Dream A Little Dream

I just reread The Lathe Of Heaven, Ursula K. Le Guin's 1971 novel.  I can't remember the last time I read it, though I know 2002, when the novel is set, still seemed far in the future.

It's a short book with a basic plot.  There are only three characters that count.  The protagonist, Orr, has dreams that become reality, but no one else besides him notices the change.  He sees a doctor, Haber, who tries to take advantage of his talent.  Orr has been ordered to submit to the

doctor, but he goes to a lawyer, Heather Lelache, to get him away from Haber.  She eventually catches on and tries to help him.

More happens, but the plot is almost secondary to the philosophical debate. (Great sf doesn't have to have a lot of action.  Take away the first and last chapter of Starship Troopers and the whole thing is about the education of a young man with a lot of speeches about government and morality thrown in.) Orr doesn't believe that great power should be used to order society as one sees fit.  He believes that things happen, and no one should decide how to change them--even though he doesn't necessarily believe (as Heather does) that things happen for a reason.  Haber believes it's incumbent upon those, who have the ability, to make the world a better place.  That involves putting order to things, even if the results will be uncertain, perhaps disastrous--you still keep trying.

The "message" isn't as simple as a Frankenstein movie, where there are certain things with which man is not meant to tamper.  Still, Le Guin stacks the deck--she's clearly on Orr's side, and has Haber constantly spouting self-justifying psychobabble, which may not be true, but always ends up with him wielding greater power. (Not that Le Guin has to make both sides equally palatable.  Starship Troopers, and Heinlein in general when he gets philosophical, practically lectures his audience on the Truth.)

I like Le Guin but she has certain weaknesses.  She's good at conjuring up different worlds, and exploring the philosophical and even practical consequences of an essentially human society with some significant changes.  But often she falls down on plot, with stories that don't get more compelling as they continue, and sometimes peter out.

Needless to say, in 1971, she had to extrapolate to create the world of 2002.  Of course, in The Lathe Of Heaven, there are several future worlds created by Orr (the name is no coincidence), but there's still a basic background against which every change is measured.  It's always fun to see how close the writer gets.  I'll ignore wars and foreign affairs, since that's always going to be guesswork.  What about scientific prescience?  Le Guin foresees pollution creating a Greenhouse Effect, where the temperature rises and the polar ice caps melt.  Interesting.  On the other hand, she imagines a world population of seven billion to be unsustainable.  There's massive starvation, and even industrialized societies experience privation, with food being rationed and people jostling up against each other.  Of course, Le Guin was merely using what experts of the day were saying was inevitable.  (When Orr creates a world where a plague killed six of those seven billion, everyone's lifestyle is greatly improved.  I wonder if it would work that way?)

Le Guin is still alive. (So are some of the "experts" she relied on.) I wonder if she's ever gone back to the old books to see what's held up.

There's a 1980 PBS movie of The Lathe Of Heaven. It's not bad, though the low budget doesn't help.  A new adaptation released in 2002, the year of the story, is horrible.  It changes so much of the plot you wonder why they bothered.