There’s nothing Flash Gordon about it, which I think is super-cool.” “It’s so much work, and it’s so much talk, and it’s so much thought. “That’s my favorite thing about this book, is it really shows you that the process of getting to a utopia is boring,” she says. The book’s moral ambiguity and deliberate pace won’t appeal to everyone, but science fiction professor Lisa Yaszek says it’s exactly those qualities that make The Dispossessed so distinctive. “So it was really-in a very direct way-inspiring people.” “I remember when I interviewed Le Guin, one of the things I asked her about was that there had been a story in the news about how protesters-left-wing protesters-had these plastic shields on which they’d printed or painted the cover of The Dispossessed,” he says. Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley notes that her themes of environmentalism, social justice, and feminism have had a profound influence on generations of readers. Le Guin, who died in 2018, was one of science fiction’s most popular authors, and The Dispossessed was one of her most popular books, winning the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. I put quotes in my email signatures, and I identified as an anarchist for several years after that.” “I would be hard pressed to think of another novel that made as strong an impression on me,” he says.

Science fiction author Anthony Ha counts The Dispossessed as one of his all-time favorite books.

The dispossessed book cover