[Everyone, it is said, dreams, but no one dreams quite like George Orr, whose dreams change the world, not to mention the contents of human memory, and history itself. George would prefer not to dream such dreams, ever again, but perhaps this powerful faculty could be employed to create a better world, free of overpopulation, war, and demeaningly small offices, thinks George's psychiatrist, Dr. Haber. Perhaps.
   In the excerpt below, George attempts to explain his plight to lawyer Heather Lelache, to whom he has turned for legal advice and emotional support.
   Ms. LeGuin's more or less serious portrayal of the eternal tension between the two elemental approaches to reality (Improve It and Adapt to It) is also a thoroughly entertaining story. She leaves no doubt, by the way, where her own sympathies lie. The near-catastrophic conclusion is a minor masterpiece. This book is very high on my most-enjoyed scale, even though its informal, folksy style (some P.K. Dick influence?) contrasts sharply with the constrained and noble prose of The Left Hand of Darkness and especially of the Earthsea Trilogy, the first book of which remains my favorite U.K. LeGuin tale. - WA, 31 Aug 97]

   "The cabin," he said, having pondered a little. "My second visit to him, he was asking about daydreams, and I told him that sometimes I had daydreams about having a place in the Winderness Areas, you know, a place in the country like in old novels, a place to get away to. Of couse I didn't have one. Who does? But last week, he must have directed me to dream that I did. Because now I do. A thirty-three-year lease cabin on Government land, over in Siuslaw National Forest, near the Neskowin. I rented a batcar and drove over Sunday to see it. It's very nice. But..."

   "Why shouldn't you have a cabin? Is that immoral? Lots of people have been getting into those lotteries for those leases since they opened up some of the Wilderness Areas for them last year. You're just lucky as hell."

   "But I didn't have one," he said. "Nobody did. The Parks and Forests were reserved strictly as wilderness, what there is left of them, with camping only around the borders. There were no Government-lease cabins. until last Friday. When I dreamed that there were."

   "But look, Mr. Orr, I know --"

   "I know you know," he said gently. "I know, too. All about how they decided to lease parts of the National Forests last spring. And I applied, and got a winning number in the lottery, and so on. Only I also know that that was not true until last Friday. And Dr. Haber knows it, too."

   "I don't expect you to believe all this, Miss Lelache. I don't think even Dr. Haber has really caught on to it yet; he won't wait and get the feel of it. If he did, he might be more cautions about it. You see, it works like this. If he told me under hypnosis to dream that there was a pink dog in the room, I'd do it; but the dog couldn't be there so long as pink dogs aren't in the order of nature, aren't part of reality. What would happen is, either I'd get a white poodle dyed pink, and some plausible reason for its being there, or, if he insisted that it be a genuine pink dog, then my dream would have to change the order of nature to include pink dogs. Everywhere. Since the Pleistocene or whenever dogs first appeared. They would always have come black, brown, yellow, white, and pink. And one of the pink ones would have wandered in from the hall, or would be his collie, or his receptionist's Pekinese, of something. Nothing miraculous. Nothing unnatural. Each dream covers its tracks completely. There would just be a normal everyday pink dog there when I woke up, with a perfectly good reason for being there. And nobody would be aware of anything new, except me -- and him. I keep the two memories, of the two realities. So does Dr. Haber. He's there at the moment of change, and knows what the dream's about. He doesn't admit that he knows, but I know he does. For everyone else, there have always been pink dogs. For me, and him, there have -- and there haven't."

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