevek is frustrated that his work seems meaningless and is constantly frustrated or appropriated by Sabul, in conversation with his friend Dap something inside him breaks, like a piece of glacier sliding along with a bewildered polar bear somewhere south. "What are you talking about Dap? We have no power structure."
"No? What makes Sabul so strong?"
"Not a power structure, a government. This isn't Urras after all!"
"No. We have no government, no laws, all right. But as far as I can see ideas were never controlled on Urras...you can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them...by refusing to think, refusing to change."

To all of this Shevek responds "crazy talk."

It is ideology that Shevek must fight. And that he puts his body on the line to leave might be even more important to those on Anarres than anything he particularly learns on Urras. It isn't really his experience on the planet, though that helps, it is the moments leading up to boarding the space shuttle that firmly re-entrench him in the anarchist spirit.

In the uplifting end, perhaps, he convinces an offworlder to settle on the moon. This, we could imagine, is the moment of "building a better world" but this is because, as Shevek says "things are...a little broken loose on Anarres."

8. jaspax

view all by jaspax | Friday June 25, 2010 11:25am EDT

IMHO this is LeGuin's greatest work, and one of the best SF works of the last 50 years. And you've touched on most of the major reasons why: both worlds are fully realized places with lots to recommend them and lots to condemn them, and you can spend hours going back and forth about the relative merits of each place. What I find most striking about Urras is how hypocritical its "utopia" is: they claim to have abolished power, but in fact they've merely denied its existence and rendered it invisible. It's this invisible power that Shevek has to fight for most of the novel, and it turns out that because of its invisibility this kind of power is even harder to overturn than the kind that comes out with riot police.

LeGuin does sometimes pontificate, but contra dankness@5, this isn't one of those times. If, for some reason, you want to read the same story with all of the interesting bits taken out, you can read The Eye of the Heron, which is probably the worst book LeGuin ever wrote. It's deservably obscure.

It'd be interesting to track the development of utopian themes in LeGuin's writing, most obviously in The Dispossessed and Those Who Walk Away from Omelas, but also in Always Coming Home, The Lathe of Heaven, and implicitly (I'd argue) in her latest YA novel Powers. There's a lot of different approaches to and criticisms of utopia spread throughout her oeuvre .

9. Gregory Benford

Thursday July 08, 2010 03:06pm EDT

The title is The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, after all.

One of the striking facets of fictional utopias is that nobody really wants to live there. Perhaps the author, or a few friends, will profess some eagerness. But seldom do utopian fictions awaken a real longing to take part.

I suspect this is because most visions of supposedly better societies have features which violate our innate sense of human progress--they don't look like the future; they resemble a warped, malignant form of the past.

Time and again, utopists envision worlds where one aspect of human character is enhanced, and much else is suppressed. Plato's Republic was the first and most easily understandable of these; he thought that artists and similar unreliable sorts should be expelled. Too disruptive, you know.

Should we be uncomfortable with this fact? If we value Western European ideals, yes.

Five Regressive Ideas

How can we codify this notion? Utopian fictions stress ideas, so we need a way to advance the background assumptions, while suppressing the foreground of plot and character.

Nearly all utopias have one or more characteristics which I shall term reactionary, in the sense that they recall the past, often in its worst aspects. Here, "reactionary" means an aesthetic analogy, no more. It may apply to works which are to the left in the usual political spectrum, though I feel this one-dimensional spectrum is so misleading that the customary use of reactionary means little. Regressive might be an alternate term, meaning that a utopia seeks to turn back the tide of Western thought. Looking at the range of utopian literature, I sense five dominant reactionary characteristics:

1. Lack of diversity. Culture is everywhere the same, with few ethnic or other diversities.

2. Static in time. Like diversity, change in time would imply that either the past or present of the utopia was less than perfect (i.e., not utopian).

3. Nostalgic and technophobic. Usually this takes the form of isolation in a rural environment, organization harkening back to the village or even the farm, and only the simplest technology. Many writers here reveal their fondness for medieval society. The few pieces of technology superior to today's usually exist only to speed the plot or to provide metaphorical substance; they seldom spring from the society itself. (Only those utopias which include some notion of scientific advancement qualify as sf. Otherwise they are usually simple rural fantasies. Also, this point calls in question classifying any utopia as sf if it is drastically technophobic. Simply setting it in the future isn't enough.)

4. Presence of an authority figure. In real utopian communities, frequently patriarchal, this is a present person. Historically, nearly all utopian experiments in the West have quickly molded themselves around patriarchal figures. In literary utopias, the authority is the prophet who set up the utopia. Often the prophet is invoked in conversations as a guide to proper, right-thinking behavior.

5. Social regulation through guilt. Social responsibility is exalted as the standard of behavior. Frequently the authority figure is the focus of guilt-inducing rules. Once the authority figure dies, he or she becomes a virtual saint-like figure. Guilt is used to the extreme of controlling people's actions in detail, serving as the constant standard and overseer of the citizen's actions.

These five points outline a constellation of values which utopists often unconsciously assume.

Before backing up these points with specific arguments, consider some utopias which don't share all or most of them. Samuel Delany's Triton seems to have none of these features; indeed, it proclaims itself a "heterotopia," stressing its disagreement with the first point. Often Delany depicts societies which express his delight in the freakish. Franz Werfel's Star of the Unborn (1946) depicts a heavily technological future with many undesirable aspects, while accepting the inevitability of war, rebellion, and unsavory aspects. Advanced technology is carefully weighed for its moral implications in Norman Spinrad's Songs from the Stars.

Nonreactionary or genuinely progressive utopias often reject regulation through guilt. This divides utopias roughly along the axis of European versus American, with Europeans typically favoring social conscience, that is, guilt. Consider Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (the most prominent American utopia of the nineteenth century) and William Morris's reply to it, News from Nowhere. Both stabilize society more through gratification of individual needs than through guilt. Indeed, one of the keys to American politics is just this idea. Huxley's Island (written after his move to California) sides more with gratification, though his Brave New World (written in England) depicts the horrific side of a state devoted to gratification without our "sentimental" humanistic principles.

I argue, in an essay titled "Ractionary Utopias" that utopists often thought to be forward-looking and left-wing may be in fact reactionary. Consider, for example, Ursula Le Guin. Arguably, The Dispossessed is the finest American utopian novel of our time, and much of her work touches on these issues.

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