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THE LATHE OF HEAVEN


THE LATHE OF HEAVEN
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Copyright ┬й 1971 by Ursula K. Le Guin,
Published by arrangement with Charles Scribner's Sons,
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77-162760
First Avon printing, April, 1973,
Sixth Printing

eBook scanned & proofed by Binwiped 10-20-02 [v1.0]




THE
LATHE
OF
HEAVEN

1

Confucius and you are both dreams, and I who say you are dreams am a dream myself. This
is a paradox. Tomorrow a wise man may explain it; that tomorrow will not be for ten


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 THE LATHE OF HEAVEN

thousand generations.
тАФChuang Tse: II



Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the
jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it.
Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no
compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways;
pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the
moondriven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial
creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which
it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will.
But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock
break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outerspace of radiance and
instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead
and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against
rock and air, breaking....
What will the creature made all of seadrift do on the dry sand of daylight; what