In class (I got in!) we are reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. The subtitle is "an ambiguous utopia." I've read other books in the Hainish Cycle, and this one is both noticeably different and recognizably Le Guin. It's the first in chronological order, and the protagonist discovers the equations that will lead to the ansible-"an instantaneous communication device." In the rest of the cycle, this is the device that the protagonists use to record their observations of other worlds. Shevek is the only protagonist in the cycle (at least of those I've read) that is of the race that he observes. However, he is and is not. Shevek is from Anarres, a desert mining colony on the moon of Urras, a water-rich planet. On Anarres, the Odonians have built a two-hundred-year old anarchist commune, where nobody owns anything. On Urras, the larger powers are still "propertarian" (i.e. capitalist) and exploit their resources, using a money economy...
Life, Books, and SFF