October 2025 readings
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I haven't read as many books as I'd like, since June: partly because the
ones I'm currently working through are very very long, partly because I've
not read as much, partly because I forget to write down my thoughts, and
partly because the things I *have* finished reading aren't worth writing
about. But here's a few, as of early October.
The Dispossessed
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> Ursula K. Le Guin (1974)
Spanning the twin planets of Urras and Anarres, is this heavily
philosophical novel. *The Dispossessed* is partly a work of fiction,
partly a genuine attempt to work out what a functional anarchist society
might look like, within the framing device of Urrasti revolutionaries,
devotees of the (dead) theorist and social reformer Odo, being allowed to
settle the considerably less habitable planet of Anarres. Both orbit each
other, roughly equal in size, and the people of each consider the other
their moon.
Much of the text is devoted to explaining the theories of Odo and the
workings of Anarresti society --- highly communal, with children staying
mostly in dormitories after (if I remember correctly) the age of four.
Anarres is without the institution of marriage, but there are still
partnerships; partners are often separated by work postings to different
areas, all such jobs being coordinated by Divlab computers. Anyone may,
nominally, reject the posting, or decide not to work at all, but social
norms seem to be to go off and do what needs doing.
Social norms and, from them, social pressure; Anarres is intended partly
as a utopia, but a flawed one. The dynamic of ruler and ruled reproduces
itself through convention. Work is organized through syndicates, and if
you have personal enemies within the syndicate, you cannot work; there is
no need to work for food, barring slashed rations during famine, but you
can be forced out of the labor you most enjoy, which you are most useful
in. Shevek (our protagonist) is barred from working in physics for a
time.
The narrative structure is split into before and after Shevek boards a
freighter to Urras (*the* freighter --- part of the agreement allowing
Anarres to be settled is that the settlers must mine ore to ship back to
Urras), where he is to try and work out a unified theory of time and
causality (the Principle of Simultaneity), with which his host state of
A-lo hopes to develop faster-than-light transportation and communication;
to establish dominance over all other worlds, and certainly over the state
socialist Thu.
Shevek takes a while to understand this dynamic, each chapter being about
either his early life, building up to his need to leave Anarres; or about
his work on Urras, learning how to navigate a patriarchal-capitalist
society; these alternate throughout the novel.
The Left Hand of Darkness
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> Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
A representative of the Ekumen (as of the Christian ecumenical councils,
bringing-together of disparate churches; here, planets) comes to the
planet Winter, Gethen, to try and convince them to join. Travel between
planets is too slow for war and trade, even in light-speed ships where the
inhabitants only experience a few hours along the way, but the Ekumen
exists to coordinate the passage of ideas from one world to the next. The
people of Gethen are without fixed sexual roles, being asexual most of the
time, until they enter *kemmering* about once a month, and depending on
chance and the partners available, develop into one or the other for a
time.
There's a bit of textual politicking beside the metatextual gender
politics, with the protag getting shuffled from the Karhide to Orgoreyn,
fleeing its mad king and budding nationalism; thence from Orgoreyn back to
Karhide, fleeing its burgeoning industrial bureaucracy, the machinery of
organized state power; almost back again! But the third time --- well,
read it and find out.
City of Saints and Madmen
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> Jeff Vandermeer (2002)
The first work in an "Ambergris Trilogy." I started reading this sometime
in mid-2024, but left off on finishing it because I hadn't much enthusiasm
back then for one part very near the end, which was in effect a fictional
literary magazine with annotations by a fictional critic in the margin.
*City of Saints and Madmen* is, loosely, a collection of short stories set
in the same connective universe, in the city of Ambergris, founded through
brutal colonialism against its native fungal inhabitants, the grey caps.
The first of these, *Dradin, In Love*, is long enough that it'd better be
referred to as a novella. All of them circle around shared motifs --- the
mushroom, the squid, the city with a will of its own; sometimes humorous,
often gruesome, but always tugging you playfully along, into the soft
moldy peat of Ambergris' underbelly.
I loved this from the first page, the only book I took home when I bought
it, despite rifling through dozens of others. Very much recommended, I'll
have to try and get my hands on the sequels.
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