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The Lathe Of Heaven

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Arrives Tuesday, Jan 28
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Format: Paperback


Description

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. Read more


Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner; Reissue edition (January 31, 2023)


Language ‏ : ‎ English


Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages


ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1668017407


ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 01


Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.2 ounces


Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.52 x 8.38 inches


Best Sellers Rank: #21,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #405 in Dystopian Fiction (Books) #816 in Classic Literature & Fiction #6,386 in Fantasy (Books)


#405 in Dystopian Fiction (Books):


#816 in Classic Literature & Fiction:


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Top Amazon Reviews

    • To dream with a little help from my friends
** spoiler alert ** In 1975 Ursula K. Le Guin won both the Hugo and the Nebula for best novel for The Dispossessed. This was by no means the first time the same book had won both the Hugo and the Nebula. However, Le Guin had accomplished the same feat once before, in 1970 with The Left Hand of Darkness. As far as I knew at the time, she was the only author to have done this twice. (Arthur C. Clarke also did it, but later.) Therefore I read The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, and subsequently everything by Le Guin I could get my hands on. Thus I came to read The Lathe of Heaven. It is, I believe the first novel she wrote. It was not the first novel she published -- presumably the success of Left Hand of Darkness relieved the reluctance of some publishers. Le Guin was the apogee of a movement. At the time I read Lathe of Heaven it was still gospel among literary types that all Science Fiction was trash. Some more lenient ones only claimed that 90% of SF was trash, which led to Sturgeon's Law -- 90% of EVERYTHING is trash. (Most Fantasy, too, though The Lord of the Rings was beginning to make a dent.) Indeed, there are still an awful lot of Self-Consciously Serious Readers who believe that all SF is trash. There were F&SF authors who wanted to show that F&SF could be real literature. Le Guin was not the first of these in time (I've seen Brian Aldiss credited with that), but she was, in my opinion, the height of the movement, the author who made it difficult to dismiss all SF out of hand, and still does. (There is also, to be crass, the commercial success of F&SF in literature and on screens.) Lathe of Heaven is not Le Guin's best, but it is still very good. Recent reviews of Lathe of Heaven have a lot to say about how prescient it was. Since I read it around 1976, that had yet to appear. I liked the way it turns the "It was all just a dream" trope on its head. The point of the trope is to deny any importance to events that happen in the dream, because they aren't real. In Lathe of Heaven George Orr's dreams change reality. Psychiatrist William Haber tries to use Orr's gift to fix the world. He asks Orr to dream a dream in which there is no longer any racial strife. The result is a world in which everyone is gray-skinned and looks much the same. Then he asks Orr to dream a dream in which humans no longer fight. The result is an alien invasion that unites humanity. Haber is intensely frustrated by what he regards as Orr's incompetence. He ultimately develops the technology to confer Orr's gift upon himself. But when he tries to use it, he breaks reality. The aliens ultimately turn out to be cool, and to be familiar with the ability to dream new reality. They give Orr (I think -- it could be someone else, this is after all a 46-year-old memory for me) some advice about how to do it. They quote the Beatles song "With a Little Help from my Friends" and suggest that is the key. I remember being disappointed with that. It seemed a very pedestrian insight to reach after so strange a journey. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 7, 2022 by LA in Dallas
    • Interesting enough for me to read a book after almost 6 years of abstinence
I was looking to get back into reading and the concept for this one seemed interesting. Le Guin crafts a shorter story packed with commentaries on humanity and what it means to dream. Highly recommended.
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 29, 2023 by Zion Fox
    • Wonderful
This book grabbed a hold of me and never let go, it felt like a pleasant fever dream; controlled yet unbound as if it was a journey through rod Serlings twilight zone. As a fan of Phillip K Dick's novels, and indeed all of science fiction, I have to say the author went above and beyond in following in his footsteps and made her own proud mark on the genre. The sheer amount of wonder, philosophy, romance, meaning, and indeed humanity squeezed out of one simple thread being pulled on the fabric of our reality astonished and delighted me. I would recommend this to anyone who ever dreamed a dream, especially those who love sci fi since they dream even when not asleep. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 22, 2023 by Kindle Customer
    • Perchance to Dream Effectively
In his Aegypt cycle, John Crowley asks; what if the world was different once, but we don't remember? What if it changed again, and we thought the new world was the way it had always been? In The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin asks the same questions but adds - what if you could control that change? If you could have whatever you wished for, how carefully would you have to word those wishes? When George Orr dreams "effectively", the world changes to align with George's dream and only George notices that there has been a change. George lives in an overcrowded, humid, desolate Portland. It's the future humankind deserves, not having paid attention to The Greenhouse Effect. Depressed citizens like George live cheek by jowl on poor food and overdose on drugs from auto-dispensaries (until they die from pollutant cancer). George admits himself, not entirely voluntarily, for Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment and reports to psychiatrist Dr William Haber's Efficiency Suite which is (take note) dominated by a mural of Mount Hood. Although George cannot control his dreams, the not so subtle Dr Haber can, and does - sort of. Dr Haber can improve humankind's lot, even if George is a bit lily-livered, so he gives it his best shot. Of course George is not the cipher he seems to be and things just won't go the way Dr Haber wants. Le Guin can be preachy and less than subtle. Climate change bad. Communism bad. Being nice to each other good. This book was published in 1971 and at times it shows- "Are there really people without resentment, without hate? she wondered. People who never go cross-grained to the universe? Who recognise evil, and resist evil, and yet are utterly unaffected by it? Of course there are. Countless, the living and the dead. Those who have returned in pure compassion to the wheel, those who follow the way that cannot be followed without knowing they follow it, the sharecropper's wife in Alabama and the lama in Tibet and the entomologist in Peru and the millworker in Odessa and the greengrocer in London and the goatherd in Nigeria and the old, old man sharpening a stick by a dry streambed somewhere in Australia, and all the others. There is not one of us who has not known them There are enough of them, enough to keep us going. Perhaps." But when she is on form - as she is at the climax of the book, we see why she maintains her reputation as a great of science fiction - "Up on the top story, the floor was ice. It was about a finger's width thick, and quite clear. Through it could be seen the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. Orr stepped out onto it and all the stars rang loud and false, like cracked bells. The foul smell was much worse, making him gag. He went forward, holding out his hand. The panel of the door of Haber's outer office was there to meet it; he could not see it but he touched it. A wolf howled. The lava moved toward the city." The turtle-like Aliens who are gentle and wise (in at least one verson of Orr's world), speak in a charming formal manner laced with quotes from Shakespeare. They call George "Jor Jor" and one of them even runs an antiques store in a forgotten slum area under a broken freeway. Familiar? The explanation for their change from antagonistic to friendly (it was all a misunderstanding) is humorously dealt with and far more effective than the same trope in Card's Ender's Game. The sub-conscious, sleep, race, mismatched couples are all blocks to Le Guin's lathe. This is a slight book but resonant. The beginning needs to be rethought when the last page is read and that is always a good thing. ... show more
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 16, 2016 by Lesley Jenkins
    • interesting to follow thru the rabbit hole
A strange premise explored in interesting ways. Not fully connected but 98%. And the characters make pleasant guides I recommend
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 13, 2023 by MLSreality

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