The Lathe Of Heaven

By Ursula K. Le Guin

With a new introduction by Kelly Link, the Locus Award-winning science fiction novel by legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin, set in a world where one man’s dreams rewrite the future.

During a time racked by war and environmental catastrophe, George Orr discovers his dreams alter reality. George is compelled to receive treatment from Dr. William Haber, an ambitious sleep psychiatrist who quickly grasps the immense power George holds. After becoming adept at manipulating George’s dreams to reshape the world, Haber seeks the same power for himself. George—with some surprising help—must resist Haber’s attempts, which threaten to destroy reality itself.

A classic of the science fiction genre, The Lathe of Heaven is prescient in its exploration of the moral risks when overwhelming power is coupled with techno-utopianism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribner
• Release date: Jul 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9781668014967

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) was the celebrated author of twenty-three novels, twelve volumes of short stories, eleven volumes of poetry, thirteen children’s books, five essay collections, and four works of translation. Her acclaimed books received the Hugo, Nebula, Endeavor, Locus, Otherwise, Theodore Sturgeon, PEN/Malamud, and National Book Awards; a Newbery Honor; and the Pushcart and Janet Heidinger Kafka Prizes, among others. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2016 joined the short list of authors to be published in their lifetimes by the Library of America. Le Guin was also the recipient of the Association for Library Service to Children’s May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award and the Margaret A. Edwards Award. She received lifetime achievement awards from the World Fantasy Convention, Los Angeles Times, Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, and Willamette Writers, as well as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award and the Library of Congress Living Legend Award. Her website is UrsulaKLeGuin.com.

Book preview

Introduction

Kelly Link

Originally, The Lathe of Heaven appeared in two installments in Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine started in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. Ursula Le Guin, born in 1929, read Amazing Stories as a child and would go on to outlive almost all the science fiction pulp magazines. While many of the writers Gernsback introduced to the field have fallen out of fashion and been forgotten, Le Guin’s influence has expanded beyond all original bounds of genre, appropriately so, as her writing was profoundly slippery, generous, shape-shifting, and outreaching from the very start.

The Lathe of Heaven has the feel of a fable, part fairy tale, part philosophical and psychological exploration of questions central to much of Le Guin’s work: What are the consequences of working for change, even with the best of intentions? What is the cost of utopia? What is the use and meaning of dreams? The protagonist, George Orr, changes the world in dreaming. He is frightened by this power, which he does not control consciously, but his therapist, Dr. Haber, seeks to harness his power to make a better world. It’s a novel with very few characters, the sort of narrative I can’t help but imagine as a kind of black box theater performance, and The Lathe of Heaven was, in fact, twice made into a movie (Le Guin’s contemporary, the artist Ed Emshwiller, served as a visual consultant to the first adaptation, which is perhaps the only faithful adaptation of any of Le Guin’s work). It is also, notably, Le Guin’s deliberate foray into Philip K. Dick’s territory, with its hallucinatory beginning, its drug-using protagonist, and its surreal, literally world-melting alternate realities. Dick and Le Guin were admirers of each other’s work and occasional correspondents. They had attended the same high school at the same time, though in a detail once again straight out of a Dick novel, neither Le Guin nor any of her high school class could afterward recall him in any of their classes or circles. I would argue that The Lathe of Heaven is also in conversation with the work of Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon was one of the first writers to introduce psychological realism into science fiction, exploring not only outer space but also the frontiers inside the human mind. Le Guin admired Sturgeon’s writing, and Sturgeon reviewed The Lathe of Heaven for the New York Times.

And now I have to digress for a moment, because I have so far only mentioned male writers to put Le Guin’s work into context, when Le Guin was part of a cadre of women writers who were beginning to publish science fiction. The first time I ever heard Le Guin speak was in 1996 at WisCon, a feminist science fiction convention still held annually in Madison, Wisconsin. She and the writer and editor Judith Merril were guests of honor, and I remember attending a live reading of Always Coming Home in which many of the writers present took part. So many of them were and are the literary descendants of Le Guin: Pat Murphy, Karen Joy Fowler, Nalo Hopkinson, myself. I remember Judith Merril zipping around the convention in an electric wheelchair, and the awarding of the Tiptree Award (now the Otherwise Award) to Le Guin for her short story Mountain Ways and to Mary Doria Russell for her novel The Sparrow. I remember Le Guin’s clarity, her humor, her presence, for lack of a better word.

At the time she wrote The Lathe of Heaven, Alice Sheldon was publishing groundbreaking short fiction under the pen name James Tiptree Jr., Kate Wilhelm was working as an editor and writer, while Joanna Russ was finishing The Female Man. Carol Emshwiller was writing the short stories that would become part of the collection Joy in Our Cause. These writers were all in conversation with each other—in their work, in their private correspondence, arguing with each other or praising each other in reviews and on panels and in other venues. There has long been an idea that science fiction can be viewed as a kind of conversation in narrative, with one writer responding to another writer’s book with a book of their own, building upon each other’s ideas, or setting out to correct one another’s errors. The field is, quite happily, now so large and varied that this conversation is more difficult to follow, and, in fact, I expect that the reader of this introduction may not be familiar with some of these writers. If so, I encourage you to seek them out. Le Guin certainly would have. And a final point: Le Guin had such a long, remarkable, and prolific career that it’s possible to see, quite plainly, how she also was in conversation with herself over the course of her career. Over time, as she wrote, she went back to revisit the characters and settings and events of earlier novels and ideas. Most notably, she returned to Earthsea, to consider why her school for wizards had only admitted men: Tehanu and the further Earthsea books are gorgeous, thoughtful complications and enlargements of her original trilogy.

When thinking of Le Guin’s body of work, I can’t help seeing it as a kind of landscape: a range of mountains, an archipelago of islands, an arrangement of celestial bodies in the sky by which other writers navigate. Science fiction is sometimes called the language of ideas, which gives dreams and the subconscious short shrift, I feel. Le Guin was an expert at navigating all of these territories, though. As for ideas, she understood they take their shapes and certainties from a moment in time, a particular culture and the terrain and climate it inhabits. She understands, too, that the inner spaces of the human psyche are connected to these landscapes.

As I reread The Lathe of Heaven this summer, it was striking how resonant Le Guin’s work remains in 2022, even as the future she describes, 2002, recedes into our past. Portland as a place of social upheaval, experimentation, revolutionary change; plagues; war; looming shortages; climate change; cramped housing; limited social services; the threat of volcanic eruption. I was reminded of contemporary popular online conspiracy theories that posit we now live in an alternate timeline; for example, the belief that the Berenstain Bears books were once the Berenstein Bears instead, before the world shifted minutely. The smaller details of The Lathe of Heaven, too, might as well be drawn from present day—for example, the ear buttons tourists wear as they wander, and the nightmarish dry riverbed beneath the funicular George Orr and Heather Lelache ride at the climax of the novel. The threat of multiple, nightmarish apocalypses hangs over the novel in a way that feels almost reassuring: the world is always ending, Le Guin seems to say, but it’s always beginning, too. Some readers may find George Orr a somewhat frustrating protagonist; he is especially atypical for a science fiction protagonist of the time. He’s as far from Robert Heinlein’s competent man as one can get, and yet Orr isn’t Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, either. Orr might prefer not to, but he isn’t opaque. We have access to his point of view, his reasoning. Eventually we discover that he is suffering through a profound trauma that lies at the heart of his power. Dr. Haber is disinterested in investigating and working to heal this trauma. Instead, he ignores it and deepens it. If you’ve ever had a bad therapist, this is an uncomfortable novel but also one that seems entirely plausible. Because I am a writer, though, I can’t help but see myself in both Orr and Dr. Haber—I’m suspicious of the places in my subconscious where stories come welling up, even though I am also grateful. I revise, as Haber does, in the hopes of making things better and to assert control. Like Orr, I would not wish for the power to change the world without its consent, even as I try to imagine other worlds, other Either/Ors.

Orr is much like the changeable mural on the wall of Haber’s office: a dormant volcano, a horse that is ridden by Haber, as, in folktales, witches ride the anxious dreamer. In fact, The Lathe of Heaven opens with three noteworthy descriptions of the natural world. There is a jellyfish, a dandelion, and Mount Hood. As this is a novel in which psychology features prominently, it seems permissible to look at what these might signify. A jellyfish, of course, might represent either passivity or a threat. A dandelion growing up from concrete is a symbol of frailty but also of persistence. Mount Hood, looming on the office wall, is a representation of permanence and also volatility. Like George Orr, who reads to other characters as a feminine man, they are markers of balance in which opposites are contained.

Le Guin was the daughter of the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and the psychologist and writer Theodora Kroeber. She was raised in a household rich in books—she was particularly en gaged by her father’s copy of the Tao Te Ching, and its DNA is richly seeded into this novel, though it is present in all of her writing and her ways of thinking. She grew up in Berkeley, attended Radcliffe and Columbia University, married, settled in Portland, Oregon, where she brought up three children and lived for most of her life. Her short stories began to appear in the magazines Fantastic Science Fiction and Amazing Stories in the early 1960s. Rocannon’s World was Le Guin’s first published novel (1966); her last was Lavinia (2008), though she continued to write and publish poetry and essays. When she died in 2018, she had been a writer, translator, editor, teacher, reviewer, and public lecturer for six decades. It would be difficult to name a modern writer whose contribution to American letters was more significant, more influential, more long-lasting, even though her best-known work was published in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and children’s literature. She wrote once of Philip K. Dick that the rejection by publishers of his early realistic novels forced him, harshly but fortunately, away from the glum realism of the fifties into broader regions of the imagination where he could find his own way. She might have been writing about herself here. Her early books, unpublished at the time, were in a realistic vein, and she began to write science fiction because she felt science fiction editors and readers would find their way into her work. And they did, and she went on writing the kind of science fiction that changed the genre around it.

Consider only the period between 1968 and 1974, which saw the publication of the original Earthsea trilogy (which more or less introduced the idea of magic schools into literature), The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed, and Robert Silverberg’s anthology New Dimensions 3, which contained Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas. The remarkable variety, speed, and genre-changing newness of Le Guin’s work in this period has an almost mythic quality to it. It isn’t the creation of the world in seven days, but seven years is nevertheless a startlingly short period of time in which to create so very many new worlds, as well as new ways of seeing the world(s) in which we live. George Orwell’s 1984 may have become a kind of perpetual reference point in political debate, but I would imagine that more people read Le Guin’s novels. The protagonist of The Lathe of Heaven is, of course, named George Orr, which can be read as a wink toward Orwell, but later on another character calls him, jokingly, Mr. Either Orr, a bit of wordplay Le Guin used more than once in reference to Oregon as a place of fantastical slippage as well as a state of mind. Le Guin’s meaning is seldom singular, and, like George Orr, she remade the world again and again in her books.

I’ve read most of Le Guin’s novels over and over again for consolation, for courage, for insight into how to live in the world, for instruction on how I might piece together narratives of my own. I find them astonishing and changeable and responsive to the place in time where I meet them. To write an introduction to a novel, generally, is like attempting to describe, in advance, the lineage and mechanics of a magic trick to the audience, who will shortly see the real thing for themselves. When the novelist in question is Ursula K. Le Guin, the situation is even more dubious—the more closely you look, the more the suspicion grows that there is no trick at all, only genuine magic and a genuine magician. Of course, the difference between a magician and a writer is that when the writer leaves the stage the story remains. The magic persists.

1

Confucius and you are both dreams, and I who say you are dreams am a dream myself. This is a paradox. Tomorrow a wise man may explain it; that tomorrow will not be for ten thousand generations.

—CHUANG TSE: II

Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moon-driven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.

But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking.…

What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?

---

His eyelids had been burned away, so that he could not close his eyes, and the light entered into his brain, searing. He could not turn his head, for blocks of fallen concrete pinned him down and the steel rods projecting from their cores held his head in a vise. When these were gone he could move again; he sat up. He was on the cement steps; a dandelion flowered by his hand, growing from a little cracked place in the steps. After a while he stood up, but as soon as he was on his feet he felt deathly sick, and knew it was the radiation sickness. The door was only two feet from him, for the balloonbed when inflated half filled his room. He got to the door and opened it and went through it. There stretched the endless linoleum corridor, heaving slightly up and down for miles, and far down it, very far, the men’s room. He started out toward it, trying to hold on to the wall, but there was nothing to hold on to, and the wall turned into the floor.

Easy now. Easy there.

The elevator guard’s face was hanging above him like a paper lantern, pallid, fringed with graying hair.

It’s the radiation, he said, but Mannie didn’t seem to understand, saying only, Take it easy.

He was back on his bed in his room.

You drunk?

No.

High on something?

Sick.

What you been taking?

Couldn’t find the fit, he said, meaning that he had been trying to lock the door through which the dreams came, but none of the keys had fit the lock.

Medic’s coming up from the fifteenth floor, Mannie said faintly through the roar of breaking seas.

He was floundering and trying to breathe. A stranger was sitting on his bed holding a hypodermic and looking at him.

That did it, the stranger said. He’s coming round. Feel like hell? Take it easy. You ought to feel like hell. Take all this at once? He displayed seven of the little plastifoil envelopes from the autodrug dispensary. Lousy mixture, barbiturates and Dexedrine. What were you trying to do to yourself?

It was hard to breathe, but the sickness was gone, leaving only an awful weakness.

They’re all dated this week, the medic went on, a young man with a brown ponytail and bad teeth. Which means they’re not all off your own Pharmacy Card, so I’ve got to report you for borrowing. I don’t like to, but I got called in and I haven’t any choice, see. But don’t worry, with these drugs it’s not a felony, you’ll just get a notice to report to the police station and they’ll send you up to the Med School or the Area Clinic for examination, and you’ll be referred to an M.D. or a shrink for VTT—Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment. I filled out the form on you already, used your ID; all I need to know is how long you been using these drugs in more than your personal allotment?

Couple months.

The medic scribbled on a paper on his knee.

And who’d you borrow Pharm Cards from?

Friends.

Got to have the names.

After a while the medic said, One name, anyhow. Just a formality. It won’t get ’em in trouble. See, they’ll just get a reprimand from the police, and HEW Control will keep a check on their Pharm Cards for a year. Just a formality. One name.

I can’t. They were trying to help me.

Look, if you won’t give the names, you’re resisting, and you’ll either go to jail or get stuck into Obligatory Therapy, in an institution. Anyway they can trace the cards through the autodrug records if they want to, this just saves ’em time. Come on, just give me one of the names.

He covered his face with his arms to keep out the unendurable light and said, I can’t. I can’t do it. I need help.

He borrowed my card, the elevator guard said. Yeah. Mannie Ahrens, 247-602-6023. The medic’s pen went scribble scribble.

I never used your card.

"So confuse ’em a little. They won’t check. People use people’s Pharm Cards all the time, they can’t check. I loan mine, use another cat’s, all the time. Got a whole collection of those reprimand things. They don’t know. I taken things HEW never even heard of. You ain’t

[sean3harton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Lathe of Heaven is Le Guin's "DIckian" book, by her own admission, somewhere. It has all the essentials of a P.K. Dick tome, the transformations, the fearful creep of authoritarianism, the cognitive dissonance writ large. But it springs from a radically different sensibility: one more Taoist, the "worship" of currents and slipstreams and pathways of least resistance, less psychedelic-messianic Christian, like Dick's style, with it's indirect urgencies and yearning to come into an impossible kind of crucifictionally sharp focus. It's a hell of a slipstream, this one, but ends with a re-beginning that may yet lead to some happy, or at least contented, ending offstage, where it must be dreamed of.

[maureencean · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Entertaining enough, a quick diversion.

[kslade-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good sci-fi. novel about dreams and how they are able to control reality.

[technodiabla · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this is audiobook format.

This 1971 dystopia sci-fi novel is about a man whose dreams alter reality and the psychotherapist who intends to harness this power. The story itself is utterly ridiculous, but it does raise interesting ethical and philosophical questions that are fun to ponder. It was also fun to to hear what the 1971 world thought about a future 2003. Some things were spot on, others way off. The two biggest topics were 1.) just because we can does that mean we should? and 2.) it there any point is regret or wishing things were different when our hoped for reality might not be so great after all? I am not a sci-fi fan; if you are, this is a classic and probably worth reading. I only finished it because it was short.

[sarcher-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

the lathe is real, haber is real, etc.

[castlelass · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Science fiction about a man, George Orr, whose “effective” dreams change the world’s reality. Published in 1971, it is set in Portland, Oregon, near the beginning of the 21st century. George has been taking drugs to suppress these dreams and has been sent to a Voluntary Treatment Program. George retains memories of prior “worlds” created by his dreams but there are only a few others that have this ability. Dr. Haber, a dream researcher, is one of them. He takes George as a patient and begins treatment using a machine he has invented. George believes Dr. Haber is trying to help him, and the doctor has good intentions, but his attempt to control George’s dreams leads to catastrophic results.

The concepts in this book take precedence over characters or plot. They show how different philosophies of life manifest in behavior, and ultimately, impact the quality of an individual’s life. George exhibits a passive philosophy of non-interference, and a desire to do no harm with his dreams. He feels extreme guilt when his dreams cause havoc. Dr. Haber, on the other hand, is into power and control. His vanity, and ambition lead him to try to “right the wrongs” of society. He views George as “a means to an end,” is egotistical enough to think he knows what needs to be done, and believes he can control the outcome, so in essence he is “playing God.” Debating the ideas set forth in this novel, especially the tension between dominance and passivity, could lead to some very interesting book club discussions.

I found the premise brilliantly conceived and extremely creative. LeGuin’s prose is magnificent, and enough science is included to make this fictional world seem plausible, or at least logical within the construct. I will be adding more of LeGuin’s works to my reading list.

I found it extremely clever, quite entertaining, and thought-provoking, so if you enjoy science fiction, I highly recommend it.

[questbird · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of Le Guin's earlier works (1971). A man has dreams which change reality, leaving him (only) with memories of what was before. His psychotherapist Dr Haber starts to exploit this 'gift'. It's a Philip K. Dick kind of premise and a similar run-down future urban setting to many of Dick's novels. Similarly the reality shifts from the 'effective' dreams. However Le Guin is more interested in the patient-therapist relationship. The patient, George Orr is totally normal and lacks all ambition. He is also completely sane, though he doubts it sometimes. That's where this starts to be very different from a Phil Dick novel, whose protagonists are never sure of their sanity. Le Guin uses some heavy-handed Taoist epigrams throughout the text, and Taoist ideas like the 'uncarved block', to remind the reader that George's 'gift' just is, and should not (and as it turns out, cannot) be channelled towards 'good works' by Dr Haber, or anyone.

[goblinbox_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I imagine a lot of people might find Orr a boring, passive protagonist, but he'd have to be. Anybody with the ability to move the entire universe onto a different track would have to be; the rest of us would just dream ourselves out of existence before things ever managed to get as fucked up as our good doctor manages.

I just love Le Guin, and it's a particular thrill to recognize all the place names she uses (because I was raised out here, east of Portland). Is the ending as strong and satisfying as it could be? No. Is it still a brilliant book and absolutely worth a read, even now? Absolutely.

[banjo123 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a good book! It's about George Orr who, when he wakes from dreaming, finds that his dreams have shaped reality and he wakes to a new world. This is distressing, so he turns to drugs to stop his dreaming, and is sent to a psychiatrist to help with his issues. The psychiatrist, realizing the power of George's dreams, sets to changing the world intending for it to be better. So, lots about power and control.

The book is set in Portland, and was written in 1971. It's very reflective of Portland during that era, so I enjoyed that about the book also. I love how aware of Climate Change Le Guin was, and how descriptive about how that could impact lives.

[laphenix · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Leagues away from what I typically pick up, I can’t pretend to grasp all the ideas broached in this dystopian novel. Though the writing style I’ve come to associate with dystopias is unvarying, the beautiful imagery, often lucidly symbolic, make this book more accessible. Written 40 years ago, the themes and setting don’t feel dated, and indeed the ideas addressed are ones society still weighs today. Le Guin’s choice to set the novel in a real location makes the city’s state in the different continua seem more realistic and plausible. Le Guin’s novel is a stirring and engaging read.

[daumari · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A man who can change reality through 'effective dreaming' under the influence of a psychologist who wants to fix everything? Recipe for a absorbing but very short read. Written in the early 70s but set approximately around the early 2000s, recommended for fans of dystopian examinations into can humans really fix things/should we have the power to do so/etc.

[xaverie_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I think this is actually my first - though obviously not my last - taste of Le Guin. Though my copy, a reprint from the early 80s, had quite a few typos which always draws me out of a story, overall I really enjoyed this story.

[thisisstephenbetts · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Future speculative fiction, can't really call it sci-Fi or fantasy. Very enjoyable - highly reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, but more focused, and also a little of Vonnegut. One of those books where one thing is outlandishly unrealistic, but the implications of it (rather than the reasons for it) are explored. Imaginative, humane.

[mmparker-213929 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Not one of my favorites of Le Guin. Another review here describes it as a rehearsal for The Dispossessed, written three years later; maybe having read that first spoiled Lathe for me a little.

[bramboomen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked a lot about this book. The characters are very good, Orr is easy to be kind of annoyed with, but I did not feel like being annoyed with him, so I didn't. These simple complexities are almost all of what I loved about this story. Le Guin's writing is also beautiful and it unexpectedly hooked me very early in the book. There is a kind of melancholy to it without shouting SAD in your face. I also loved how Le Guin easily mixed a lot of complex ideas together without it feeling forced.
My only problem with the writing was the few paragraphs where Le Guin felt like writing some profound and theatrical sentences. Instead of profound they came accross as pretentious and not very meaningful. It is probably mainly a personal preference but I felt that the deceptively simple story did not need explicit sections to remind me how profound the ideas are with which she is playing.

[lschiff-742783 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

An interesting premise, but it just didn't catch me in terms of the quality of the language and some of the plot turns and associated character developments. Also, the very unsubtle political critiques that felt somewhat inspired by a Cold War mentality were quite grating.

[narilka · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What if you could change the world by what you dream? What would you do? This idea is the premise for The Lathe of Heaven.

Talk about the unintended consequences of wielding unlimited power. It's like having a genie grant a wish - it never quite works out as intended. Very philosophical and thought provoking.

[dreamweaversunited · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I couldn't put this book down. My Kindle was glued to my hand all evening.

The best kind of book is the book where you have to stop every few pages just to think about all the implications of what you've just read. This is that kind of book.

[minaisham · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

-- LATHE OF HEAVEN was published in 1970. In the novel author Leguin mentions air pollution & overpopulation. In 2020 climate change is very much on people's minds. LATHE OF HEAVEN is set in Portland, Oregon. When a man is troubled with dreams & sleeps he visits a sleep scientist. The sleep scientist hypnotizes George Orr & makes suggestions while Orr is sleeping. The suggestions are manifested in real life. Orr consults an attorney because he doesn't approve of the scientist using him to improve the world. Orr realizes the "improvements" change the natural order of life. Plot sounds bizarre but in Leguin's capable hands it's believable. --

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wasn't sure at first that I was going to care for this science fiction book (despite the fact that I think Le Guin is one of the best sci fi/fantasy authors of our time). Unlike most of her books that I have read, this one is set here on Earth at a time contemporary (or nearly so) with ours. Overpopulation & climate change have made the quality of life much worse than that we (here in 'reality') have.

But of course, Le Guin didn't let me down and the plot offers lots to think about. George Guidall does a marvelous narration.

[vladmihaisima · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Great book, with a strange atmosphere and story. The subject is on "what would happen if dreams influence reality?" and is exposed in a very distorted and fluid way - perfect fit with the main subject. The story is not very complex but its evolution and play with the subject makes it interesting. The story is about the main character's ability to have dreams that change reality in uncontrolled ways. This makes him desire to stop dreaming to avoid bad things happening. He ends up treated by a psychologist that has a machine that enhances his dream state under the doctor's influence. Then the doctor tries to fix the world - but there are always unintended consequences that makes you wonder if it was worthy. Keeping the characters somehow consistent through the changing world is done very well and gives the opportunity to the writer to show slightly different sides of the characters.

[xiaomarlo · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting book to read before going to sleep. It's pretty standard science fiction, although you can totally see the Le Guin anthropological touches with the culture of the aliens and their concept of dreaming. (Perhaps influenced by "the dream-time" of Australian aboriginal people?) I like it, and I would recommend it to sci-fi and/or Le Guin fans -- it's just not particularly outstanding compared to some of her others.

[mbmackay · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful book. SciFi at its best. The plot and the characters rise above the details of the science and technology, so that after almost 50 years, the book remains readable and relevant - and enthralling. Sadly, so many other SciFi hits from that era have become anachronisms.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Le Guin's writing, and this short novel was just as powerful as many of her longer works. Revolving around the idea of what would come of a man who could ream things into being, the concept-driven novel is as interesting as it is packed with fear, curiosity, and wonder. Like some of Le Guin's other short novels which are driven by ideas just so much as plot or character, this is denser than some of her other works, but it's also rich and worthwhile.

Recommended.

[ahs7wolfy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

George Orr has a problem with his dreams. When he has what he terms an 'effective dream' it changes reality to match. What a cool ability to possess you might think? George's problem is that he has no control over what he dreams so he has tried all sorts of things to stop them from occurring. His current method is drugs but he's having to borrow other people's Pharmacy Card's so they're not all allocated to him and this leads to discovery and referral to a therapist as part of the Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment. Dr. William Haber, the psychiatrist Orr gets assigned to, soon realises that he can make use of this talent and improve the lot of mankind as well as helping himself along in the process. Unfortunately for Haber and the rest of the world, Orr doesn't always dream what Haber actually suggests and perceived results could have unforeseen consequences. Will the doctor find a way to get better results or perhaps even give his patient what he wants: to be cured of effective dreaming once and for all.

Touching on many of the big questions such as the nature of humanity and with social and political themes abounding even touching on environmental concerns and over-population which, for 1971 when this work was first published, is quite something. The story never meanders though and stays fixed within its main tenets which means it's a fairly quick read weighing in at under 200 pages. In lesser hands this story could get terribly confusing but I'm glad to say that wasn't the case here. It's a really enjoyable read and I'll certainly be looking for more of her work having only read some of the Earthsea stories previously.

[liscarey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

George Orr is a mild, unassuming man, a good draftsman, a man who has recently developed a mild drug abuse problem. This is discovered in part due to the pharmacy card that every citizen is issued. He's been making unauthorized use of other people's cards. It's not a very serious offense, at least at his level of abuse. Because he admits it, and another person admits to being one of his sources, he's only sent for Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment.

By chance, the psychiatrist he's assigned to is Dr. Haber.

This isn't the beginning of George's nightmare. George was using the drugs to suppress his dreams, and this is vital because some small percentage of George's dreams are what he calls "effective dreams." They change the world, and not just for him. He's the only one who even remembers that the world was ever different.

He tells Dr. Haber the truth, and manages to convince him. Haber promises to help, but instead begins manipulating George's dreams, in pursuit of his own ideas of a "better" world.

What follows is a strange, often dark, and fascinating adventure through alternating timelines, none of which work out exactly the way Haber intended. Haber grows increasingly frustrated; George grows increasingly alarmed--even as, along the way some positive and encouraging changes do happen. Yet even the good changes are often the result of horrific events that killed millions, and George feels responsible for those deaths.

He needs friends, help, a way out of the trap.

George is a very good man, with seemingly great power, who wants to do as little damage as possible. Haber is not really a bad man, and he is genuinely trying to make things better--but he does have a large ego and great personal ambition, too.

They and the whole world are on a roller coaster ride through an unpredictably changing world.

It's a fantastic, wonderful story. Highly recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

[dylanwolters · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A really great, introspective journey. The world within the book changes left and right as George continues to dream beyond his control. A fabulous look into learning to adapt and to accept. Man is not mean to be god, and that is for the better. Well worth the rather short read by anyone looking for a captivating journey full of intriguing plot shifts.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What you would do if you had access to unlimited power? Would you wield it to try to solve problems like overpopulation, warfare, and pollution, or would you be wary of it, knowing the dangers of ‘playing god’ may include all sorts of unintended consequences? This is the subtext to this story of a man who finds that he changes reality through some of his dreams, and turning to a psychiatrist to help him, finds himself being exploited.

Le Guin is an excellent writer, and keeps the story clean, not bringing in all sorts of additional characters or subplots, but at the same time, making us think about the human condition. There are elements of environmentalism, eastern philosophy, and man’s nature on display here. I love how we feel the angst of the world when the book was written, the fear of overpopulation, pollution, and clear references to the immorality of the Vietnam war (“He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in”) - yet at the same time, the book is ahead of its time, and timeless. As a lot of the best science fiction authors are, Le Guin is remarkably prescient about the future; to be warning of global warming because of greenhouse gasses in 1971 was impressive to me. She also envisages battery powered cars (‘batcars’), the inevitable uprising to end apartheid in South Africa, and a multitude of nations all armed with nuclear weapons.

Le Guin also occasionally injects little one-liner barbs into her prose, almost as if in her stream of consciousness, and they’re wonderful (“Look out for this woman. She is dangerous.” then later “…and so now she’d have heartburn. On top of pique, umbrage, and ennui. Oh, the French diseases of the soul.”). When the doctor is frowning and standing over his patient she injects “Your God is a jealous God”, which delivers on many levels, including a criticism of the doctor and a religion.

I loved how the book was set in Portland, and had a strong African-American woman character in the lawyer he enlists to help him. Most of all, I loved the blend of reality with dreams, self with universe, and the virtues of action vs. letting things be. Oh, and the turtle aliens too.

Quotes:
On dreams vs. reality, reminding me of Chuang-Tzu’s butterfly dream:
“George Orr, pale in the flickering fluorescent glare of the train car in the infrafluvial dark, swayed as he stood holding a swaying steel handle on a strap among a thousand other souls. He felt the heaviness upon him, the weight bearing down endlessly. He thought, I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.”

On the meaning of life:
“Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.”

On nature:
“She went to the door and stood half inside, half outside for a while, listening to the creek shouting and hollering eternal praise! eternal praise! It was incredible that it had kept up that tremendous noise for hundreds of years before she was even born, and would go on doing it until the mountains moved. And the strangest thing about it, now very late at night in the absolute silence of the woods, was a distant note in it, far away upstream it seemed, like the voices of children singing – very sweet, very strange.”

On oneness, it reminded me a lot of Alan Watts’ writings on Buddhism:
“…I’m a part of it. Not separate from it. I walk on the ground and the ground’s walked on by me, I breathe the air and change it, I am entirely interconnected with the world.”

On sex, interesting comment during the ‘sexual revolution’:
“The insistent permissiveness of the late twentieth century had produced fully as much sex-guilt and sex-fear in its heirs as had the insistent repressiveness of the late nineteenth century.”

And this one, on attraction:
“An irrelevant and poignant sensation of pleasure rose in him, like a tree that grew up and flowered all in one moment with its roots in his loins and its flowers in his mind.”

On the Taoist principle of wu wei, and the uncarved block.
“The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything.”

I loved this one too:
“Are there really people without resentment, without hate? she wondered. People who never go cross-grained to the universe? Who recognize evil, and resist evil, and yet are utterly unaffected by it?”

[booklove2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ursula K LeGuin proves herself a sci-fi pro yet again, in this compact, yet full of ideas dystopia. Written in 1971 but with a plot that takes place in 1998 (and reading the book for the first time 20 years after 1998) it becomes an interesting little experiment in time. George Orr (ring any bells?) finds himself able to have certain dreams that recreate reality. Much of the book involves George Orr talking with his dream therapist, in order to figure out how to stop the dreams. But the doctor wants something different. And of course an unconscious mind doesn't take dream direction very well... The book is a lovely little weird snippet of sci-fi. It reminded me of the Terry Gilliam movie 'Brazil'. The book takes place in Portland, Oregon which is a setting you don't see every day. I wonder if LeGuin was friends with Katherine Dunn? They were both awesome book ladies who lived in Portland, so I hope.

[stephlaymon · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

So many of you loved this, but it was painful as hell for me. Sure, it was thought provoking, and the end was good enough that it calmed my hot nerves enough to give it a 2-star, but man oh man was there ever A LOT of useless filler, and this book is only 200 pages long!