The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le GuinMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
One of the most [implicitly] terrifying and sinister scenarios I’ve ever seen in a sci-fi. What if your dreams really could rewrite the nature of reality? And what if someone tried to take advantage of your ability to do so? And I guess on a more abstract level, would anyone really have the right to harness such a power?
I’m almost reminded of Death Note except on a much grander scale: it’s one thing to supernaturally kill people off; it’s another to just rewrite them out of existence and everyone else’s memories altogether… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg here.
In this book, Le Guin manages to take a deceptively simple premise- the reality-altering power of dreams- and use it to explore a ton of other crazy philosophical ideas and possibilities from a wide range of other utopian/dystopian tropes. You wouldn’t even recognize it as a sci-fi until some of the later changes, some of which actually made me giddy for reasons I won’t spoil. I found myself wondering why there wasn’t already a movie of this, until I did a wiki search and saw that there’s already been two movie adaptations. I’m clearly behind the times.
The implications that Le Guin derives can feel a little heavy-handed at times, being not-so-subtly critical of utilitarianism and practically everything that the psychologist Haber does against George's conscience, and especially considering how conveniently inconvenient George’s power can be at the worst possible moment, but at the same time the concerns espoused are natural and valid ones. The novelty of the premise and the way the rest of the story developed were enough for me to get past that and just enjoy the ride, anyway... along with the interesting ideas.
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