Ursula K. Le Guin is half right

I’ve always had lots of dreams when I sleep.

The dreams have always been about the future.

The future in my dreams 

was always bright.

A future brimming

with hope and peace.

So I’ve always loved to sleep.

That is, until just recently.

Bright Future

The Lathe of Heaven is a book published in 1971 by acclaimed science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin, initially serialized in a magazine called Amazing Stories. It was adapted into a film in 1980 by PBS – their first ever feature-length film. It was adapted into a film by A&E in 2002. It is a well-regarded book and one of her more famous works. 

It’s also, in part, critical of behaviorism. Or, that’s what Wikipedia says, referencing this book.

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The Lathe of Heaven begins with a jellyfish, buoyed by the ocean. 

George Orr awakes near death. It’s the near-future in an America afflicted with extreme poverty, malnourishment, and climate change. Orr has been illegally mixing medications to stop his dreams. For this, he is sentenced to “voluntary therapy” with a therapist named William Haber. Haber is a dream specialist, and Orr was mixing medication to avoid dreams. 

Orr was avoiding his dreams because some of his dreams – the “effective” ones – permanently change the world, with Orr being the only one who remembers each change. These being dreams, he can’t exactly control them.

As a 17 year-old, his aunt moved in with his family and bothered him. He dreamed that she had a car crash, and awoke to find that she died in a crash weeks before, with no evidence she ever lived with him. 

Initially Haber sees this as a psychological problem: Orr can’t accept his rude dreams. The problem is not the dreams, but that he takes them too seriously. 

Haber introduces his dream device, the Augmentor, which will maximize the dream state and speed up their work on acceptance. Haber hypnotizes Orr and suggests pleasant dreams.

At first, Haber doesn’t remember the time before each dream, but after several sessions, Haber knows. Haber suggests eliminating overcrowding; Orr dreams up a plague. Haber suggests eliminating racism; Orr dreams that all people are gray. Haber suggests world peace; Orr dreams that the world unites against an alien invasion.

In the end, Haber suggests that Orr dream that Orr himself is no longer able to dream effectively, which works in stopping the dreams. Haber attempts to use his Augmentor to replicate the dream patterns of Orr, to use Orr’s power, and destroys his own mind.

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The two film adaptations are on YouTube. 

The PBS adaptation from 1980 is very low budget, and the initial scenes look more like a play, with static medium shots of dialogue. The acting, effects, and cinematography are not what we would expect from a Hollywood production. Still, it’s entertaining. Rather than sets, they sometimes make use of futuristic architecture (apparently in Dallas). They stretched their budget and it generally works.

The A&E adaptation has a higher budget, particularly evident in the C-list Hollywood actors who all appear to sleepwalk through the production. There are more sets, but they look cheap. Dreams are not shown onscreen, but described by the actors in dialogue. On top of that, the writers overdid the dialogue – they explain a “Lady Godiva” reference 3 separate times. This adaptation is worse than the 1980 version.

But at least the A&E version starts with a jellyfish. 

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The name Lathe of Heaven comes from the Tao Te Ching.

It’s a mistranslation. Le Guin later notes that, at the time of writing, there were no lathes in China. It might be more accurate to replace “on the lathe of heaven” with something like “by the equilibrium of heaven.”

Nevertheless, it’s a good title. Also a good, if difficult, concept.

In ACT, acceptance is an incredibly important, yet difficult, concept

Acceptance is embodied in the Tao Te Ching “lathe of heaven” quote above, perhaps because it is a Zen Buddhist concept – influenced by Taoism. A Buddhist dictum is that desire is the heart of suffering; desire for a perfect future will surely always be frustrated.

Le Guin was heavily influenced by Taoism. Haber, to her, was not a villain – simply falling victim to a misguided desire to plan. Planning a utopia will always fall short, just as you can’t control a dream.

A book, and then Wikipedia, claim that Lathe was a reaction against (among other things) behaviorism. Le Guin’s single reference to “behaviorists” appears to be one sentence. During a writing exercise, a professor asks the class to write about utopia. A woman, embarrassed, speaks to the professor. What if their little college town is utopia?

A jellyfish, buoyed by the waves.

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Bright Future is a 2003 film written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It’s also available on YouTube, with subtitles.

An underachieving man is buffeted around by the forces of his life, periodically lashing out and hurting people. Meanwhile, his sociopathic coworker breeds a poisonous jellyfish, which escapes and begins spawning in the city’s waterways. It’s a jarring if uneven film. 

A generation of men are like jellyfish: floating through life, only hurting people.

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Levitas, as quoted by Franko, considers some anti-utopianism “fatalistic.” And hence the problem with Lathe of Heaven: is “trying” the problem? Is it hubristic to believe that positive change is possible?

Previously we mentioned that acceptance is a difficult topic. Lathe was mistranslated. Let’s look at “wu wei”:

Wu wei has quite a long Wikipedia page of its own. In Taoism, it is paradoxical: it suggests a few actions (breathing, posture) in order to cease doing.

Acceptance does not seem to be a clear synonym for wu wei. And in any case, Le Guin seemed to understand that “not doing” was a paradox. A central irony, pointed out by Franko, is that the world of Lathe only exists because Orr dreamed it during his death in a nuclear apocalypse (though of course this could also signal that the entire story is a dream). Le Guin was a writer and a professor, which is something; do nothing, like acceptance, is more complicated than it seems.

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The Lathe of Heaven is an interesting story. The PBS adaptation is worth watching. If anything, it’s a shock that it hasn’t been redone as a prestige miniseries.

Calling it an attack or comment on behaviorism seems misguided. Haber is closer to a psychotherapist, and the information on dreams reportedly comes from the work of William Dement. The work is certainly anti-utopian.

In 2025, two jellyfish echo through time: Lathe of Heaven and Bright Future. One suggests that planning and control are the central problem with society. The other suggests that rudderless people can damage everyone around them. Which feels more true?