Last year, the New York Times described Ursula K. Le Guin as "America's greatest living science fiction writer," though Le Guin said she would prefer to be called an "American novelist." Her fantasy and science-fiction works transcend the boundaries of genre, exploring sociological, anthropological, environmental and spiritual themes in the guise of spaceships and magic. Le Guin is perhaps best known for Earthsea, a fantasy series set on an archipelago world, and the Hainish Cycle, a loosely related collection of novels and short stories set in the same science-fiction universe. The Hainish Cycle imagines a range of planets colonized long ago by humans from Hain, who are just recently reconnecting with these scattered and radically diverged worlds.
The Dispossessed (1974), the fifth Hainish novel, takes place on a pair of twin worlds in Tau Ceti. Shevek, a physicist on the anarchist world of Anarres, travels to Urras, from which the anarchist Odonians fled several generations prior. The book is split into two connected narratives: the first chronicling Shevek's trip to the lush but authoritarian world of Urras; the second Shevek's upbringing on arid, anarchist Anarres, and what drove this brilliant scientist to abandon his homeworld. Le Guin's construction of a pacifist-anarchist society is a testament to her anthropological upbringing (her father was a famous anthropologist) and literary genius. The Dispossessed illuminates human behavior and social structures through the lens of the fantastic, as only the best sci-fi can. It was last published as a Harper Perennial Modern Classic in 2014 (9780060512750). --Tobias Mutter
