The Lathe of Heaven in Around the Year in 52 Books

Apr 29, 2020 Dixie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: scifi-fantasy

4-1/2 stars. I tore through this in one sitting. I originally read it as a teenager but remembered nothing at all about it, except that I thought it was great. It was. And although it's a very different situation in the book, I couldn't stop thinking about how topical it felt, at this time of covid19 and political mayhem and no hint of certainty left in the world. ...more

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Jul 11, 2012 martha rated it liked it

Shelves: speculative-fiction, year-2012

When I was a kid I read a book, title long since forgotten, about a kid whose thoughts immediately came true: telling a classmate to go to hell sent him literally to hell, etc. (Hell, if I recall, was full of fish.) It scared the crap out of me, and rattled around in the back of my brain for years. So every time I thought of reading this, I got nervous and backed away. But I'm on a Le Guin tear which cannot be stopped, so I bit the bullet.

It's funny reading this, since it's so different from al When I was a kid I read a book, title long since forgotten, about a kid whose thoughts immediately came true: telling a classmate to go to hell sent him literally to hell, etc. (Hell, if I recall, was full of fish.) It scared the crap out of me, and rattled around in the back of my brain for years. So every time I thought of reading this, I got nervous and backed away. But I'm on a Le Guin tear which cannot be stopped, so I bit the bullet.

It's funny reading this, since it's so different from almost everything else of hers I've read: both because it's an earlier book and because it's set on Earth. It reminded me in tone a bit of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which makes sense, I think: both show grim, everyday life in the urban future, and were written at almost the same time. (And I've just learned that apparently Le Guin was good -- and influential! -- friends with Philip K. Dick.)

Anyway. I'm rambling. This was frustratingly slow at times -- I cringed through all of Haber's endless technobabble -- but I really loved that she went for it, no holds barred, as far as the implications of dreams-becoming-reality. I was definitely freaked out several times, and loved the twists it took as it progressed: the second half was better than the first, I think, as it picked up speed, and I stayed up too late finishing it. Bumping the rating down a bit because it lacks some of the grace of her later writing and because I seriously never want to hear about the d-state brainwaves again. I wish I were more familiar with Portland, because I'm sure I would have loved how it plays around with the city's geography. The climate change stuff seemed remarkably ahead of its time and depressingly believable.

(view spoiler)

It was so so interesting to read this immediately after having finished her short story, "Another Story," which was written 20 years later, but deals with a lot of the same ideas about alternate histories, slipping between continuums, and being the only person who knows what reality used to be. ...more

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