I’ve been a Le Guin fan for a long time, but hadn’t previously read much beyond her greatest hits (the Dispossessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Earthsea series) and some short stories. The Lathe of Heaven isn’t a book I’d heard mentioned previously. I believe I came across the title referenced in a Guardian comments section. I’ve gotten some good recommendations that way.
The Lathe of Heaven follows George Orr, a draftsman on the edge of poverty with the bizarre ability to alter reality through his dreams. He regularly wakes to find the world fundamentally different than it had been when he went to sleep the night before, with no one but him recognizing the change. His desire to stave off these “effective” dreams leads him to illegally acquire drugs from a state-run Pharmacy, a crime for which he is caught and forced into therapy. (The world, or worlds, in the book are different from—and worse than—our own in ways that are referenced obliquely through dialogue, lending the metatextual possibility that our original world was the first to be obliterated by one of Orr’s dreams)
His court-appointed psychologist is Dr. Haber, whose research into an innovative device called an Augmentor allows him to control dream states. He uses it to trigger an effective dream and, as he is present for the moment of transformation, learns that Orr’s powers are not simply a delusion but real and immense. This sets off the principal conflict of the book. Orr believes the act of reimagining the world is fundamentally immoral, regardless of whether things are superficially improved, while Haber claims it is their duty to dream away the ills of society and create a more utopian world (though it’s notable that his own station in life improves with every dream, bringing him from an obscure psychologist to head of an esteemed dream institute, while Orr remains a lowly draftsman throughout).
Hoping to extract himself from Haber’s grasp, Orr enlists the help of a human rights lawyer named Lelache, who becomes the third person to learn of his strange power. A subtle but effective love story grows between this pair, giving extra dimension ot the main story’s twists and turns. The dynamic is a good one, with Haber more self-interested and idealistic than outright villainous, and Orr and Lelache’s attempts to control his dreams doing more harm than good.
The tone of the story aligns with the major theme of dream life. It also reminds me of the works of Philip K. Dick (a classmate of Le Guin’s incidentally; funny how one high school graduating class produced wo of the most distinct and influential science fiction writers of the 20th century), with its preoccupation with the uncertain nature of reality. Her prose, as always, is excellent. Though her penchant for wordplay sometimes goes a littler overboard for me, I can’t deny her skill. Definitely a book from her canon worth reading.
