I attribute this to being an early Lord of the Rings fan and viewing her Wizard of Earthsea series as a cheap imitation. Read moreĭespite reading well over a thousand books over the years, many of them science fiction, I somehow neglected Ursula LeGuin. Lathe of Heaven is also the first of Le Guin I’ve ever read, so I have no other experience with her work, but I did enjoy this first look. Without imperfection, there is no balance in the world.From my own first read and from other reviewers, I’m certain I’ll need to have a go at this book again sometime in the future. In that quest for perfection, however, they learn that they can’t account for every flaw and in turn create an alternative string of disasters. Rather than one man’s dreams influencing reality through a retelling, Le Guin imagines the main character’s dreams changing reality and his therapist’s attempt to steer those dreams in order to create a more perfect world. The central story, however, is the role of dreams and the impact one individual’s subconscious can have on reality. Written in 1971, Lathe of Heaven impressively projected the trends of the time into a turn-of-the-twenty-first century reality that foresaw the extremes of climate change and perpetual conflict among the major powers. Le Guin has an incredible imagination and she’s equally adept as a thoughtful futurist as she is an untethered fantasist.
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