In this set of stories Le Guin makes it really clear her feelings about omelettes and eggs, I think Anarres' ambiguous utopia is such because Anarres is dirt poor and the people live in relative poverty and yet the system is still worth defending in that poverty
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
It is not the kind of "utopia" where the political and economic system is so productive and profitable it lets the people invent a magic perpetual motion engine, Atlas Shrugged-style Indeed Shevek's story is about how their system works *against* that possibility
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
Le Guin was not a friend to gee-whiz futurism of the kind that characterized old-school Golden Age science fiction (just as Ayn Rand honestly was kind of an ultimate reductio ad absurdum of that mindset) Haber in Lathe of Heaven is kind of an avatar of that ideology
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
And just in terms of his personality he embodies what's repulsive about it He's just such a douche He's gets so *annoyed* whenever you bring up a child in the closet in Omelas "Fuck you, who says there has to be one? Dream bigger man"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @iridienne and
Right; you’re supposed to hate Haber, and love Orr, who insists we’re in the best world possible and is right because he’s in perfect balance.
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Replying to @nberlat @iridienne and
I don't really think it's fair to say the message of the book is that everything is fine and you mustn't try to change anything Taken to its logical extreme that message would equate to saying the right thing to do is lay down and die rather than trying to feed yourself
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
I mean, in the normal human sense of the word, Haber *doesn't* do anything He sits in his office and he imagines stuff and he believes by describing what he imagines in sufficient detail it will become reality It's some harsh writerly self-deprecation
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
Yeah, I mean, the simplest thing here is that there's an awfully big difference between identifying problems and solving them.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @arthur_affect and
It's not to say that all problems are inherently difficult to solve and require dramatic compromises that leave no good options, etc. But it IS a focus on the fact that those problems exist, and she sets up scenarios where it's really laid bare.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @arthur_affect and
To Noah's point here, though - I think it's correct to assess this as being counterrevolutionary; I think it's just a fairly strong counterrevolutionary case.
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It's like how if the Matter of Seggri were the only thing she ever wrote about gender she'd come off as an MRA
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Replying to @arthur_affect @mssilverstein and
I do think it's echoed in other parts of her work as I say, though it's not her *only* take on the subject at all. and she changes over time too.
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Replying to @nberlat @arthur_affect and
I’d agree with that. She certainly never says “never act,” but “be cautious about it” is pretty consistent. I call her anti-utopian, by which I don’t mean she’s against “the better” or even “the good” but rather “the perfect.” Folks do monstrous stuff for the perfect.
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