It's always been odd to me that I've read so little of LeGuin's science fiction, and regard myself as a fan of hers due to my deep and abiding love for her Earthsea books. I'm not really sorry I didn't, because while I don't want to flatter my current intellect, I really would not have been up to the ideas in this book when I was younger. I think I would have liked it, because I always did find ideas compelling, and the writing is so good, but I suspect my understanding would have been superficial and shallow. 

There really are a lot of ideas, and they're almost all to do with politics - freedom and authority, personal ethics and the behaviours of crowds. The depiction of a meeting of the PDC, the council which does not govern the ambiguous anarchist utopia, except that in a way it does, is eerily reminiscent of online arguments and how they work, and makes a case for them being a not competely bad thing, on balance, despite their messiness. 

As for the rest, the lone brilliant physicist who cannot complete his work in an isolationaist hardscrabble utopia journeys to a lush and bountiful capitalist hell which, ironically, the representatives of a desolated Earth regard as a paradise. The whole story is related in measured, distanced prose which unapologetically lays out the arguments and the ideas, and the toughness of life on Annares and the hidden lines of authortiy in a society that's supposed to have none. A magnificent, challenging, rewarding book.