The Lathe of Heaven [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition] Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B0000545AF | Format: PDF, EPUB
The Lathe of Heaven Epub FreeDownload books file now The Lathe of Heaven Epub Free for everyone book 4shared, mediafire, hotfile, and mirror link
George Orr's dreams do change the world. He is the only one who knows it...he and the power-mad psychiatrist who is forcing George to dream a new reality - a better reality that is free from war, disease, overpopulation, and all human misery. But for every man-made dream of utopia, there is a terrifying, unforeseeable consequence; so George must dream and dream again, forever seeking a perfect future - until the very essence of cosmic reality begins to disintegrate.
The Lathe of Heaven is perhaps the finest, most eerily provocative novel from an author who is world renowned for the dramatic force of her fiction.
Books with free ebook downloads available The Lathe of Heaven Epub Free
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 6 hours and 33 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
- Audible.com Release Date: December 15, 1999
- Language: English
- ASIN: B0000545AF
It is a bit more than a quarter of a century since Ursula K. Le Guin's classic novel of the near future was originally penned; a classic science fiction tale that is quite simply, a masterpiece.
Avon Books has re-issued a new trade paperback format of the book, bringing this imaginative fable of power--both uncontrolled and uncontrollable--to a whole new generation of readers. And if you happened to see the WNET movie adaptation done in 1980, please read (or re-read) the book; as with most book to movie translations, the movie was good--but the book is just so much better!
THE LATHE OF HEAVEN is the story of George Orr--a man whose dreams become reality, for better or worse. Against his will, Orr is incarcerated, then sent for psychiatric care to treat his "delusions". After a few experimental sessions, Dr. Haber, Orr's psychiatrist, realizes what is going on and decides to start tinkering with the real world...to make it better--with devastating ramifications.
Like Philip K. Dick at his best, Le Guin truly gets the reader into the inner machinations of the protagonist's head--while taking sly social sideswipes at such matters as geopolitics, race, socialized medicine, and the patient/shrink relationship. And there is a reason that Le Guin has often been referred to as a "writer's writer". Her prose is artfully wrought with vivid imagery in an inimitable style which conveys more in a few sentences than others tell in pages.
It is an allegorical tale in which a "miracle worker" (George Orr) comes under the control of someone wanting to play "master of the universe" (Dr. Haber).
Warning - I talk about some minor plot points below.
This is a novel whose premise is so outlandish that it begs for a dramatic opening line. Something that catapults the reader into the story and sets a frantic pace. A line like "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time". Instead we get this: "Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss." With that opening, and throughout the book, Ursula K. Le Guin refuses to cater to readers who want the focus of the story to be fantastic power and unlimited possibilities. Instead she gives us a man, George Orr, who is relentlessly in balance. He is hard to upset, difficult to anger, but easy to coerce. And through some unknown power of the mind, his uncontrolled dreams change the very fabric of reality.
When a well meaning psychiatrist discovers this power and begins to use it to improve the lot of the human race, Orr must struggle to decide how much change is too much. Although he is curiously without judgment in most things, he feels deeply that the integrity of what is should be respected. Nonetheless, he is such a passive man that he bends to the will of his doctor almost until it is too late.
Because Orr believes so deeply in reality and in humans being what we are, his subconscious cannot help but balance each improvement in humanity with a correspondingly harsh but in hindsight perfectly logical setback. When asked to imagine perfect peace on Earth, his subconscious assumes that there is something else to fight against, in this case aliens. When asked to imagine a world without racial strife, he does not imagine good will breaking out across the planet, but a human race where everyone looks the same.
Book Preview
The Lathe of Heaven Download
Please Wait...