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The Lathe Of Heaven

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The Lathe Of Heaven

By: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrated by: Adam Sims
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About this listen

 'Her worlds have a magic sheen . . . She moulds them into dimensions we can only just sense. She is unique. She is legend' THE TIMES

'Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power' OBSERVER

George Orr is a mild and unremarkable man who finds the world a less than pleasant place to live: seven billion people jostle for living space and food. But George dreams dreams which do in fact change reality - and he has no means of controlling this extraordinary power.

Psychiatrist Dr William Haber offers to help. At first sceptical of George's powers, he comes to astonished belief. When he allows ambition to get the better of ethics, George finds himself caught up in a situation of alarming peril. Dystopian Genre Fiction Hard Science Fiction Psychological Science Fiction Fiction Dream

Critic reviews

Le Guin is a writer of phenomenal power
Ursula Le Guin was able to reimagine many concepts we take to be natural, shared, and unalterable - gender, utopia, creation, war, family, the city, the country - and reveal the all-too-human constructions at their center ... Literature will miss her. There's no one like her (Zadie Smith)
She is unparalleled in creating fantasy peopled by finely drawn and complex characters
Le Guin is one of the singular speculative voices of our future, thanks to her knack for anticipating issues of seminal importance to society
Her worlds have a magic sheen . . . She moulds them into dimensions we can only just sense. She is unique. She is legend
I'd love to sit at my desk one day and discover that I could think and write like Ursula Le Guin (Roddy Doyle)
A rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion
[Le Guin had] the heart of a poet who knew all too well the difference between miracle and eureka, revelation and revolution
Le Guin's storytelling is sharp, magisterial, funny, thought-provoking and exciting, exhibiting all that science fiction can be
Ursula Le Guin is a chemist of the heart (David Mitchell, author of CLOUD ATLAS)
When I read The Lathe of Heaven as a young man, my mind was boggled; now when I read it, more than twenty-five years later, it breaks my heart. Only a great work of literature can bridge - so thrillingly - that impossible span (Michael Chabon)
Le Guin writes tellingly of different kinds of society . . . and of the individual's response to them
Le Guin neatly and eerily conveys the bad-dream civilization which is George's everyday world
The most exciting book of Le Guin's . . . Easily the most fun of her novels, it's also one of the strangest, and Le Guin seems to take joy in this
All stars
Most relevant
One of those books I didn't want to put down. Narrator brought it to life very well, differentiating the characters' voices so you could focus on the story not the reading. Gripping escapism with an undercurrent of social commentary. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

An excellent yarn

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It must be forty years since I first read this book and, although I have returned to others in Le Guin’s oeuvre, sometimes quite often, I hadn’t returned to this one. Can’t think why. It’s great!
Very well read.

Happy revisit

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I enjoyed very much this book by Ursula Le Guin, of whom I knew earlier only the Earthsea series. Adam Sims does a fantastic job here, giving the characters distinguished tones without overdoing it. Highly recommended.

great story excellently read out

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George Orr dreams. Well, yes, so does everyone, but some of his dreams change the waking reality not just for himself but for everyone. So terrified at the possibilities, George finds treatment with an experimental psychiatrist. As the story progresses, the pace speeds up and grows increasingly weird and intriguing idea emerge.. Great story but the character s are rather flat, two dimensional. Perhaps deamlike? Whatever - for this reason, I've scored it 4stats instead of 5.
Alan Sims performs well with clear narration and good differentiation of character voives.
A good S.F.read and highly recommended.

"It's only dreams."

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Superb writing and perfect narration. A fascinating story filled with the wisdom of the Tau.

Fantastic

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