The Lathe of Heaven is a short novel, and one that holds a special place in my heart. It was the third grown-up science fiction novel I read when I was twelve years old, after The Dispossessed and King and Joker. I didn’t understand a word of it but I loved it anyway.
The Lathe of Heaven is about George Orr, a man who has dreams that change reality, and he’s afraid of having those dreams. He gets sent to a psychiatrist, Haber, who becomes fascinated with changing reality. He then finds a lawyer, Heather LaLeche, who he hopes will rescue him from Haber as the world changes around them. It’s his dreams that change reality, and dreams produce answers from the subconscious to questions rationally asked. Dreams are not daydreams. Asked to produce peace on earth, George dreams of alien invasions; asked to solve overcrowding, he dreams of a plague fifteen years ago that killed off six billion people. When he wakes up, the world has always been that way, and that’s how everyone remembers it except for those in the room with him.
What makes the book brilliant is that it’s told from the points of view of the three central characters, and they’re all real. George Orr is naturally worried about having this ability. Haber wants to use the power to do good, he’s essentially benevolent but has no sense of proportion. Heather LaLeche is the most interesting of them all. She’s a black civil rights lawyer. When everyone becomes grey (and has always been grey—Haber told George to solve the problem of racism) she doesn’t exist because her blackness is an essential part of what has made her. Then George does manage to evoke her in that world, and she’s different, as a grey person. Her point of view is the most interesting of all. The book cycles through their points of view in order, and in the grey world, while she’s missing, the point of view remains with George and that asymmetry reflects the asymmetry of a world without her. I’m sure I didn’t consciously notice that the first time I read it, I’m not sure when I consciously noticed it, but I think any reader would unconsciously notice it.
The changing world is evoked rather than described—you mainly see the changes to the world through the changes to the people, and you see some of the smaller changes more than some of the bigger ones. The aliens are wonderful, but again seen very briefly—I most like the way that after they are revealed never to have been a menace there’s one running a junk shop.
People have sometimes compared this book with Philip K. Dick’s work with shifting realities, especially Ubik and Eye in the Sky. The real difference is that Dick liked to torture his characters, and he often didn’t distinguish them enough for anyone to care about them anyway. Le Guin wrote a novel about the effect of world-changing on three-dimensional characters. Philip Dick wrote world-changing from the point of view of alienated, miserable people nobody could care about. Le Guin wrote from a position of hope and Dick from a position of existential despair. There may not be any difference, except in whether I enjoy reading the result or not.
Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer. She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode, and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied.
I do think this book is very Phildickian in many ways, but you’re absolutely right that the way Dick treats his characters is very, well, different to how Le Guin does so.
Dick also has pretty serious issues with women, and although I vaguely remember (it’s been ages) being disturbed by some of the gender issues here too, it’s not the same. (Is it?)
Thanks – I really must re-read this soon!
I just finished reading this, so it is fresh in my mind. Jo’s take on the depiction of the world is accurate. You always get the sense that things are changing quite dramatically, but Le Guin never hits you over the head with the big shifts that happen, just the little things, and without fanfare. It’s great.
Actually, in at least one spot Le Guin does hit you over the head with the shifts – but she does it in a believable in-character way, with Haber babbling away about it in an ineffectual attempt to hide from George the fact that he’s aware of what’s going on. I liked that – a subtle use of lack of subtlety, if you will.
Thomas Disch actually said, regarding The Lathe of Heaven, that the best Philip Dick novel had been written by Ursula Le Guin. (I’m not sure where, but I think it was during an interview with Charles Platt, included in Dream Makers.)
Somehow I never actually had a clear idea what this book was about, before. It sounds awesome.
(I have a bit of a quibble with When everyone becomes grey (and has always been grey—Haber told George to solve the problem of racism) she doesn’t exist because her blackness is an essential part of what has made her.–since if blackness is that essential to people in this society, I would lay money that not-blackness and/or whiteness is, too, and it’s just invisible cultural defaults all over again–but I appreciate that it was at least considered.)
Kate: I think Le Guin has thought about that and I didn’t explain it very well. The greyness is what a white man’s subconscious comes up with when told to end racism, and the greyness is therefore definitely an unmarked state similar to the default white unmarked state that he has lived with in the world before. He isn’t different as a grey person. It really is as if he’s extended white privilege to everyone at the cost of every non-white person’s racial identity. This is not portrayed as a good thing by the text or by George when he realises what his subconscious has done — which is a motif of the book. Heather Laleche really is different when she’s grey, because of her personal history not just as a black woman but as a mixed-race woman who was brought up in Portland by her white hippie mother.
Ah, thanks for the clarification.
I managed to care about Dick’s characters, though he certainly did have issues with women.
It’s nice to see a review of this classic. I, too, am inspired to re-read it. I always thought Lathe of Heaven offered a great critique of utopias in general. She did that well with The Dispossessed, too, making utopia seem not all that utopian-ish. She acknowledges that trying to create the perfect society always involves some sort of loss or tradeoff, something I didn’t see as much in, say, Woman on the Edge of Time, or the early female separatist stuff like Herland.
Jo, I think you’re over-thinking the disappearance of Heather LaLeche. It’s stated in the book that her parents met at a civil rights rally. Her disappearance isn’t because of any “essential blackness”, it’s because in George’s world-without-racism, there was no need for civil rights rallies, and so her parents never met.
At least, that’s how I read it at the literal level. Perhaps there’s a more symbolic, thematic level where it is about “essential blackness”.
Also, Jo, I have to take issue with PK Dick’s “alienated, miserable people nobody could care about”. I’m pretty sure Dick cared about them, because he was one of them. (Literally, in some cases.) I don’t think Dick liked to torture his characters; I think he did it because he was, himself, tortured.
Personally, I care about Dick’s maladjusted low-lives far more than I care about, say, Tolkien’s elfs. The notion that it’s right or normal to only be able to identify with the un-tortured, the un-broken, the un-miserable, reminds me a bit too much of Poul Anderson’s proud claim (in the intro to Nebula Award Stories Four, 1969) that “[Science fiction] remains more interested in the glamour and mystery of existence, the survival and triumph and tragedy of heroes and thinkers, than in the neuroses of some sniveling fagot.”
Avram: I can like tortured characters, I can’t like ones where the author writes them so they feel distanced. It’s not that Dick’s characters are miserable, though they are, it’s that I can’t feel any empathy for them coming out of the text. I haven’t read all the Dick there is — I’ve read five or six of his novels, and I stopped for precisely this reason.
Have you tried VALIS? That’s one where the protagonist is a thinly-disguised PK Dick. (And two of the supporting characters are thinly-disguised Tim Powers and KW Jeter.)
Also, I’m a bit confused by “empathy for them coming out of the text”. Isn’t empathy something the reader is supposed to feel? And presumably the author. Are you saying that it doesn’t feel to you, as you read, as if Dick has empathy for his characters?
Avram: Yes, that’s exactly what I feel. I feel as if Dick felt detached and slightly sadistic towards his characters and that’s why he tortured them. Of course, I don’t know what he felt, but that’s my impression.
I haven’t read Valis. And I’m very unlikely to. If I ever did decide to read any more Dick it would be The Man in the High Castle.
Also, I’m not overthinking Heather’s disappearance, her blackness as an essential quality is noted in the book.
@@.-@. You are probably thinking of Dish’s introduction to the last volume of the complete short stories of Philip K. Dick. What is he said was it was “one of the best novels” in Dick’s style but not written by Dick himself.
@15. I strongly disagree. Which novels have you read? Pehaps there were some passages in Ubik that seemed detached or sadistic, such as Joe Chip trying to climb the steps, but nothing else really comes to mind. He often shows quite a bit of empathy for many of protaginists.