George Orr Timeline and Summary

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• George Orr wakes up from a dream that he's a jellyfish. He's assigned to voluntary therapy by medics who discover that he's overdosed on drugs.
• At his first appointment with Dr. Haber, George tries to explain his particular predicament: he changes reality with his dreams.
• Dr. Haber doesn't believe a word of it, but he makes George dream about horses, which ends up changing the picture in his office into one of a horse. Nevertheless, he still doesn't believe George.
• The next day at Dr. Haber's office, George has a dream that turns Dr. Haber's picture back into one of Mount Hood. But he's not done yet: after that, he also dreams that it rains a little bit less.
• Poor George is sad all the way home because he thinks that Dr. Haber doesn't believe him. But after a while of thinking, he realizes that Dr. Haber obviously does realize that the effective dreams are real.
• Yay.
• Well, except that this means he's using George to change the world.
• Not so yay.
• So George goes to a lawyer, Heather Lelache, to get some advice. He feels like the doctor is invading his privacy.
• There's not much Heather can do, but the two agree that she should stop by George's next appointment.
• Dr. Haber has something even weirder up his sleeve at the appointment: now he wants to end overpopulation. That sounds great and all, but it means that 6 billion people disappear after George dreams they're gone. Looks like Dr. Haber can't quite control how these big problems will be solved.
• Heather watches the whole thing, and she makes a date with George to talk about it.
• George never makes it to the date, because after an appointment where he ends warfare by imagining that aliens exist, he goes to a cabin in the woods to stop himself from dreaming.
• Heather goes to the cabin, convinces George to sleep, and tries to hypnotize him into stopping this whole alien business. Of course, the plan backfires. Now the aliens are attacking.
• Heather and George run back to Dr. Haber, who makes George dream that the whole universe is peaceful. It works. The aliens actually are peaceful, and the invasion has stopped.
• After that, Dr. Haber gets very ambitious and makes George dream that everyone is gray—and that he rules the world.
• The next time we see George, it's his last appointment. Dr. Haber has figured out how to induce effective dreams in anyone, so he doesn't need George anymore. Great.
• Well, at least until reality starts melting. Looks like Dr. Haber should never have had this kind of power.
• The novel ends with George saving the day by unplugging Dr. Haber.