The movie was shot on16mm film, and it looked great when I first saw it in original broadcast back in 1980, but those original film elements have long perished, and the copy used to master the DVD was sourced from a single 2″ analog videotape of poor quality. If you happen to buy the film on DVD or stream it from YouTube, you may be distressed by the poor quality it sometimes looks dark, murky and ill-defined. 1980’s “The Lathe of Heaven” was also the very first TV movie ever made exclusively for PBS. Note: Better known for her “Earthsea” fantasies and Hainish universe series (including 1969’s “The Left Hand of Darkness”), Ursula LeGuin’s 1971’s “The Lathe of Heaven” was considered one of her lesser-known novels at the time of its PBS adaptation. The result was made on an extremely slim production budget of a quarter million dollars and was surprisingly effective. Getting the gist of the story, I was curious exactly how PBS would adapt such a reality-bending book for TV (this was decades before visual effects on TV were anywhere the level of sophistication they are today). LeGuin (1929-2018).Īt the age of 13, I remember hearing about the adaptation of “The Lathe of Heaven”, so I perused my school library for a copy of the book before the debut of the film (I would buy a copy much later). The original dreamer, sci-fi/fantasy author Ursula K. It was a very ambitious year, and one of the last where not every new idea had to be an FX-fueled crowd pleaser. The last three of those all premiered in January of 1980. LeGuin’s 1971 novel “The Lathe of Heaven” for PBS (Public Broadcast System TV).

It was the year that ushered in a diverse range of sci-fi movies like “The Empire Strikes Back” “Battle Beyond The Stars”, “Flash Gordon” “The Final Countdown,” and “Altered States.” My parents’ old 25″ Zenith TV set practically exploded with sci-fi related content as well, with equally diverse offerings such as “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century”, “Galactica 1980” (an ill-advised sequel), the miniseries adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” and an adaptation of the late Ursula K. 1980 was a heady time to be a teenaged sci-fi fan.

George the lathe of heaven