The Lathe of Heaven  

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β€œThe buildings of downtown Portland, the Capital of the world, the high, new, handsome cubes of stone and glass interspersed with measured doses of green, the fortresses of Government – Research and Development, Communications, Industry, Economic Planning, Environmental Control – were melting. They were getting soggy and shaky, like jello left out in the sun. The corners had already run down the sides, leaving great creamy smears.”--The Lathe of Heaven (1971) by Ursula K. Le Guin

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The Lathe of Heaven is a 1971 science fiction novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. The plot revolves around a character whose dreams alter reality. The story was first serialized in the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories. The novel received nominations for a Hugo and a Nebula Award, and won the Locus Award for Best Novel in 1972. Two television film adaptations have been released: the acclaimed PBS production, The Lathe of Heaven (1980), and Lathe of Heaven (2002), a remake produced by the A&E Network.

Contents

Plot summary

George Orr

The novel is set in Portland, Oregon. George Orr is a draftsman and has long been abusing drugs to prevent himself from dreaming effectively. Orr is forced to undergo "voluntary" psychiatric care for his drug abuse, under threat of being placed in an asylum.

It is set ca. 2002. Greenhouse warming has taken hold, and there is also overpopulation, famine, malnutrition, global warming, and urban blight. Portland has three million inhabitants and continuous rain. It is deprived enough for the poorer inhabitants to have kwashiorkor, protein-deprivation, as in Harry Harrison's SF novel Make Room! Make Room!.

The culture is much the same as the 1970s USA, though impoverished. Hippies are still around, some still living and dressing exactly as they did in the 1960s. There is also a massive war in the Middle East, with Egypt and Israel allied against Iran.

Haber

George begins attending therapy sessions with an ambitious psychiatrist and sleep researcher named William Haber. Orr claims that he has the power to dream "effectively" and Haber seeks to use it to change the world. His experiments with a biofeedback/EEG machine nicknamed the Augmentor enhance Orr's abilities and produce a series of increasingly intolerable alternate worlds, based on an assortment of utopian (and dystopian) premises familiar from other science fiction works:

  • When Haber directs George to dream a world without racism, the skin of everyone on the planet becomes a uniform light gray.
  • An attempt to solve the problem of overpopulation proves disastrous when George dreams a devastating plague which wiped out much of humanity and gives the current world a population of one billion rather than seven billion.
  • George attempts to dream into existence "peace on Earth" - resulting in an alien invasion of the Moon which unites all the nations of Earth against the threat.

Doubts

Each effective dream gives Haber more wealth and status, until late in the book where he is effectively ruler of the world. Orr's economic status also improves, but he is unhappy with Haber's meddling and just wants to let things be. He becomes increasingly frightened by Haber's lust for power and delusions of Godhood. He seeks out a lawyer named Heather to represent him against Haber, and while he falls in love with her and even marries her in one reality, this effort is unsuccessful in getting him out of therapy.

George tells Heather that the "real world" had been destroyed in a nuclear war in April 1998. George dreamed it back into existence as he lay dying in the ruins. He doubts the reality of what now exists, hence his fear of Haber's efforts to improve it. The war apparently escalated from a conflict between Egypt and Israel - presumably George dreamt an alternative history in which they somehow became allies. thumb|Portland and Mount Hood play a central role in the setting of the novel Heather has seen one change and has a multiple memory - remembering that her pilot husband either died early in the Middle East War or else died just before the truce that ended the war in the face of the alien threat. She tries to help George but also tries to improve the world, saying that the aliens should no longer be on the moon. George dreams this, but this results in them having invaded the Earth instead. In the resultant fighting, Mount Hood is struck and the dormant volcano starts to erupt again.

They go back to Haber, who has George dream another dream in which the aliens are actually peaceful. For a time there is stability, but Haber goes on changing things. His suggestion that George dream away racism results in everyone becoming gray. Heather, whose parents were of different races, never existed in this new reality. George manages to dream up a gray version of her, married to him and with a less prickly personality. Mount Hood continues to erupt and he fears the world is losing coherence.

Results

Eventually, Haber becomes frustrated with Orr's resistance and decides to take on effective dreaming himself. Haber's first effective dream represents a significant break with the realities created by Orr, and threatens to destroy reality altogether. Orr is able to shut off the Augmentor - even as coherent existence is falling apart - reaching the "off" switch through pure force of will. The world (universe?) is saved, but random bits of the various recent realities are now jumbled together. Haber's mind is left broken. Heather, presumably her original self, exists, though with only a slight memory of George.

Viewpoints

"One of the best novels, and most important to understanding of the nature of our world, is Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven, in which the dream universe is articulated in such a striking and compelling way that I hesitate to add any further explanation to it; it requires none." --Philip K. Dick


Though technology plays a minor role, the novel is largely concerned with philosophical questions about our desire to control our destiny, with Haber's positivist approach pitted against a Taoist equanimity. The beginnings of the chapters also feature quotes from H.G. Wells, Victor Hugo and Taoist sages. Due to its portrayal of psychologically-derived alternate realities, it has often been described as Le Guin's tribute to Philip K. Dick. In his biography of Dick, Lawrence Sutin described Le Guin as having "long been a staunch public advocate of Phil's talent". According to Sutin, "The Lathe of Heaven was, by her own acknowledgment, markedly influenced by his [Dick's] sixties works." The book is critical of psychiatry.Template:Fact Orr, a deceptively mild yet very strong and honest man, is labeled sick because he is immensely frightened by his ability to change reality. He is forced to undergo therapy whether he wants to or not. His efforts to rid himself of Haber are viewed as suspect because he is a psychiatric patient. Haber, meanwhile, is very charming, extroverted, and confident, yet it is he who eventually goes insane and almost destroys reality. He dismisses Orr's qualms about meddling with reality with paternalistic psychobabble, and is more concerned with his machine and Orr's powers than with curing his patient.

See also




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