I just finished “The Lathe of Heaven” by Ursula Leguin, and it was absolutely uncanny how it described the world today. What books have you read from more than 25 years ago that, when read today, seem to describe our world with unusual precision?
“The Lathe” was written in 1971 and nominally set in 1989. In the initial scene, she describes climate change:
The Greenhouse Effect had been quite gradual, and Haber, born in 1962, could clearly remember the blue skies of his childhood. Nowadays the eternal snows were gone from all the world’s mountains, even Everest, even Erebus, fiery-throated on the waste Antarctic shore.
And then she proceeds to discuss various permutations of war among Israel, the Middle East, China, and Afghanistan. I know these were all hotspots before, but I felt as though I was reading a novel with a contemporary setting!
The Lathe of Heaven is even better, if you know about Portland geography and history.
If you’re in the Portland metro area, both Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens are easily visible from anywhere you have a clean line of sight. They’re basic features of the city, you can use them to orient yourself once you can recognize them, which isn’t hard now.
In Lathe, the eruption of Mt. Hood is definitive in letting the reader know which alternate timeline we are in, through the painting in Haber’s office - sometimes erupted, sometimes not.
In the real world, Mt. Hood has never erupted and you can clearly see it intact from Portland. Then again, Mt. St. Helens is not at all intact. It’s a massive crater visible from the city, so obviously an erupted volcano that you can understand where Le Guin got her inspiration from. One destroyed mountain, one intact, and the view makes a perfect argument for a story in which the eruption status of a mountain is pivotal.
Except, Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, in the deadliest eruption in US history. Lathe was still written in 1971. I think we all know what this means:
Ursula K Le Guin did Mt. St. Helens.