The world of literature lost one of its finest writers with the death of Ursula Le Guin this year (2018) at the age of 88. She was one of my heroes. Her writing is humane, wise, and penetrating, and she followed no 'school', no ideology, no fashion. I write for a living too (though it's writing of a very different kind), and if I could write just one page, even one paragraph that would live up to her standards, I'd be proud of it the rest of my life.
Well, anyway: The Lathe of Heaven is one of her SF novels and probably my favorite among them. It's a singular vision that stands alone in her own work, and in fact I can't think of any other novel to easily compare it with by anything else in SF either. It belongs vaguely to an alternate-worlds genre, but with differences. Not all that long after it was written, this movie adaptation was done for original TV broadcast, so it has a low-budget feel to it, and the lead actors (Bruce Davison, Kevin Conway, Margaret Avery) weren't all that well known at the time. It's even in black and white format. But put all that aside: it actually stays pretty close to the Le Guin storyline, unlike the inferior 2002 adaptation that strayed off the path. It's such a great story and so easily translatable to the screen for today's SF-familiar audiences that you can easily imagine a much bigger-budget superb production being done now complete with advanced CGI that would do justice to the hero George Orr's world-changing visions.
George Orr (Davison) is a perfectly ordinary, nice, low-key guy except for one thing: when pressed into it, he has "effective dreams" that change reality and rewrite history. He doesn't want to do this, but gets taken advantage of by psychiatrist William Haber (Conway) who uses George to enable his own altruistic but power-hungry goals. George's torturous journey through one history after another and eventual resolution are the substance of the movie.
This production disappeared for a long time after its original airing, but finally now you can see it on YouTube. Well worth it.
Le Guin's stories haven't generally been served well on movies and TV but so much better could be done with them. The Earthsea fantasy books are on a level with Narnia and Tolkien and they would work brilliantly if well produced. The recent TV production of them turned out to be a travesty. So would others of her SF novels like City of Illusions, Planet of Exile, or The Left Hand of Darkness (well, maybe that last one would be best as an indie film.) Hollywood is missing a bet.
Well, anyway: The Lathe of Heaven is one of her SF novels and probably my favorite among them. It's a singular vision that stands alone in her own work, and in fact I can't think of any other novel to easily compare it with by anything else in SF either. It belongs vaguely to an alternate-worlds genre, but with differences. Not all that long after it was written, this movie adaptation was done for original TV broadcast, so it has a low-budget feel to it, and the lead actors (Bruce Davison, Kevin Conway, Margaret Avery) weren't all that well known at the time. It's even in black and white format. But put all that aside: it actually stays pretty close to the Le Guin storyline, unlike the inferior 2002 adaptation that strayed off the path. It's such a great story and so easily translatable to the screen for today's SF-familiar audiences that you can easily imagine a much bigger-budget superb production being done now complete with advanced CGI that would do justice to the hero George Orr's world-changing visions.
George Orr (Davison) is a perfectly ordinary, nice, low-key guy except for one thing: when pressed into it, he has "effective dreams" that change reality and rewrite history. He doesn't want to do this, but gets taken advantage of by psychiatrist William Haber (Conway) who uses George to enable his own altruistic but power-hungry goals. George's torturous journey through one history after another and eventual resolution are the substance of the movie.
This production disappeared for a long time after its original airing, but finally now you can see it on YouTube. Well worth it.
Le Guin's stories haven't generally been served well on movies and TV but so much better could be done with them. The Earthsea fantasy books are on a level with Narnia and Tolkien and they would work brilliantly if well produced. The recent TV production of them turned out to be a travesty. So would others of her SF novels like City of Illusions, Planet of Exile, or The Left Hand of Darkness (well, maybe that last one would be best as an indie film.) Hollywood is missing a bet.