The Dispossessed

1975

Science Fiction PS3562 E42 D57 1975

St. Albans, Hertfordshire: Panther

Award-winning Science Fiction and Fantasy writer, Ursula K. Le Guin (née Kroeber, 1929-2018) read Ghandi, Murray Bookchin, and Peter Kropotkin, in preparation to write her utopian novel, The Dispossessed. In the novel, Le Guin writes about an anarchist society on the planet, Anarres, where there is ‘no government, church, or ruling class’ (Jaeckle, 2009). She explores the freedoms experienced in an anarchist society, and the opposite in a non-anarchist state. More an imaginative anarchist than an active one, Le Guin writes works containing themes associated with the philosophy of anarchism. The Dispossessed, first published in 1974, was a vehicle to bring the ideas of anarchism to a contemporary audience of science fiction readers; Le Guin said it was her ‘reaction to the Vietnam War’.