I'm over half way through The Dispossessed and I'd rather rub sandpaper on my eyeballs than read anymore. How can someone so progressive about sexuality have utterly sexless writing? The main character repeatedly has gay sex with a socialist revolutionary inside a highly patriarchal, capitalist state and somehow the relationship is less interesting than a scatterplot with no coorelation. Le Guin's prose has zero color, zero suspense, zero humanity, zero poeticism, all anodized on an aimless plot. This is the most ivory-tower, assume-spherical-human author I have encountered.

I've read Those Who Walked Away from Omelas and its the best Le Guin has to offer because its only like 2 pages. Even then half of it is a professor hand-waving away what a utopia might be.

When I was a I child I had to read The Wizard of Earth-Sea for school and I actually read it. My memory of it is all white noise because there were no humans in the book, only ideas with no flesh. I've never seen someone make a fantasy book boring. Tolkien would spend pages describing a single tree but at least it would be in color and depth.

I watched the film adaptation of The Lathe of Heaven. A man who's dreams actually become reality, but he must actually go to sleep and dream the reality. Fascinating idea. One of a kind premise. SOMEHOW STILL BORING.

Is Asimov this bad too? I've read Starship Troopers from Heinlein and it was about as bad but it at least had some suspense and violence to keep things wet. If anyone has read Rand and Le Guin, I'd love to hear a comparison.

I need to rehydrate myself with my big wet boy PKD, and try to finish VALIS. I had to keep putting it down because, "thats enough crazy for today".

  • captcha [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I think that book was written before The Dispossessed but comes after it chronologically in the Hainish cycle. Maybe I should've started with it.

    Is there any real conflict in the story? Because the only conflict in The Dispossessed is a scientist feeling unfulfilled about the science he's not doing. I know he's supposed to make the ansible. Maybe I should stick it out until then?

    • forcequit [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      It's been awhile so recollection is hazy, but no I don't recall conflict as such, certainly not any the narrator is involved with.

      The world is split into two continents, with conflict existing between the mercantile state and the.. idk, 'outlanders'? It's told through the eyes of an offworld envoy detailing their experiences with different peoples and societies/ways of being