Lathe of Heaven
by Ursula Le Guin
List Price: $12.95
Pages: 176
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0060512741
Publisher: Perennial
A multiple award-winning author, editor, and anthologist, Ursula K. LeGuin was born in 1929 in Berkeley, California -- the daughter of writer Theodora Kroeber and anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber. She went to Radcliffe College, did graduate work at Columbia University and attained a 1953 Fulbright Fellowship. Le Guin married historian Charles A. Le Guin and has three children and three grandchildren. She has lived in Portland, Oregon since 1958.
Throughout her illustrious literary career -- 19 novels, short stories in nine collections, two volumes of translation, 13 books for children, three collections of essays, and numerous honorary degrees, teaching posts, and awards -- Le Guin has held to the highest standards in her writing, taking risks that would bring great rewards and praise from her contemporaries.
Having received countless awards -- a National Book Award, five Hugo Awards, five Nebula Awards, the Kafka Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Howard Vursell Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the L.A. Times Robert Kirsch Award to name a few -- Le Guin has also had three of her books become finalists for the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Le Guin's first major work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness, propelled her instantly to the forefront of her field. Since then, she has used the context of her work to delve into such issues as gender roles, morality, and the individual's ordinary grief. Working in so many forms -- from poetry and prose to screenplays and voice text for recordings -- Le Guin has transformed the genre in which she works countless times over. An intensely private figure like many of her characters, Le continues to create her fantastical worlds for all ages.
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Q: How do you revise a novel like The Lathe of Heaven where each chapter appears to be a revision of the one before?
ULG: That's a neat question! Well, since when I was writing it I just followed George's dreams and Haber's mistakes, without plotting the novel at all in advance, revision couldn't consist of big changes or remaking decisions about what happened in the story: it consisted of trying to make sure it all hung together in some way, emotionally, aesthetically, meaningfully, even when it changed direction or took great leaps. And getting the language right, of course -- all the fiddling and tweaking and fine tuning that are (actually) what I love best about writing. (If I rewrote that novel now, after all these years, which of course would be impossible, I would cut most of the dialogue down, by the way. People go on too long talking! All except the turtles. They talk just enough.)
Q: In your novel The Lathe of Heaven, you portray the aliens as kind beings compassionate to the novel's hero. Why is it important to you that they receive help from the aliens? Do you think the first aliens we meet will be benevolent?
ULG: TDo I think the first aliens we meet will be benevolent? No. Honestly, I don't think we're going to meet any aliens, nice or nasty, first or last -- not any time soon. Space travel and other-world beings are wonderful ideas, very useful to story tellers; you can say things about us and our world by talking about other beings and other worlds -- imaginary ones -- that you couldn't say any other way. But it has nothing to do with predicting an imminent possibility, and nothing to do with belief. You know, I write about dragons, too, for the same reason, but I don't think dragons exist outside the human mind ... The imagination is our most useful tool, and it's most useful when it isn't taken literally!
So, the aliens being imaginary, being part of a made-up story, they are what the story needs, what fits into the story best. In the case of The Lathe of Heaven, the world has got itself into such a horrible mess -- and as I kept writing and, Dr. Haber kept making the world so much worse every time he tried to make it better -- eventually there was no way George, or I, could clear up the mess. We definitely needed some help from outside. A little help from our friends. So (to the surprise of all of us!) the aliens showed up on Earth, in the form of giant sea turtles. I really do like them a lot.
For more information, visit www.ursulakleguin.com.
Excerpted from Lathe of Heaven © Copyright 2008 by Ursula Le Guin. Reprinted with permission by Perennial. All rights reserved.
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