★★★★☆ To dream with a little help from my friends

The Lathe of Heaven

Ursula K Le Guin

** 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. (Most Fantasy, too, though The Lord of the Rings was beginning to make a dent.) Some more lenient ones only claimed that 90% of SF was trash, which led to Sturgeon's Law -- 90% of EVERYTHING is trash. 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 turned 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.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

Comments

★★★☆☆ Be wary. Be clever. Be good.

One Dark Window Rachel Gillig I finished One Dark Window with a feeling of dissatisfaction, that I'm having a hard time explaining. When I updated my progress at 57%, I remarked "Too much smolder, too little actual fire." By that I meant that it seemed as if Rachel Gillig spent all her time telling us how to feel, and too little describing actual events. Now, objectively, that is false. One Dark Window is full of event -- there are battles and magic spells and romance. Yet, somehow, I can't shake the impression. If you asked me to summarize the plot of One Dark Window , I would find it difficult. Even though I just finished it last night, I have a hard time remembering the events of the story, or arranging them into any semblance of order -- salient/nonsalient, this happened because of that... The Acknowledgements provide a small hint of the nature of the problem. Gillig writes, "To John, my husband who brags about me, holds and feed...

★★★☆☆ Mostly interesting for the juggling lore

Lord Valentine's Castle Robert Silverberg I remember that I was a grad student in biochemistry when I read Robert Silverberg 's Lord Valentine's Castle . I was a grad student from 1976 - 1983, so I must have read it not long after it came out in 1979. I read it because I am and always have been a science fiction fan, and Silverberg has a BIG reputation -- I had read praise of him from many of my favorite authors. So I got this novel and read it. I never read another book by Silverberg , which probably tells you everything you need to know about my opinion. What's the book about? Well, the publisher's blurb begins thus Valentine, a wanderer who knows nothing except his name, finds himself on the fringes of a great city, and joins a troupe of jugglers and acrobats; gradually, he remembers that he is the Coronal Valentine, executive ruler of the vast world of Majipoor, and all its peoples, human and otherwise... This plot summary reminds me of the following qu...

★★★★☆ Alana in show-biz

Saga, Volume 4 Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples (Illustrator) If you're like me, your first question on seeing Saga, Volume 4 is, "Who is that woman on the cover?" That, my dear friend, is Alana. About halfway through Volume 3 Alana and Marko had a brief conversation about The Circuit, which is a performance venue of some kind that people can tune into with a virtual reality helmet. Before she became a soldier, Alana harbored ambitions of performing on the Circuit. Now that their lethal pursuit has been temporarily distracted or put out of commission, they're focused on making some kind of living. Marko encouraged her to audition. So now Alana is performing on the Circuit, and what you see on the cover is her bewigged with wings bound and hidden in order to perform. She's the family breadwinner. Marko is a househusband, staying home and taking care of Hazel. The Marko-Alana-Hazel story in this volume is a bit dull. Without giving away any spoilers, it's kin...

★★★★☆ Murder and cats

Head On John Scalzi The title of John Scalzi 's Head On is what they call "antiphrasis" in rhetoric, or "flipping it" in Baltimore (at least, according to The Wire ). Head On is about a sport called "Hilketa" (that's Basque for "murder"), in which players knock each other's heads off and attempt to throw them through a goal. But fear not! The players are Hadens using threeps (that is, telepresence robots, as you know if you've read Lock In ), and they only knock the heads off of threeps. This, of course, is harmless to the Haden piloting the threep. So, as sports go, it is more violent than, say rugby or NASCAR, but less harmful to the players. Until it isn't. In the course of a game, player Duane Chapman loses his head (literally) three times, then dies -- for real. Chris Shane, our favorite Haden FBI agent and World Champion Destroyer of Threeps, happens to be at the game when Chapman dies. Soon he and his partner Les...

★★★★☆ Making heroes of Rednecks and Hillbillies

Demon Copperhead Barbara Kingsolver You already know that Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver is a retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens . Indeed, it is so faithful a retelling that, if the publisher had not already spilled the beans, I would feel compelled to mark this review a spoiler because of mentioning David Copperfield . If you have read David Copperfield at all recently, then you will recognize the characters and the major plot points as you read Demon Copperhead . (I last read David Copperfield when I was a kid in the late 1960s, so I was blessedly free from this detailed anticipation as I read Demon Copperhead . I did, however, check out the Wikipedia plot summary of David Copperfield on finishing Demon Copperhead , so I'm up to speed on both plot outlines.) And this, I say, is absolutely fine! If you're going to steal, by all means, steal from the best! I am co...

★★★★☆ Which Thursday?

One of Our Thursdays Is Missing Jasper Fforde This installment of Jasper Fforde 's Thursday Next series features a new main character. Actually, she's not quite new -- we met her in First Among Sequels . She is Thursday Next - 5, the fictional Thursday Next in an unsuccessful fifth Thursday Next book promoted because Thursday, the Real World Thursday, was unhappy with her own portrayal in the series. This introductory scene from First Among Sequels will give you a pretty good idea of her personality But I did bring you some breakfast.’ ‘Well, in that case . . .’ I looked into the bag she handed me and frowned.‘Wait a minute – that doesn’t look like a bacon sandwich.’ ‘It isn’t. It’s a crispy lentil cake made with soya milk and bean curd. It cleanses the bowels. Bacon definitely will give you a heart attack.’ ‘How thoughtful of you,’ I remarked sarcastically. ‘The body is a temple, right?’ ‘Right. And I didn’t get you coffee because it r...

★★☆☆☆ Nudge nudge wink wink

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Laurence Sterne I was a high-school student when I tried to read Laurence Sterne 's Tristram Shandy . This was a mistake. If you read a lot of old books, you come to know of other, even older books that are mentioned by the authors of the less old ones. I don't know how many Tristram Shandy -reading gentlemen I encountered in 19th century English literature. (Always gentlemen -- although I rather suspect 19th century ladies read Tristram Shandy , few 19th-century authors would dare to feature a Tristram Shandy -reading female.) One can easily imagine Mr Bennett chuckling at Tristram Shandy , although if he did, Jane Austen doesn't tell us so. So, I tried to read it. It's supposed to be funny. It was frustrating. High-school me kept hoping something would happen, but nothing ever does. In fact, that is kind of the point. Sterne is masterful at filling pages with text and yet so...

★★★★☆ Murderbot is not all there

System Collapse Martha Wells In my review of Rogue Protocol I described Murderbot as "the adorably cuddly ball of barbed-wire that she naturally is". But Murderbot's bristling exterior has been breached. In Network Effect Murderbot encountered alien remnant contamination, which did something -- she's not quite sure what -- to her. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I had told Mensah. “I think you might know,” she had said. “You just don’t want to talk about it.” She is definitely not 100%, and she knows it. In fact, her knowing it is something like 80% of the problem -- Murderbot is suffering from that oh-so-familiar-to-humans problem, a failure of self-confidence. She needs help, and her relationships, always an uncomfortable subject for Murderbot, with "her" humans and with ART are essential. Short bookkeeping note here: although Network Effect is nominally book 5 and Fugitive Telemetry book 6 in The Murderbot Diaries , the chron...

★★★★☆ It's in the blood

Murder of Crows Anne Bishop Murder of Crows , the second novel in Anne Bishop 's The Others series, begins with Meg kicking Simon out of her bed. That doesn't mean what you probably think it means. Simon wakes Meg up from a scary dream, and in her sudden fright, she literally kicks him. But what was Simon doing in Meg's bed? He was sleeping. Yes, Simon and Meg are sleeping with each other. But that, while literally true, doesn't mean what the phrase usually means. Near the end of Written in Red , Meg was attacked by a team of kidnappers/murderers and almost killed. In Murder of Crows she's still working through some post-traumatic stress. Having a warm, friendly, scary-safe wolf in bed with her makes it easier for her to sleep. Simon and Meg are not romantically involved with each other, but their relationship was an important plot thread of Written in Red , continues to be important in Murder of Crows , and, I confidently predict, will be...

Search This Blog