About the work
“Die Geißel des Himmels” is the German title of “The Lathe of Heaven”, a science fiction novel by the American writer Ursula K. Le Guin. It first appeared in 1971 in two instalments of the magazine Amazing Science Fiction Stories and was published as a book by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York the same year; the first German edition, translated by Birgit Reß-Bohusch, followed in 1974 from Heyne. The duo F. Wiesel (Hanke Wilsmann and Jost von Harleßem) is creating a mixed-reality stage version, partly experienced through VR headsets, whose world premiere at the Staatstheater Nürnberg is scheduled for 11 February 2027.
Plot
The story is set in Portland, Oregon, in the year 2002, a city of three million people and incessant rain. Draftsman George Orr has dreams that rewrite reality, including its past; only he remembers the world as it was before. Because he tries to suppress his dreams with drugs, he is ordered into treatment with the ambitious psychiatrist and sleep researcher William Haber, who recognises Orr's gift and steers it with a machine of his own design in order to improve the world. Each of these interventions, against overpopulation, war or racism, produces a new and often worse reality, and Orr turns to the lawyer Heather Lelache for help.
Cultural significance
The novel won the 1972 Locus Award for Best Novel and was a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Le Guin sets Haber's engineered improvement of the world against Orr's Taoist-inflected composure; the original title and several chapter epigraphs come from the writings of the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi. The story has been adapted for television twice, in 1980 for PBS and in 2002 for A&E.