A review by crickety
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin

reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

3.5

- This novel about dreams felt quite dreamlike, reality was in flux and took new shapes as we progressed. The novel felt a tad dated; it reads like classic scifi sometimes in the sense that dialogue at times feels more like a philosophical monologue. But to me this worked well with the novel! The placid main character Orr had a great foil in Haber, and the question at the heart of the novel, about whether it would be right to change reality (for the better?) was explored with George being positioned close to non-interference while Haber wanted to fix the world. As LeGuin herself noted about Haber: "[...] poor Haber in the book is a do-gooder whose self-defeated. He is not defeated by anybody evil. He's not evil. He means well all the way through the book but he's doing it wrong." Haber’s transformation across the novel into a godlike character obsessed with fixing the ills of the world, while simultaneously ruining it made him frustrating but not odious. I can't deny that I sympathize with his attempts at making a better world. I love their interactions, like him chiding George:   "You have no social conscience, no altruism. You're a moral jellyfish. I have to instill social responsibility in you hypnotically, every time. And every time it's thwarted, spoiled."  The novel has great re-readability as I would like to catch more of how the world changed 

One unclear aspect I’ve mulled over revolves around Heather, and in particular how persons are changed by changing reality. George does not only change the present but retroactively restructure reality and history itself, and as people are shaped by experience this of course has deeper changes. I wondered about Heather. She notes that she feels changed in certain realities. GEorge also comments in the reality post-their married reality that she is completely different. “His wife had been unaggressive and, though courageous, timid in manner. This was not his wife, but a fiercer woman, vivid and difficult”. I guess I wondered at the continuation of people in this world, was he ever married to “Heather”, or did he only bring back a grey imitation of what he remember of her, did he dream the Heather as he saw her, with the features he most yearned for?

 

+ excellent concept, exploration of such 

- partly flat-ish characters 
- rushed ending