The Lathe of Heaven

The Lathe of Heaven, A science fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin (1971) 175 pages.

George Orr has been terrified of dreaming lately, since his dreams can change
the reality.

It's not that things simply happen later according to his dream. For that
there is the more comfortable explanation of prophesy. George is deadly sure
that his dreams actively change things because the changes are retroactive.
If he dreams of a pink dog, when he wakes up there will not only be a pink
dog, but also people who take it for granted that pink dogs have been around
throughout millennia.

Desperate to stop his dreams, George started abusing drugs, got busted and
wound up in the hands of a psychotherapist Dr. Haber. Haber quickly saw a
potential in George’s dreams in creating a better world (in the book the
current one is pretty awful). Things quickly whirled out of control, stopped
short of total catastrophe – for the sake of curious readers I’ll stop here.

Utopia or Dystopia?

Humanity’s quest for an ideal society has been around since the time of Plato
and Confucius. The advance of modern technology has, however, added a
sinister twist to this ancient pursuit. Starting with Huxley’s “Brave New
World”, people (at least Westerners) get suspicious whenever a “social
improvement plan” is proposed.

I personally cannot see the alternative, i.e. leaving the world as it is, is a
better option. Indeed, the quest for utopia can turn the society into a
dystopia. Yet all human communities have the natural tendency of sliding
towards chaos (2nd law of thermodynamics J ), unless it is constantly offset
by a counter effort. Furthermore, the claim that non-technological means are
somewhat safer is questionable, too. Technology going awry has brought us
biochemical weapons, Hiroshima and thalidomide, on one hand. On the other
hand non-tech methods applied wrongly lead to the Spanish Inquisition, Gulag
and 9/11. If one goes by the numbers, the latter has caused far more human
misfortune.

Le Guin was the daughter of two anthropologists and the wife of a historian.
Her Sci-fi works focus heavier on exploring human societies than the
technological frontiers. Her best known work “The Dispossessed” (Nebula
1974, Hugo1975) describes an anarchist society that is supposed to be a
utopia but actually has many subtle shades. “The Lathe of Heaven” is a much
shorter and simpler variation on this topic. Haber’s seemingly perfect
“dream machine” failed to control the effect of George dreams is a subtle
allegory of the difficulty with utopias. When Haber told him to dream
everlasting peace among people, the result is an invasion of space aliens that
united humans on earth.

Personal Self-Determination

George has been perceived by both Haber and Heather (at least in the
beginning) as a spineless, will less creature. Yet as the story progresses
George gradually turned out to be the strongest character, saner than both of
them, and saving the world in the next-to-final episode. The transition
seems natural and there is not even a clear turning point. Did the
dysfunctional patient-therapist relationship triggered a rebellion? Did it
make George realize he alone, not Haber, can solve the problem?

I find the last scene especially moving – George and Heather found each other
after the world, and everything they formerly knew were altered. Was it karma
or their determination to be themselves? (By the way, Le Guin had the good
taste to avoid the usual mushy lovers-reunited kitsch).

Reality versus Dream

George once told Haber that one of the earlier realities, the world was
actually at its end and he was dying. Then he lied down and has a dream that
made it slightly habitable. Does that mean everybody live in his dream
afterwards? No wonder Le Guin made a reference to the story of Chuang Tzu (
庄周梦蝶).

There is also a darker side. “Human kind cannot bear very much reality”,
says T.S. Eliot in the poem Burnt Norton. But this difficulty pales besides
when the world people have accepted as reality suddenly collapses, turning
everybody’s life over. Then is Le Guin’s description reasonable, that
societies would just accept the rewritten world (as well as personal) history
and live on as if nothing happened? Sadly, it has been true when one
considers the history of regimes (especially the despotic ones). The only
price is that with each collapse an entire generation is confused and has a
hard time adjusting to reality – consider the Japanese after WWII, the
Chinese after the cultural revolution. Here Le Guin is suggesting an extreme
case: as long as George’s dreams are effective, everything is subject to
shift without a real “bottom of the pit” to fall on. In other words all one
can do is to remain true to themselves and reach out for another, like Geroge
and Heather did. It leaves you with more things to think about than the usual
good-guys-versus-bad-guys Sci-Fi story.