“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”- Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Dispossessed”
***SO VERY MANY SPOILER ALERTS***
In the last few days there have been a slew of powerful summer thunderstorms. I haven’t been wearing my corrective lenses much during this pandemic but I always make the effort to put in my contacts when there is a particularly wicked one. It’s the “best of” in visual natural entertainment with unbeatable surround sound.
During this period, I decided to stock my mind library with a bit more of the highly underrated Ursula K. Le Guin. I finished “The Dispossessed” on the 20th and “The Lathe of Heaven” yesterday. Not to sound like a naive teenager but, utopia is a kind of mission impossible scenario for the philosophically minded right?
In “The Dispossessed,” an anarchist independent people form a colony on what is akin to the moon. A scientist, alienated since birth, leaves this world to visit the Capitalistic world they broke from almost two centuries before with the hopes of sharing his knowledge of simultaneity and light speed travel. While not a page turner for me, it is super smart, passionate at times, honest and down to earth* written in a time (1974) when dystopian fiction had become solidly rooted within literary spheres.
Funny thing. I had my own simultaneity experience while reading “The Lathe of Heaven” (1971). There’s a part where sirens are going off which coincided with several real time sirens howling through my neighborhood. In the novel, aliens had descended upon Portland, Oregon. In real life, well…I’m not so sure it was aliens. Later on, there is also a section where the sky turns an unnatural green. Lo and behold, my real time skies started getting very creepy dark at a normally bright 4pm. And then, the world shook in both worlds in concert. Very meta. It was also a kind of Bastian/Fantastica of “The Neverending Story” throwback moment.** Almost anyway. Let’s just say the latter would have been more fun, riding Falcor and all.
“The Lathe of Heaven” is about a troubled man, George Orr, of supernatural power to alter reality with his dreams. He cannot control it however, and he suffers from guilt, sleeplessness and drug dependency. Among George’s many effective dreams which are hypnotically manipulated by his court assigned psychologist, Dr. Haber, one is about achieving war deterrence. The mission: World Peace. The dream-into-reality-impossible solution: alien invasion to bring the international bickering peoples together for a single global cause. Sound familiar? If you’re like me, you’ve seen and read this plot device unfold in darkly clever action within “The Watchmen” as well (1986). Similarly, it turns out, we see that the dangerously hopeful yet misguided goal of utopia is paved by violence and serious moral ambiguity.
While thinking about tackling the slippery slope of achieving utopia for humankind, I also just happened to re-watch the end of “Serenity” last night. I quickly thought of Dr. Haber’s character in “The Lathe of Heaven” in relation to The Operative in “Serenity.“
The Operative: This is a good death. There’s no shame in this, in a man’s death. A man who has done fine works. We’re making a better world. All of them, better worlds.
…
Mal: I don’t murder children.
The Operative: I do, if I have to.
Mal: Why? Do you even know why they sent you?
The Operative: It’s not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
Mal: So me and mine gotta lay down and die so you can live in your better world?
The Operative: I’m not going to live there… There’s no place for me there, any more than there is for you. Malcolm, I’m a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.
1 oz. Kilchoman “Machir Bay” Islay Scotch, 1 oz. La Guita Manzanilla en Rama, 1 oz. Bonal Gentiane-Quina, .75 oz. chilled pu’erh tea. Garnish with fresh thyme.
Le Guin passed away in January of 2018. It is hard not to see her influence carry over to many later brilliant authors. It’s true that a great idea, IE: the power in naming,*** or the mission impossible-ness of utopia, or the instigation of greater evil to spawn a moment of collective good, can birth even better stories than their predecessors. But sometimes they don’t.
…
*This is my attempt at a pun. Although technically, it isn’t earth, but another world called Urras in the Tau Ceti star system.
**Channeling when Bastian realizes he is a part of the story, and must choose a name for the princess or everything will be done for. NO WORRIES. It works out. Incidentally, the book was published in 1979.
***Reference to “The Wizard of Earthsea” series from Le Guin written in 1968.