The Lathe of Harry Potter

I saw an article lately about Ursula Le Guin called "Ursula K. Le Guin pressured to make books 'more like Harry Potter' "

I really can't think of a good analogy to this.  Its like asking Michelangelo to paint pictures of McDonald's characters for advertisements.  I have to admit that I haven't read as much Le Guin as most science fiction readers but I know enough that she is one of the giants of real science fiction, up there with Heinlein and Frank Herbert in my book.  Her book, The Lathe of Heaven, has haunted my mind for forty years since I first read it.  The 70s movie was okay, although it changed stuff a lot.

In fact, I wonder if Ms. Le Guin thought of her 1971 book when her publishers made this ludicrous suggestion, demand even.  The Lathe of Heaven is about all sorts of things; power corrupting absolutely, the abuse of power, the possibility that our problems will get solved in ways that we didn't intend and that are very bad.   Like the characters in the book, magic users in Harry Potter are able to remake their world, delete and edit memories, call things into existence that weren't there before.  But in Harry's world, this is all cool (and having almost no negative long range consequences).  

I just find this whole idea amusing.  I enjoyed the first couple of Potter books until author-bloat set in and JK Rowling showed her true stripes and lack of talent by doing the opposite of what usually happens with new successful writers: Her books became more bloated, less focused, less carefully plotted as she threw in more and more stuff, more and more wizbang and less thoughtfulness.  The final books, in which she portrays magical battles as mere gun battles with wands instead of attack rifles, was just disappointing.  These people are supposed to have strange magical powers but there was none of the idea of high magic and warfare in a whole different plane.

In the end, wanting a great science fiction writer to write JK Rowling stories is just silly anyway, its a whole other genre.  I suppose its understandable, the desire to admixture something you love with something else you love is a common theme I see in everyday life.  Gamers who want a computer game which combines two other games they love, but would suck if it was actually done.  You can't mix Harry Potter and the Earthsea Chronicles.  No matter how much you might love both of them, if you mixed them, you can almost be guaranteed a bad result.