The Lathe of Heaven : A Novel (Perennial Classics)
by Ursula K. Le Guin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ursula K. Le GuinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2003-09-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 176
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Book Reviews of The Lathe of Heaven : A Novel (Perennial Classics)
Book Review: A dystopian thriller for a philosopher
Summary: 5 Stars
As with everything she writes, Ursula Le Guin has crafted some rich, beautiful and somewhat sad (though never depressing) characters and set them in a world of wildest intrigue. Renowned for her "social/anthropological experimentation" in her sci-fi novels, Le Guin sets this novel on earth in Portland, OR, to be exact) and gives us a dystopian future novel that is so imaginative and fascinating that it feels we are on another world by the end of it (aliens do, in fact, visit earth briefly). As wacky as that and the premise of the book--what happens if whatever you dream becomes reality?--it is not a wacky or funny story, and is all the more stirring and endearing for it.
Our reluctant protagonist, George Orr, is a quiet, unassuming man who starts out very much as a victim. A mysterious and terrible past/true reality is hinted at the very beginning, but we first come to rest in a slightly and predictably dystopian future where overpopulation, pollution and all the things that are bound to happen in fifty years' time have happened. George is caught taking illegal doses of a dream-suppressing drug and sent to see a state shrink as punishment. In actuality, all George wants is to keep from dreaming so that he won't end up accidentally changing the world in a terrible way while sleeping, but his psychiatrist--a robust and arrogant but unusually well-meaning alpha male type--decides that he wants to use George's power to change the world for the better--whether George consents to it or not! As the good doctor's hypnosis-induced dreaming forces him to dream away world problems (and inadvertently, five-sixths of the world's population), George must find a way to escape his mad benefactor and somehow make reality right again.
A fascinating tale told by one of the most brilliant authors in fiction today--definitely worth reading!
Summary of The Lathe of Heaven : A Novel (Perennial Classics)
George Orr is a man who discovers he has the peculiar ability to dream things into being -- for better or for worse. In desperation, he consults a psychotherapist who promises to help him -- but who, it soon becomes clear, has his own plans for George and his dreams.
The Lathe of Heaven is a dark vision and a warning -- a fable of power uncontrolled and uncontrollable. It is a truly prescient and startling view of humanity, and the consequences of playing God.
Ursula K. Le Guin is one of science fiction's greatest writers. She is also an acclaimed author of powerful and perceptive nonfiction, fantasy, and literary fiction. She has received many honors, including six Nebula and five Hugo Awards, the National Book Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Newbery, the Pilgrim, the Tiptree, and citations by the American Library Association. She has written over a dozen highly regarded novels and story collections. Her SF masterworks are The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), The Dispossessed (1974), and The Lathe of Heaven (1971).
George Orr has dreams that come true--dreams that change reality. He dreams that the aunt who is sexually harassing him is killed in a car crash, and wakes to find that she died in a wreck six weeks ago, in another part of the country. But a far darker dream drives George into the care of a psychotherapist--a dream researcher who doesn't share George's ambivalence about altering reality.
The Lathe of Heaven is set in the sort of worlds that one would associate with Philip K. Dick, but Ms. Le Guin's treatment of the material, her plot and characterization and concerns, are more akin to the humanistic, ethically engaged, psychologically nuanced fiction of Theodore Sturgeon. The Lathe of Heaven is an insightful and chilling examination of total power, of war and injustice and other age-old problems, of changing the world, of playing God. --Cynthia Ward
LeGuin, Ursula K. Books
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