欧美乌托邦小说的写作深受社会历史背景的影响，自莫尔1516年发表《乌托邦》至今，各个时期都有经典乌托邦作品问世，对这些作品加以研究可以发现：欧美乌托邦小说发展历史上存在两种思想传统——社会改革思想传统与科技进步思想传统。社会改革思想主要表现为作品在经济制度、权力制度、两性关系、教育制度等方面提出改革方案；科技进步思想传统在作品中主要表现为科学技术促进物质进步，改变社会生活、生产方式，特别是在20世纪“反乌托邦三部曲”中科技与极权结合，消除个人特征与价值。但这两种思想传统在欧美乌托邦小说发展历史上并非平行发展：20世纪前的欧美乌托邦小说较多体现了社会改革思想传统；由于受到第一次工业革命、第二次工业革命的影响，20世纪后，科技在欧美乌托邦小说中占据越来越重要的地位。这两种思想传统在具体作品中也并非泾渭分明、非此即彼，而是共同存在，只是不同作品侧重不同。一些学者认为传统意义上的欧美乌托邦小说在二战后就已消失，乌托邦理想在二战后寄生于科幻小说之中。“科幻文学新浪潮运动”丰富了科幻小说的主题内容和写作手法，也将社会学、心理学、政治学、教育学等社会学科引入科幻小说，为乌托邦理想与科幻文学的结合创造了契机。美国作家乌苏拉•勒古恩的作品正体现出了这一趋势，其代表作《一无所有》不仅继承了欧美乌托邦小说的两种思想传统还有所发展和创新，运用社会科学的知识和剖析方法突破了社会改革派作家的写作模式和内容局限，提出科学的哲学目的以纠正世人强调科学的物质意义的偏见。勒古恩在《一无所有》中糅合了乌托邦小说与科幻小说的特点，将社会改革思想与科技进步思想相融合，为乌托邦小说的发展提出了一种新的可能与样式。

European-American utopia Fictions are deeply influenced by its writing social and historical backgrounds. There are several classic works published in each period since More published Utopia in 1516. After studying these classic works, two idea traditions in European-American utopia fictions can be found—the idea of society reformation and the idea of science and technology development. The idea of society reformation focuses on economic system, the politic system, gender relations, education system and other aspects. And the idea of science technology development focuses on material progress, changes in social life, production, and the elimination of personality and characteristics by the joint of sci-tech and trilogy in the 20th Century "three dystopia fictions”. These two traditions are not parallel to the European-American utopia fiction history. The works before 20th century reflect more of the society reformation idea. On the contrary, the idea of science technology development takes more room in the works of 20th century and afterwards. Besides, these two idea traditions are in particular works are not clear-cut, either-or , but co-exist , just different work different emphasis .Some scholars believe that the European-American traditional utopian fictions have disappeared after World War II, and after World War II, utopia thoughts got absorbed into science fiction. "New Wave science fiction movement" had enriched science fiction’s content, themes and writing techniques with introducing sociology, psychology , political science, education and other social sciences to it , which created the opportunity for the joint. American writer Ursula K. Le Guin’s works reflected this positive trend. Her work The Dispossessed not only inherits the two traditions of European-American utopia fictions, and also written with innovation –breakthrough the limitations of the writing mode and content of social reformist writers’ by using the knowledge and analysis methods of social science, and propose philosophical purposes of science to confront the emphasis and bias of material promotion. Le Guin represented both the features of utopia fiction and science fiction, and combined the two idea traditions of utopia fiction in The Dispossessed, creating a new possibility and style for utopia fiction.