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The Row Boat

"Had we but world enough, and time..." *

Utopian Selves

10/29/2006 12:24:17

As part of my science fiction self-education project, I just finished Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven. It is about a man whose dreams change reality and a psychologist who tries to use him to create a perfect world. I know that this and sci-fi books like it have drawn the attention of late Marxian critics such as Fredric Jameson, but I haven't read their work. So much that I know about it, I agree: we would benefit from a revitalization of utopic thinking. It can reinvigorate the public political imagination as well as creating good shared stories.

Of course, Le Guin's book itself gives the idea of utopia a mixed review. Every attempt to create a perect world also comes with some shadow side of it including, eventually, an alien invasion. Despite the care the psychologist gives to his instructions, the dreamer's subconscious fills in the gaps with unexpected disasters. The other one of hers I've read, The Dispossessed, is a wonderfully successful account of an anarchist moon colony, a functional utopia. Really, though, in both books the utopia is ambivalent. It goes both ways. First it is realized and then it becomes just as human and tortured, in its own fresh and inexhaustible way, as every other moment of human history. She seems to be telling us that around every corner there is still ourselves. And are we any more pleased to be ourselves if we happen to be encased in a uptopia?

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re:Utopias - 10/29/2006 14:32:12
Posted by DWM

If you're going to read Le Guin Lathe is a great way to start. I've always preferred the Earthsea Trilogy. As far as people like Jameson go, there's no substitute for a film. On this line there's a pretty good film version of Lathe while there is no good version of Earthsea. As far as Utopian stuff goes I've always preferred the distopian stuff 1984, Brave New World, Island, We, and even Gattaca. The failure of utopia is very much the issue in all these films. Humans think they know what they want, but no matter how clear their vision is of, in its construction the end product is never ideal.

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re:Utopian Selves - 10/30/2006 13:24:13
Posted by nathan

Which film version of Lathe do you prefer? I saw that Le Guin likes the 80s one better, which she was involved with.

Since my true drug is Star Trek, I have to say that I tend to prefer the utopia to the distopia. There is something to be said for the sad reminder about human nature, but as for a habitable world, I much prefer one that actually works. The moon in The Dispossessed was more pleasurable to me for that reason. Really what I love the most is uncomtaminated hope. Though admittedly, it does get tiring. The whole downfall of Star Trek in the last decade can be explained succinctly as the producers got tired of the happy utopia and wanted to try something else.

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