View source for The Dispossessed

==Setting==

''The Dispossessed'' is set on [[Anarres]] and Urras, the twin inhabited worlds of [[Tau Ceti]]. Urras is divided into several states, but is dominated by two rival superpowers, A-Io and Thu. While on Urras, the main character spends most of his time in A-Io, a state with a [[capitalism|capitalist]] economy and a [[patriarchy|patriarchal system]]. The state of Thu is never actually visited, but is said to have an [[authoritarian]] system that claims to rule in the name of the [[proletariat]]. A-Io has dissent in its borders, including a few different oppositional [[left-wing]] parties, one of which is closely linked to the rival society of Thu. When a revolution is sparked in Benbili, the third major, yet undeveloped, area of Urras, A-Io invades the Thu-supported revolutionary area, generating a [[proxy war]].

The moon, Anarres, represents a more idealist ideological structure: [[anarcho-syndicalism]]. The Anarresti, who call themselves Odonians after the founder of their political philosophy, arrived on Anarres from Urras around 170 years ago. In order to forestall an anarcho-syndicalist rebellion, the major Urrasti states had given the revolutionaries the right to live on Anarres, along with a guarantee of non-interference. Before this, Anarres had had no permanent settlements apart from a few mining facilities. (The proximate trigger for the settling of Anarres is the subject of Le Guin's 1974 short story ''[[The Day Before the Revolution]]''.)<ref>{{cite book | title=Ursula K. Le Guin | last=Spivack | first=Charlotte | publisher=Twayne Publishers | location=Boston, MA | year=1984 | isbn=0-8057-7393-2 | url=https://archive.org/details/ursulakleguin00char|pages=74–75}}</ref>

The economic and political situation of Anarres and its relation to Urras is ambiguous. The people of Anarres consider themselves to be free and independent, having broken off from the political and social influence of the old world. However, the powers of Urras consider Anarres to be essentially their mining colony, as the annual consignment of Anarres's precious metals and their distribution to major powers on Urras is a major economic event of the old world.

=== Theoretical timeline ===
In the last chapter of ''The Dispossessed'', it is revealed that the Hainish people arrived at Tau Ceti 60 years previously, which is more than 100 years after the [[secession]] of the Odonians from Urras and their exodus to Anarres. Terrans are also there, and the novel occurs some time in the future, according to an elaborate chronology worked out by science fiction author [[Ian Watson (author)|Ian Watson]] in 1975: "the baseline date of AD 2300 for ''The Dispossessed'' is taken from the description of Earth in that book (§11) as having passed through an ecological and social collapse with a population peak of 9 billion to a low-population but highly centralized recovery economy."<ref>{{cite web |first= Ian |last= Watson | title= Le Guin's ''Lathe of Heaven'' and the Role of Dick: The False Reality as Mediator| publisher= Science Fiction Studies # 5 = Volume 2, Part 1 | date=March 1975 | access-date=2017-02-26 |url= http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/5/watson5art.htm}}</ref> In the same article, Watson assigns a date of AD 4870 to ''[[The Left Hand of Darkness]]''; both dates are problematic — as Watson says himself, they are contradicted by "Genly Ai's statement that Terrans 'were ignorant until about three thousand years ago of the uses of zero'".