The Dispossessed

by Ursula K. Le Guin

I read this book straight after reading The Left Hand of Darkness by the same author.

The book tells the story of the invention of the ansible, which allows for instantaneous communication (but not travel) across solar systems. It covers three different civilisations spread across several plantes. These are the anarchists on Anarres, the propertarians on Urras, the Terrans (surviving on Earth earth afte climate collapse reduced their population from 9 billion to 500 million) and the Hainish, which at several thousands of millenia is the oldest civilisation.

It is a very insightful critique of different political systems such as capitalism, communism and anarchism without actually taking sides. They all have their faults and all have their benefits. The book also encourages you to think about how these systems could interact going foward as purposefully it does not come to a clear conclusion.

I particularly liked that part of the ending with the Hainish commander Ketho being curious to visit the young anarchist civilisation on Anarres. Despite warnings from Shevek that his safety could not be guaranteed he insisted on visiting, not because anarchy was something new to his civilisation, far from it. But because his civilisation was 100s of millenia old and whilst it had tried anarchy, he personally had not experienced it. As he said:

The there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, wach single life, then why are we born?

The way I understand it he basically wanted to experience a youthful civilisation, given the age of his own, Hainish, society.