The Lathe of Heaven

Fun, psychedelic, and SUPER dated. This was very silly and very entertaining. This was also totally unlike Ursula Le Guin's masterworks, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. Those are, like, serious books. This is higgledy piggledy.

Plot: In some drab Near Future Portland (SUCH PORTLAND), Oregon, George Orr is suffering quietly as his totally Freudian, hallucinatory dreams accidentally change reality. At best, much embarrassment is had. At worst, SHIT GETS CRAY. After failing to drug himself into dreamless stupors, he's assigned a therapist, Haberman. Much 1960s/1970s psychobabble is discussed, and meanwhile, Haberman is clearly a shady dude. Orr catches on, but how do you fight by “dreaming right”?

Anyway, super satisfying reveals - I was always a step behind or ahead of the plotting (“wait a minute, Haberman's shady!”), which I attribute to Ursula's excellent pacing and mystery-style plotting. This book is essentially pulp, but it's very, very smartly-made pulp.