They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed.

In The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas Le Guin asks the reader to imagine their ideal utopia, as pure or debauched as one likes, but perfect in whatever way one regards it as perfect. If the picture she paints is perhaps too “goody-goody”, then feel free to add an orgy if it would help. But she knows that this idea rings hollow, that such a place feels unsatisfying in its flawlessness, and as such she, famously, adds the suffering child: The rot at the heart of it that somehow fuels the city. The fatal, evil flaw. She does not try to justify this at all—no coherent connection is made between the misery of the child in the basement and the prosperity of the city—but she knows that somehow this absurdity, the most unreasonable thing about her description of Omelas by far, makes it seem more real. We know that perfection and harmony like this cannot be real, and this justifies our doubts of it.

And so Anarres, our ambiguous utopia. Le Guin tries to imagine an anarchist society and imagine it honestly, warts and all. Simply by striking off our chains we will not become new Soviet men, free of flaws and jealousies. People will still be petty and small minded, people will still feel alienated and isolated. I may not be a brilliant physicist (seeing how stressed and miserable my lecturers in university seemed put me off such things) but I related a lot to Shevek; his difficulty with other children and other people, his desire for isolation clashing with his need for community. The story of his struggles with this fallen, conservative anarchism is what first made anarchism seem real to me. That it could happen. That society could be remade. I admit that I do not wish to give up all of my luxuries that the Odonians would consider “excrement”, (I was raised propertarian after all) but the useless work that I do to live comfortably right now certainly does not sit easily in me.

For this world, New Tahiti, was literally made for men.

A very fun read and the anger toward colonialism seeps off the page.

To oppose something is to maintain it.

A beautiful meditation on the divisions that we make up to to pretend that we cannot understand one another; sex, gender, nationhood, genetics.

He was staked now totally on one belief: that an honest man cannot be cheated, that truth, if the game be played through right to the end, will lead to truth.

There are one or two places earlier in the novel where Falk has an internal dialogue with himself, perhaps hinting at the protagonist’s eventual plural nature. One might expect that to be developed more thoroughly throughout the book, and such dialogue to be explored in more detail after Falk-Ramarren dual awakening, but in Le Guin’s typical fashion much of the book is a slow journey exploring a character, the world, and their place in it, with a rush of action held off to the every end. Falk-Ramarren does not get much actual interplay in the text before it’s all over and we must imagine what their reconciliation of identity looks like ourselves.

It is also perhaps odd that the liars are defeated not just by truth but also in part by the secrecy, hierarchy and compartmentalisation of Werelian culture, though much like the origin of the Werelian culture itself that can only become useful through it’s joining together of human culture and understanding in Falk, who Ramarren would be lost without just as Falk would be lost without Ramarren.

But who remembers the Year before last?

One people who live only in the concern of the immediate, who cannot look beyond one lifetime except as part of cycle without beginning or end, and another who only look to the past, only able to look to the future by looking at how they could survive together rather than apart.

They can send death at once, but life is slower.

I have previously read three books in Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle: The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed and City of Illusions. Having read through Earthsea a few years ago I’ve been meaning to revisit Le Guin’s science fiction series and decided to start at the beginning.

Interesting to see threads of both the later Hainish Cycle books and of Earthsea starting here, with its heroic high fantasy world and story embedded in a science fiction setting. Le Guin’s prose is always wonderful to read and I really enjoyed the contrast in perspectives between Semley in the prologue and Rocannon in the rest of the novel, though it’s difficult not to judge it against her later works and find it less cohesive.