The Dream Master

After second reading:

Three and a Half Stars. My thoughts on the book from my first reading pretty well stand as is. It's a thoroughly compelling science fiction tale which gives the reader plenty to chew on related not merely to the psychology of the main characters, given the formative events which stalk each of them throughout their arcs, but that of modern society at large given Zelazny's awfully prescient prognosis of where technological progress (of a nature very akin to that which we enjoy today) would leave humanity's individual and collective psyche. In typical Zelazny fashion, there are a mixture of mythological elements blended in with the narrative (primarily in the climax though foreshadowed far ahead of that), with a spinoff of Tristan and Isolde taking center stage. The closing of the book leaves much on the reader to image and reimage in terms of what events might transpire thereafter, which is style of storytelling very much up my particular alley. I always appreciate authors who treat their readers' intelligence with the utmost respect and Zelazny certainly seems keen on letting us evolve our notions of what befall his characters over the time we spend pondering the outcome he provides.

It also features a side story told in rare instances about a man in the same world haunting his way towards a highway into oncoming traffic, another side story about the main character's son and his precocious intelligence leading his career goals towards an optimistic vision regarding man's yearning to stretch out into the stars– and there's a talking dog who is a mythological stand-in for Fenris. That's pretty fun.

So, on the whole, this is a cleverly written story, replete with lovely prose and feels like the work of an author well beyond the age at which Zelazny penned it. It really goes to show how well read authors were in general so many years ago and of how much higher quality authors of today could be should they opt to follow that same lead. I very much recommend this book to any lover of science fiction who is looking for something more inspired and thoughtful than so much of the drivel being churned out within that genre at present.

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After first reading:

A thoroughly fascinating read which I will be giving a second pass before giving an official rating and review. I have a hunch that, now knowing how it ends, reading from the beginning once again will unfurl much more regarding the story's myriad mythic hieroglyphs and “far future” ideas, so crushingly relevant in their psychology to the year of my having first read this hyperextended short story. It is rather beyond unlikely that I managed to read two books back-to-back (The Claw of the Conciliator just prior) which spin off a pair of different mythological tales involving ships come home carrying either white sails or black depending on a particular event's outcome. And to think that The Dream Master was written before Zelazny had yet turned 30 and won the Nebula (long before that institution became the joke it has rendered itself more recently) for Best Novella alongside Frank Herbert's win with Dune as Best Novel makes it all the more bizarre that while the latter remains highly regarded, widely read and frequently republished, this novella was left far behind and has not seen an even somewhat meaningful publication in well over twenty years. It's time more readers discovered this gem.