The Lathe of Heaven: A Novel - Softcover

Le Guin, Ursula K.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1416556966 ISBN 13: 9781416556961

Publisher: Scribner, 2008

Synopsis

"The Lathe of Heaven" is George Orr's story - a man who dreams things into being, for better or for worse. It is a dark vision and a warning - a fable of power uncontrolled and uncontrollable - a truly prescient and startling view of humanity, and the consequences of God-playing. It is, quite simply, a masterpiece.

About this title

Review

First published in 1971, Ursula Le Guin's SF novel The Lathe of Heaven combines a sheaf of future possibilities--including an early evocation of global warming--with a parable about wishes that has the terrible clarity of a fairytale.

The uncomfortably gifted George Orr is desperately drugging himself to avoid sleep, because he knows his dreams can change the world. Psychiatrist Dr Haber begins with good intentions of curing Orr, but when he finds he can shape Orr's "effective dreams" and force his own wishes into reality, the lure of power is too much. Though Haber believes he wants only to do good, he's also quick to upgrade himself from obscurity in a windowless office to Director of the prestigious Oregon Oneirological Institute.

During his flawed attempts to create an earthly paradise, we see that each sweeping change makes matters worse. Let's fix over-population: suddenly there's a new past in which humanity was almost destroyed by plague, billions of people are written out of existence, and Haber drinks a toast--"to a better world". Let's fix war: the hapless Orr's dreaming mind can only imagine and create a new threat that unites Earth against outside foes. Let's fix racism: the result is even more painful. As Orr broods:

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

In this mad round of poisoned wishes, it becomes necessary to stop. But power-crazed Haber refuses to stop....

Beautifully written, jolting in its moral force, The Lathe of Heaven is one of Le Guin's finest SF excursions. --David Langford

Review

"A rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion."--The New York Times

"Gracefully developed...extremely inventive.... What science fiction is supposed to do."--Newsweek

"Profound. Beautifully wrought... [Le Guin's] perceptions of such matters as geopolitics, race, socialized medicine, and the patient-shrink relationship are razor sharp and more than a little cutting."--National Review

"A very good book... A writer's writer, Ursula Le Guin brings reality itself to the proving ground."--Theodore Sturgeon

"When I read The Lathe of Heaven as a young man, my mind was boggled; now when I read it, more than twenty-five years later, it breaks my heart. Only a great work of literature can bridge - so thrillingly - that impossible span."--Michael Chabon

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1416556966
• ISBN 13: 9781416556961
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 184