I've never been a huge fan of Ursula K. Le Guin. Now, granted, I've only read a handful of her short stories (all dealing with her fictional race of a/bi-sexual beings), and I have started but failed to crack a few of her novels. I really want to like her, and with all the praise she gets, I think I should like her. I don't think authors are this highly regarded, both with critics and with readers, for no good reason. I recently told a friend of mine that I was going to read a Le Guin book, and he said, disparagingly, “enjoy the infodump.” I thought this was a pretty good description of Le Guin's style. I often feel as if she is preaching to me from atop some ivory, gender-issue-tinted tower, and that as a straight, white, male I just wasn't meant to get the cut of her jib. I sometimes feel as if she should be writing sociology textbooks for alien cultures rather than narrative based fiction (well, I guess she kind of does do that...).
And so it was with some trepidation that I recently purchased The Lathe of Heaven. It is a short book, and so I figured that even if I didn't enjoy it, it would be over soon enough - that's me, an optimist to the end. Holy crap was I ever wrong. This book blew my freaking mind. It is incomprehensibly good, and even though there are moments in which Le Guin piles on the INFORMATION, often dealing with dream-psychology, the narrative is tightly focused, moves with a purpose, and features a few central characters that shine with nuanced emotions and motives. I couldn't read this fast enough; I wanted to devour the plot presented on each and every page as quickly, but as carefully, as possible. Like a well written poem, each phrase and passage of this short novel is precisely written, and each word is chosen for its most effective usage.
Le Guin's book pulses with a pounding rhythm, it is a tensely paced novel full of plot and ideas; it glances at notions that other books would base their entire premise around. It focuses on two central characters, George Orr (an allusion to George Orwell, perhaps?) and Dr. Haber. Orr has a peculiar problem, namely, his “effective dreaming.” He is able to create reality and shift the space time continuum by dreaming. Orr does not want this power, and wants to escape the responsibility of changing things that impact everything and everyone around him. After being caught using other peoples' pharmacy cards to get drugs (drugs to stop him from dreaming), he is sentenced to “voluntary” therapy, and finds himself under the watchful gaze of Dr. Haber. Dr. Haber is a kind and boisterous man, blinded by misplaced ambition, and soon discovers that Orr's problem is very real and incredibly powerful. Through a series of sessions assisted by the Augmenter, a device Haber invents to guide Orr into prolonged effective dreaming, the two men find themselves entangled in a battle of wits involving a rapidly evolving universe, an alien invasion, an interstellar war, and Armageddon.
The most lavish praise I can thrust upon this book is that it reminds of a Philip K. Dick story. Now, these kinds of comparisons are often dangerous, because some might argue that by not celebrating Le Guin's own unique voice that I am, in fact, disparaging her writing. But this is not true. As most of you know, I am a huge dickhead; I've read more, and liked more, by good old Phil than any other author. The Lathe of Heaven could easily be placed, side by side, with Dick's best, namely Martian Time Slip, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and A Scanner Darkly. It reminds of Dick, but this is not to say that I enjoyed it because Le Guin was simply channeling my favorite author. I know that the two authors were quite close, and Le Guin helped Phil a great deal later in his life, and I wouldn't be surprised if she wrote this with her friend and colleague in mind. It reminded me of Dick's work simply because I enjoyed it almost as much.
My Le Guin shell has now been broken, and I feel as though I am prepared to embrace more of her work. It is hard for me to put into words just how much I loved The Lathe of Heaven. Every page was a joy to read, and every new reveal, plot point, and character decision was composed with a master's eye for detail. It's as if Le Guin left all the boring parts out, and decided, smartly, to focuses only on the stuff that really mattered to the characters and the narrative. I appreciate this aspect about well written older science fiction; short, concise, to the point, and not belabored with overwrought exposition. This book reads like a dream, it effortlessly flows from one point to the next, and contains a world built upon in its own logic, a logic that totally works within the printed page. I can easily imagine these characters living on, in some parallel universe, and I only wish I was able to visit their world now, to see how it has changed.
