Toward the end of this science fiction novel, someone from Earth tries to explain to the protagonist, who comes from the anarchist/socialist world of Annares, what his world means to her. She tells him how the Terrans utterly despoiled their world long ago and practically destroyed themselves, and how they were only saved by the benevolence of another civilization that they encountered, and how, to her, the "evil" capitalistic world of Urras in the novel is the very model of what a world should be, while the utopian Annares is beyond her imagining, something that humanity threw away its chance for long ago. As I read The Dispossessed, I feel much the same way. Of all the science fiction authors I've read, Ursula LeGuin is the best writer. Her characters are complex and her stories tend to be more about human relationships than the science, hardware and male fantasy fulfillment of most science fiction. Her "utopia" is no idealistic bit of wishful thinking. Its people can be just as petty and power hungry and blindly dogmatic as we know people can be. Its society is revealed to be, in many ways, just as hierarchical and oppressive as any nation on Urras or in our actual world. And it is even suggested that the only reason socialism has been able to work on Annares is that utter cooperation is the only way humans can survive on that barren world. Nevertheless, the mere existence of Annares, in all its imperfection and messiness, in its near impossibility and absolute necessity -- its mere existence even just in a work of fiction! -- is enough to fill me with longing and grief and hope.