She recognizes that some of the status and honor she is accorded by her fellow anarchists is not in keeping with her principles or theirs. Odo goes through her daily routine, attempting to dictate letters to her secretary and eat meals she doesn't want. She lives in the nation of A-Io in an 'Odonian House', a building or commune in which her anarchist principles are followed. Her husband is long dead, her days as a political prisoner are in the past and her major anarchist treatises were written many years ago. Awake, she is shown to be an elderly woman, who has had a major stroke. The protagonist Laia is introduced dreaming of her younger self and her lover at a political meeting. In The Dispossessed, she is usually referred to as the historical figure 'Odo', but in this story, told from her point of view, she is called Laia. Odo's theory becomes practice after her death and the revolution she inspired, with the colonization of the moon Anarres and the establishment of a society without private property ownership. That novel is set in the same planetary system: the idealized anarchical society depicted in it is based on Odo's teachings. The short story is described as a prologue to The Dispossessed (1974), though it was written after. It depicts the last day in the life of Laia Asieo Odo, a revolutionary figure, shortly before the revolution she helped inspire sweeps through her society. The Day Before the Revolution is set on the fictional planet of Urras, which possesses a habitable moon, Anarres. The people of Hain colonized many neighboring planetary systems possibly a million years before the setting of the stories. In the alternative history of this universe, human beings did not evolve on earth, but on Hain. The Day Before the Revolution takes place in the fictional Hainish universe, created by Le Guin.

It is considered a short story prologue to The Dispossessed and represents an idealized anarchy by following the character of 'Odo', the semi-legendary woman who led the revolution that founded the anarchist society in The Dispossessed. ' The Day Before the Revolution' is a science fiction short story by American writer Ursula K.

Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin