{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"","title":"The Dispossessed's Anarchist Wall: Le Guin's Utopia Test","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/6a28001ca917ce4c7065c483/1119d981-d291-4001-9cfb-2b7ed97b7703.jpg?height=200","description":"Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed (1974) is subtitled 'An Ambiguous Utopia' — a deliberate challenge to utopian SF's tendency to present perfect societies without examining their costs. Anarres is a moon colony organized on anarchist-communist principles, and it is genuinely admirable: no ownership, no hierarchy, mutual aid, gender equality. It is also conformist, resource-scarce, and capable of its own subtle tyrannies. Le Guin was deeply influenced by the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin and was writing during the post-1968 disillusionment with both Soviet communism and American capitalism. The novel's physicist protagonist, Shevek, crosses between the two worlds and finds both wanting. This episode examines The Dispossessed as the most rigorous utopian thought experiment in SF history, Le Guin's anarchist politics, and what the novel says about the relationship between freedom and community.","author_name":"Atween Studios"}