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.
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.
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.
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.