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From: lewis%Shasta@spider.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Lathe of Heaven
Message-ID: <16494@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Feb-84 14:47:29 EST
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.16494
Posted: Tue Feb  7 14:47:29 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Feb-84 03:17:56 EST
Lines: 32

Mark Mallet's problem is that HE is confused.  The ideas presented in
Lathe of Heaven are genuinely confusing.  Le Guin has no need to put
on a pretentious intellectual pose, the problem of reality is a genuine
problem.  I should probably reread the story and see the movie again
before I say this but I BELIEVE that the story LEAVES IT UP TO THE
reader/viewer whether to interpret the whole business as a dream in
one or more minds in Seattle after the bomb drops.

The big problem in the movie was how to distinguish the "dream" sequences
from the "real" sequences.  They finally decided that since the idea was
that the participants couldn't distinguish which was which (at least until
afterwards), and any "effect" they could use would be hokey and distracting,
they decided NOT TO DISTINGUISH THEM.  This does make the film confusing.

The point of the story, however, is that distinguishing between reality
and dream IS confusing and sometimes not possible.  Perhaps Mallett is
really objecting to the chaos this kind of idea does to the PLOT.  Depending
on what you think was REAL, you get a different plot:

The bomb dropped on Seattle and destroied everybody there.

The bobmb dropped on Seattle and two survivors changed history because
their minds WOULD NOT accept this horrible thing.

The bomb dropped on Seattle and one survivor made such a paradoxical mess
out of time with the mental abilities this created in another survivor,
the these good guy aliens had to come and straighten it all out.

Et cetera.

What do YOU think happened?
                                - Suford