I didn't record when I finished the novel, but it was in early April of 2026. I've read the book several times since I bought it at the library booksale on Sa 2/7/04.
It's the story of a man who seeks psychological help when he realizes that his dreams are affecting reality. However, his therapist hijacks his ability and uses 'the changes' to implement what the counsulor feels should be 'real'.
A take on the novel from 'sammatey.substack.com':
"That’s the book. It’s a really good book! From one perspective, it’s lost some of its punch these days because it’s very much “of its time” and can seem outdated: many people now worry far more about human population decline than human population growth, as fertility rates are dropping sharply around the world. But I would argue that as time has gone by, The Lathe of Heaven has actually taken on a whole new meaning that enriches the reading experience. As its featured fears receded into the past; it’s become a fascinating time capsule of what smart people in the mid-20th century were extremely worried about. The litany of horrors George dreams up really did seem like very plausible near-term futures in the 1970s. Reading books and articles from the time gives a sense of a broad-based horrifying feeling among many intelligentsia of the time that dystopian tradeoffs were inevitable, that we’d either have Malthusian mass famine or totalitarian control of all reproduction, and probably lots of both. The fact that we have a population of over eight billion humans as of 2024 would have seemed a sure indicator of apocalypse to many. Make Room! Make Room!, the 1966 science fiction novel that inspired the movie Soylent Green, posited that a population of just seven billion would have caused total environmental collapse, with only the infamous ration left as a food source for the starving multitudes." ken
No comments:
Post a Comment