This 1966 Zelazny novel The Dream Master began life as the novella He Who Shapes (1964) which won the Nebula Award for Best Novella, tying with Aldiss’s The Saliva Tree.
Zelazny, being one of the so-called ‘New Wave’ authors, delved into ‘inner space’ as much as the traditional outer space. The book is set in the future – and for example convincingly portrays driverless cars – where hunger has been abolished. ‘Physical welfare is now every person’s right, in excess.’ (p37). ‘A society, though, is made up of many things, and when these things are changed too rapidly the results are unpredictable.’ (p51)
Charles Render is a leader in his field of neuroparticipant therapy – a Shaper. His patients invariably suffer from persistent uncomfortable dreams or neuroses. Using complex apparatus, Render can effectively enter the patient’s mind and construct the dream world they psychically inhabit and destroy it or make it benign, as appropriate, and sooth or remove the underlying neuroses. He is also a widower, his wife Ruth and daughter Miranda having perished in a car wreck; he has a son Peter. Oh, and some dogs have been operated upon so that they can actually talk to their human owners!
One telling phrase is surprisingly prophetic: ‘The power to hurt has evolved in a direct relationship to technological advancement.’ [q.v. our present-day anti-social media, for example].
A potential client is Eileen Shallot, a resident in psychiatry at State Psych. She is congenitally blind and wants Render to train her to become a Shaper like him. (p23). Since she has no visual sense, he feels that her goal is unattainable and therefore he is reluctant at first. Butt she convinces him it would be a scientific triumph when he succeeded. What he had not figured on is Eileen's overpowering hunger for visual stimulation…
Eileen’s dog is called Sigmund. ‘An argument with a dog was about the most ludicrous thing he could imagine when sober.’ (p44) Some of the scenes between Render and Sigmund are quite amusing.
Zelazny has a leaning to poetic and visually arresting phrasing. (Render) ‘remembered her fingertips brushing over his face, like leaves or the bodies of insects, learning his appearance in the ancient manner of the blind. The memory was not altogether pleasant. He wondered why.’ (p39)
Talking of poetry, Render quotes Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (p100) - and there’s no credit in the front of the book!
I particularly liked this scene: Eileen is looking at herself in her compact. ‘Her thirtieth birthday, like a huge black cloud, filled an April… She touched her quizzical lips with colour, dusted more powder over her mole, and locked the expression within her compact for future use.’ (p117)
The scene with young Peter touring a space exploration exhibition reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s The Silver Locusts: ‘Almost imperceptibly, it had lifted itself above the ground. Now, though, the movement could be noted. Suddenly, with a great gushing of flame, it was high in the air, darting against the grey. It was a bonfire in the sky, then a flare; then it was a star, rushing away from them. “There’s nothing quite like a rocket in flight”.’ (p94)
In this case, I suspect the shorter version should have been left alone. I felt that there were too many stream-of-consciousness paragraphs where very many literary and artistic allusions were shoe-horned in, providing padding to get to novel length. Even the scene at the exhibition with his son Peter was not notably relevant.
Still, I’m glad I finally got round to reading this ‘classic’ science fiction novel, and enjoyed several aspects of it.
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