The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K Le Guin

Publisher Gollancz

First Published – 1971

George Orr is a mild and unremarkable man who finds the world a less than pleasant place to live: seven billion people jostle for living space and food. But George dreams dreams which do in fact change reality - and he has no means of controlling this extraordinary power.

Psychiatrist Dr William Haber offers to help. At first sceptical of George's powers, he comes to astonished belief. When he allows ambition to get the better of ethics, George finds himself caught up in a situation of alarming peril.

The next novel Le Guin wrote after Tombs of Atuan is Lathe of Heaven and this new read for me again struck me both a departure and quite experimental. We are so used to a story being about the need to act – make something happen or stop something happen. Kill the bad guy, save the world and many other combinations. In The Lathe of Heaven its actually the action of learning not to act which is the key which fifty years later while I’ve a few issues I find still it feels both quite remarkable and relevant to today.

George Orr is arrested for being on drugs. He is assigned as is normal a ‘voluntary’ therapy session to avoid further punishment. He is assigned Dr Haber and in the course of their sessions Orr explains that he takes drugs as he fears his dreams. Since he was a young man Orr has discovered his dreams can change reality and he increasingly fears what he could do to the world while he sleeps. Initially disbelieving Haber becomes convinced in Orr’s ability and decides to develop the ability for his own agenda. The world rapidly changes in unforeseen ways and eventually this partnership needs to end.

Let’s have a quick look at the world Le Guin creates here as we’re unusually fully on Earth a revised version of the early twenty-first century. It has not got the pseudo-feudal worlds of the Hanish we kept visiting in earlier novels and it’s not got the lovely poetical nature of the Earthsea tales to date. Instead, this is a gritty, claustrophobic world in its first incarnation. As was very common for the period overpopulation shows up – not enough food for everyone, very cramped living conditions and a feeling of a world strung out and as we hear in news reports at war with multiple nuclear powers. Psychotherapy is very popular as a form of treatment but I could have easily done without a brief mention of a repressed homosexual eventually abusing children which fed into some of the worst stereotypes however well-meaning it was meant to be about repressed natures being helped. Very sobering is the mention of the Greenhouse Effect now in motion but Le Guin slightly assumes some areas of America win and lose so that feels quaint with what we know today but again it adds to a feeling that the world isn’t safe, its fragile and full of dangers. From a 2025 viewpoint in some ways its different dangers in the detail but the feeling its all going wrong isn’t going to feel unusual to most readers.

At the heart of this then is the fascinating dynamic of Orr and Haber. If Left Hand of Darkness is two people learning to accept one another here we get a dynamic that in many ways becomes toxic. It would be very easy to make Haber an evil megalomaniac therapist using mind powers for his own ends. But he’s just initially a therapist with a poor manner, patients are problems not people, he talks condescendingly to George, but it all comes through standard approaches. It is in the little things we get clues – he tells us his dreams are often about becoming a hero, his relationships are quite empty, and he often talks to George more as if he was a pet. Haber is a man that wants to make things better and thinks they’re easy problems to solve. He’d given the keys to creation he thinks when he discovers George can alter reality and unusually Haber gets to be aware of the changes too. Which should you’d think make Orr the victim and yet he is in many ways equally culpable – he knows he can cause harm but finds the offer of good drugs for most days helping him, he likes someone being in charge of him. A strange clue to why George may have this ability is that he is apparently extremely normal – the most average height, weight and perfectly in the middle of emotional responses. He goes with the flow and Haber in many ways is the dominant partner but the story does make you realise George too needs to take some ownership.

Which comes to the philosophical nature of the book and this in many ways does feel in keeping with le Guin’s earlier stories exploring senses of self, relationships but here as the many quotes from or about eastern philosophy ask - is it better to act or not? Orr’s ability only works at a subconscious level, it’s the nature of dreams to be symbolic and so Haber goes in thinking he can say let’s solve overpopulation and that means history is rewritten with a huge plague that effectively wipes out from existence 6 billion people in a chilling mix of matter of factly and watching the world just change in a few seconds. Le Guin puts us in the centre of the storm, watching buildings vanish, memories be re-written and we get to feel what Orr does knowing that they were responsible, and they’re changed whole history.

The message is that however well-meaning you may want to be ‘simple’ changes to our world aren’t easy to make well and not without consequences. You want global peace then its appears uniting the world against invading aliens is the easy answer but that creates new horrors and risks, you want the removal of racial tensions then let’s make everyone grey-skinned but then you find the world is bland on culture, food and yet still finds scarily to find new tensions this time around a clean and healthy gene pool and no illness will be tolerated. It is not hard with modern eyes to hear in Haber back then the man of psychology who is now replaced by the man of smart technology or populist politician saying if only I was in charge I’d fix everything very very quickly. Le Guin is very much saying that’s not possible. You can’t just externally change things to how you feel they need to be. Orr’s journey is unusually about not using the power he is given because however tempting it is these changes are better done within a community not through a single individual and their vision of the world.

I really liked how the third key characters Heather is used by le Guin to make us see how Haber doesn’t really see people as people and finds him quite frightening in his way he treats George but also she sees George’s issues too. He needs to remove that de-dependency on Haber. In each version of the world Haber somehow becomes more powerful and central to how the world operates – George accepts that while Heather sees him as increasingly dangerous. There is a touch of the instalove. Le Guin makes heather mixed race and while encouraging in this time there are some heavy handed comments that such makes a person more likely to be angry and not prepared to accept things that sounds a compliment but feels a little basic in how its simply labelled on her. The ultimate ending is fascinating its about power, choices and consequences. Do you use it even when warned?

The Lathe of Heaven packs a lot into just 184 pages – the economic nature of this for me was a plus and makes its arguments much more punchier. Those expecting lots of exterior action may be disappointed even alien invasions are handled in two or three pages and characters tell us about car crashes they had rather than we experience them ourselves. This is far more a story fo ideas, concepts and subtle arguments with thought experiments to play with. We are asked well what would we do if we had this and Le Guin underlines no one really should try this alone. It the kind of big chewy read I sense I’ll be coming back to a lot over the years to come. Yes, it’s a classic for a reason and strongly recommended.