![]() ![]() ![]() Published in 1971 and set in Portland in the palindromic year of 2002, Le Guin’s novel is depressingly prescient. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outer space of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. The world of The Lathe of Heaven is grim, gray, dystopian. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will. ![]() It is a classic of the science fiction genre. Le Guin that masterfully addresses the dangers of power and humanity's self-destructiveness, questioning the nature of reality itself. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moon-driven sea. Le Guin 's The Lathe of Heaven, a book steeped in Taoist metaphysics and philosophy, the concept of yin and yang is embodied in the protagonist, George Orr. The Lathe of Heaven is an eerily prescient novel from award-winning author Ursula K. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. ![]() Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. ![]()
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