Kicking it Old School: The Dispossessed

I've been traipsing around in the annals of old school SF again, this time around I decided to explore the fertile ground that is the works published list of Ursula K. Le Guin.  I picked out The Dispossessed based on the back blurb, and a staff recommendation from my favorite local bookstore.

A few generations ago, the moon Anarres, with its bleak desert-like landscape, was settled by an anarchic utopian civilization.  Urras, the mother planet, is a planet much like our own. It has a capitalist system with extreme wealth and severe poverty, as well as it's fair share of warring nations, and savage inequalities.  On the surface, the two planets seem like night and day, and that discrepancy has led to hatred and misunderstanding between the two planets for years.

Shevek, a brilliant physicist from Anarres is underappreciated and underutilized on his own planet. So he decides to undertake a most unheard of mission, and travels to Urras in hopes of pursuing his physics career, learning about this unknown world, to share his knowledge, and reunite the two planets.

The Dispossessed has a unique narrative style that I enjoyed quite a lot.  The chapters alternate between focusing on Shevek's time on Urras, and his time on Anarres.  The cool part is that the Urras chapters deal with the events of Shevek's time on the foreign planet, and the Anarres chapters deal with the events of Shevek's life that lead up to his departure from Anarres.  I enjoyed this quality of the book as it made me feel like I was having to put together a mental jigsaw puzzle so that I could understand the book.

There was a bit of a drawback however, as it makes the reader wait a long time for an explanation as to why Shevek decided to leave his home planet behind.  This long development worked as a double-edged sword as it kept me on the hook... to an extent, because for a large portion of the book I didn't understand Shevek's motives, and that led to some frustration on my part.

For me, the most impressive part of this novel is that Le Guin had to create and make real not one world but two, and she did it incredibly well. There were plenty of parallels between Urras and our own, which was a deliberate part of the plot, but Le Guin also made Urras different enough so that it was fun to explore alongside Shevek.  It was interesting to see how further exploration of each planet brought about more highlights and inadequacies of each. The exploration of these two disparate societies reminded me a bit of books like Brave New World, but The Dispossessed explores both the Utopian and Dystopian side by side which I found much more interesting.

In the past, I have had a hard time getting fully into SF books where the focus is on a political exploration/message.  I've often felt like the politics often overtake the narrative and don't leave any space for an interesting story.  For two thirds of The Dispossessed, I felt the same way. However, once the back story kicked in and gave meaning to the current events of the novel, I found myself enjoying it a lot more, and felt rewarded for sticking with it.  It might take a while the whole picture to become clear, but I was glad I hung in there.

I didn't enjoy The Dispossessed as much as my previous Le Guin read, The Lathe of Heaven, but I still enjoyed what this book has to offer.  Despite being published before I was born, it still is a book that can have relevance today.  That should say a lot.  It's not too bad of a read either.

Grade: 7.5 Fanny Packs

Book Review: The Lathe of Heaven

The Lathe of Heaven takes place in what was, at the time of publication in 1971, the near future, but when read now is just about current day, give or take a few years.  Anyway, the story follows George Orr, a pretty regular guy with a totally unique ability; His dreams can alter the shape of reality.  In order to avoid these reality altering dreams George borrows prescription cards from friends and neighbors in order to stock up on sleep depriving drugs.  He's eventually busted and sent to a psychiatrist, Dr. William Haber, who specializes in dream psychology.

Once the two meet up and Dr. Haber learns about George's strange gift, he quickly learns to harness George's ability through hypnosis and a dream augmentation machine.  Before too long, Dr. Haber is manipulating George's dreams for his own purposes.  George must find a way to stop Dr. Haber before the world as they know it is completely altered beyond redemption.

After reading and loving Jo Walton's Among Others I knew I wanted to explore some of the old school science fiction and fantasy works that get mentioned in that novel.  It didn't take me long to realize that The Lathe of Heaven would be something I would enjoy, so I quickly set out to track down a copy and give it a read.

The Lathe of Heaven is one of those unique stories that is a wonderful blend of a little bit of science fiction and a little bit of fantasy. It seems like nowadays we have such clear distinctions between the two genres, but that couldn't be less true here. Le Guin managed to meld the two genres together like an expert metallurgist and create a truly wonderful novel that felt completely unique to me.

Aside from being a story with a plot that completely sucked me in and had me devouring page after page, I was most impressed with the fact that Le Guin was able to pack so much story into a mere 184 pages.  Way more goes on here than in many of the door-stopper sized novels we see on the shelves today, and the characters are a hell of a lot more well developed and interesting as well.  Le Guin's prose was equally impressive, as I got a distinct feel for her voice from the opening lines on page one.

As I mentioned above, the characters in The Lathe of Heaven are impressively written.  George Orr was a fun character to read, as I felt like I could understand him, and I found myself really hoping for things to turn out well for the guy.  Dr. Haber on the other hand is very much the antagonist of the story, but he too was someone I felt a connection with as well.  I felt like I could understand and relate to his motivations even though they weren't always the most ethical.  With primary characters like these two, and secondary characters that stand out as well, this is one of the better character driven stories I've read in recent memory.

The Lathe of Heaven was pretty much the perfect novel to being my excursions into the history of the science fiction/fantasy genres, as this was a great example of a classic that has an incredibly fresh and new feel to it, all while managing to still have the distinct feel of being from another era.  This is an absolutely fantastic book that I loved from beginning to end.  I highly recommend this, as I think it holds appeal to any fan of genre literature, and could be enjoyed by non-genre fanatics as well.  I can only hope all my other "old school" reads are as good as this.

Grade: A