Have you ever played the game where you thought up what you would wish if you somehow found a genie in a lamp? Ursula Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven reminds me of that game because I used to spend an awful lot of my wishful thinking (so to speak) trying to work out clauses that would mitigate any of the side effects of my wishes. The difference between my youthful thought experiments and The Lathe of Heaven is that not only is Le Guin much more eloquent than I was, but this book centers around a man who finds that his dream can change reality. And, not only can George Orr make things different by dreaming, but he can make it so that his new version is actually the way things have always been.
We meet George when he’s very down on his luck. In order to stop his dreams, he has been taking every drug he can get his hands on. When he’s caught, he’s sentenced to “voluntary” therapy for his presumed drug addiction. At first, his psychiatrist doesn’t believe him. But when Dr. Haber does start to believe him, the doctor uses hypnosis to turn George’s dreams to his own advantage. George tries to use his dreams to make Dr. Haber more than an opportunist, but things get even more sinister after Haber starts using George’s dreams to make things better.
Which brings me back to the wish game. In the genie stories, there are always unintended consequences. After Haber suggests that Orr’s anxiety stems from overpopulation, from being constantly crowded by other people, George dreams of a plague that kills six billion people. When Haber suggests that George dream of world peace, George instead dreams up invaders from outer space. There is world peace, but only because the humans banded together against the aliens. (I took no small amount of cynical delight in this.) Haber only wanted to do good (after his own alteration), but the consequences may be too high a price to pay.
If you had the power to make these sweeping changes, either through a wish or a dream, would you? For me, knowing about the possible consequences is enough to steer me away. But it’s a very interesting question. What if you really could make things better?
The Lathe of Heaven is short, but it raises so many questions (aside from the one I just posed) that it would reward many readings. To me, that’s the sign of a genuinely great book.