La rooda del cel

Full spoiler free review here : system-failure.trbn.xyz/lathe-of-heaven-wip/ [...] “Reality is an odd choice of word, when all that shapes it is a dream”, thinks the jellyfish.

We meet George Orr in the middle of an overdose. Whilst society deems him an addict, his issue is one much greater than that : he is a Dreamer.

His bed is a boat with no helm to speak of, and as he catches odd things shift in the world behind his eyes, so too does reality shape itself anew. The change terrifies him.

Should Orr attempt to swim ? Should Orr dream with intent, for the betterment of humankind, to become the Lathe of a heaven of his own making ? Or should Orr rid himself of this terrible and frightening power ? “Worse…” he thinks. “if my dreams have such potency… what will come with my nightmares ?”

this was fantastic, I think I like it more than the Dispossessed!

It's funny how of all the books I've read by Le Guin, the one that's set on a baseline plausible Earth-in-my-lifetime would turn out to be the weirdest. Also funny how in what starts as a pretty reasonable extrapolation from 1971 to ~2000 has one repeated glaring error: multiple references to the perfect cone of Mount St. Helen's.

Against that background, we get a story of a man running away from his dreams because they give him a power he doesn't understand and can't control. And another man who wants to channel that power, setting up a modern Daoist fable about the hubris of trying to control too much.