The Lathe of Heaven

Ursula Le Guin

1971

George Orr is an inhabitant of Seattle in the late 1990s. Like his fellow citizens, George is concerned with staying alive, getting enough to eat and finding enough space to keep away from the crowds. For this world has 7 billion inhabitants and severe global warming so previously fertile areas of the planet are wastelands of dust while other are flooded out as the polar ice-caps melt.

George is like his neighbours in other ways as well. Like them, he takes massive doses of drugs to cope with his surroundings but unlike them, he takes the drugs in order not to dream. For George has a particular class of dream that change the world around him. Changes subtle - a picture on the wall changes, or not so subtle - 6 billion people suddenly never have been.

By now, George is under the care of a psychologist who specialises in dreams and he sees in George a great opportunity to change the world for the better. But as he tries to guide George's dreams, George's subconscious fights back and though the effects of the changes are carried out, they are usually implemented in unexpected fashion.

Can George learn how to control his Dreaming, or is the world fated to remain a swirling kaleidoscope of realities?

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Despite the age of the book and the fact that the threat of overpopulation has not come to pass in such a serious fashion as represented in this novel, it still reads well and is definitely one of the classic Le Guins.

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This is part of the Science Fiction Masterworks series.

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