Perilous Dreams

by Andre Norton

Would you like to dream high adventure – and have the dream become reality?

This is a novel of one who did. She was Tamisen the Dreamer – trained to explore other worlds through her genetic ability to transfer herself through dream to their actualities. To a dreamer all worlds, all times, were open.

But there were risks. There were perils such as no landbound explorer could conceive. For in an infinity of worlds, there must be an infinity of enemies, of beasts, of personal peril – as well as an infinity of rewards and pleasures.

Here is Andre Norton’s imaginative best, taking Tamisen through a series of worlds as real as her own towards an ultimate destiny none could suspect.

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy, Fiction

199 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1976

About the author

Andre Norton, born Alice Mary Norton, was a pioneering American author of science fiction and fantasy, widely regarded as the Grande Dame of those genres. She also wrote historical and contemporary fiction, publishing under the pen names Andre Alice Norton, Andrew North, and Allen Weston. She launched her career in 1934 with The Prince Commands, adopting the name “Andre” to appeal to a male readership. After working for the Cleveland Library System and the Library of Congress, she began publishing science fiction under “Andrew North” and fantasy under her own name. She became a full-time writer in 1958 and was known for her prolific output, including Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D. and Witch World, the latter spawning a long-running series and shared universe. Norton was a founding member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America and authored Quag Keep, the first novel based on the Dungeons & Dragons game. She influenced generations of writers, including Lois McMaster Bujold and Mercedes Lackey. Among her many honors were being the first woman named Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy and SFWA Grand Master. In her later years, she established the High Hallack Library to support research in genre fiction. Her legacy continues with the Andre Norton Award for young adult science fiction and fantasy.

Reviews

[Rindis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is... almost a novella collection; the third story is notably shorter, but the other three reach into novella length. The four stories all deal with the 'dreamers' of Ty-Kry: Women who can dream and, through a device, share those dreams with other people. These dreams are under the dreamer's control, but are presented for the client's entertainment, making this a mix of virtual reality and GMing an RPG (in 1969 for the original story!).

There's some extra questions in the stories about just how 'real' all of these dreams really are. They are just dreams... except....

And of course, none of the stories are about the ordinary types of dreams of day-to-day business at Ty-Kry. All of these are about the exceptional cases. The first story, "Toys of Tamisan" (the only one previously published in a magazine, and it also appeared in High Sorcery), deals with Tamisan, who being a crossbreed of offworlder and native of Ty-Kry, is an unusual dreamer, and when she tries to present a scenario based on if Ty-Kry's history had gone differently, things go sideways. She is not in control, the 'NPCs' are all doing their own thing, and there is a real question of just how real all of this really is. It ends with a leap into the unknown, and the second story, "Ship of Mist", is a direct sequel, that technically doesn't directly deal with the dreamers. Other than the background, the bulk of the plot could a fairly typical pulp adventure (and a good one).

With a few changes at the ending, there could have been more adventures with Tamisan, but the second story brings an end, and the next two are only related by using Ty-Kry and dreaming. The remaining two have viewpoint characters a bit outside of having a lot of knowledge of how the dreaming works goes in. The third one ("Get Out of My Dream") questions how real these dreams again, as it is an attempt to use a dream to alter the past.

The fourth story, "Nightmare", is the longest, and deals with the fact that someone is using these dreams to kill clients despite a good number of safety precautions. This attracts the attention of off-world authorities who send in an undercover team to uncover how it's happening. This probably gives the best idea of how normal dreaming (which we haven't seen much of) is supposed to go, but of course it immediately goes off the rails too. In addition to the previous VR+GM idea I mentioned before, there's a quick digression into zombie plagues, decades before they became popular.

Overall, it's a good set of stories. It's concept-centric SF, with a good amount of action, and some treachery, and fairly solid plots. "Get Out of My Dream" is really all concept, which would be why I considered it the weakest of the lot. The real workings behind the concepts are not explored, and... there's some sense it's not necessarily well understood in-world either. This works well inside of a small number of stories, but I'm definitely curious as to how the entire concept of a machine to 'share' dreams came from, especially as people who can use it are rare (though the two Tamisan stories do imply that its at least related to other psychic powers).

[Storm Bookwyrm · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have been better served in my reading of this to know that it is, in actuality, an ANTHOLOGY, containing four different short stories. The fact that the first directly led into the second so seamlessly it might as well have just been a 'chapter two' only helped to confuse me by the time I'd finished it, and got to the third story, which abruptly introduced new characters.

So, if you're unaware, take this as preparation!

But, it is no mere anthology of COMPLETELY unrelated tales; rather, the four stories herein are all of a common theme and setting, both concerning the idea of dreamers, a strange caste of individuals who have the air of glorified priestesses and enslaved sex-workers all in one. Their unique talent is the ability to control and manipulate dreams, an ability they put to the use of entertaining clients. ...and also for turning this sci-fi story into a 'portal fantasy', to generic, basic fantasy worlds.

I've grown a little wary of such stories based on bad experiences with other books of that niche genre, beginning as sci-fi then very swiftly diving into a 'fantasy experience' that lasts the whole of the rest of the book. In this case however, while I didn't LOVE it, I did kind of like it.

The lack of love comes from, by and large, a lack of particular things TO love. There's one idea out of the whole thing that I did really enjoy (that being the 'villain' from the second story - that story being my overall favorite), but aside from that nothing felt particularly vivid, creative, or 'cool' enough to really draw me in, and there were no characters I loved. Yet, it carried me on to the end, and I had a good time reading it, so something must have been done right. I suspect its saving virtue was the simple matter of good writing.

So, do I reccomend 'perilous dreams'? Sure, 2.5 out of 5 stars. I'd like to check out another book by Andre Norton, and see how it does.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

Linked set of stories by Andre Norton about Tamisan, and the other Action Dreamers, who can bring non-dreamers into their dreams as entertainment. In the first tale, “The Toys Of Tamisan”, the Lord Starrex purchases Tamisan and asks for her to weave a dream, but a third party, his plotting cousin Kas, has entered the dream as well and has managed to change it from a dream to a parallel world, where things are very different. In the second part, “Ship Of Mist”, Tamisan (now Tam-Sin and a gilled Tide-Singer) has escaped by changing a pivotal moment in the history of Ty-Kry again and finds herself with Starrex (now Kilwar, a Sea King) investigating a ghost ship seemingly bereft of crew. The series has evolved into a Quantum Leap style now and the errant cousin Kas is still about. A change of cast and scenery in the third tale, “Get Out Of My Dream” where the heir to the Atto regency has dreamt himself back in time to rid the ruined city of Yul of a brooding evil but requires assistance from the action dreamer Itlothis. The final tale “Nightmare” sees the investigator Burr try to discover why five dreamers on Ty-Kry have died while in dreams, so with the Esper Uahach they enter the last dream of a dead man and find a dreamer sending them their worst fears. Average stuff.

[Amy Rosenkoetter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and excellently characterized. This was my first foray into Norton and it won't be my last.

I loved the exploration of other worlds - fantastical places of dreams, distant planets, and time - but blending, blurring, and metamorphosing into reality.

My only issue was that I was expecting a through-written novel rather than four short stories based in the same reality. The first two carried the same characters through, but the other two were completely different, although the dream theme held true.

As many writers do to pull us out of our armchairs and evoke the alienness of a place and time, Ms Norton created a lexicon peculiar to the setting. Most of the created vocabulary was only indirectly defined ("Foostmam," for one), which threw me out of the scene a bit. I'm exact. I want specifications, not implications. But once I made myself just read on, the context - sentence structure and additional references - eventually clarified sufficient substance of the definition, if neither explicit nor nuanced, and I savored the rest of the book.

The beauty of the writing was a pleasant surprise for me, and I'll be going back for more.

[M.E. Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andre Norton is a famous writer, and the book was written in 1976 so it is dated as in terms of plotting. The immediate sexual attraction and consequent getting together at the end of the story would never pass muster today. However, the idea was novel. It would have been a better arrangement to have four short stories of the hive or four episodes of the continuing story of Tamisan and Starrex. Two of one and two of the other did not fit well.

Wanting to step into your dreams seems to be universal feeling and the Hive makes that possible with the aid of dreamers, those who can control your dreams and make them real. However there is no virtue that cannot be turned into a vice, and dreams can be used to get rid of opponents also.

Well written, decent plotting, novel situations. could have been developed better perhaps but sufficed for quick reads.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3141247.html

I'm sorry to say that I completely bounced off this Andre Norton novel, particularly disappointing given how much I enjoyed the Beast Master novels when I reread them a couple of months ago. Somehow I never quite got to grips with the setting or what was going on; it is about shared dreams and a dreamed reality, but I didn't really understand it or get the characters sorted out in my head.

[Sandra Munger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of short stories about dreaming. The planet provides people from the Hive for active dreaming. A dream sabotaged leaving the dreamer and her client trapped in the past. To save the future, he goes into the past and succeeds. Someone is committing murder through dreams. 2 agents go in and manage to catch the killer. A quick fun read.

[Rosemary Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first 2 parts of this book are about the same dreamer but not the last 2 parts. They all start on the same planet and the dreamers Ty-Kry but that is the only connection. So, it is like a novel in 2 parts and 2 short stories. All are very enjoyable.
Part 1 Toys of Tamisan.
Part 2 Ship of Mist
Part 3 Get Out of My Dream
Part 4 Nightmare

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

An anthology involving Dreamers, esper women of an alien culture who can bring clients inside dreams of adventure, passion or sex. Needless to say something always goes wrong.
A good solid collection

[Al "Tank" · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting enough for one read, but not any more. I just couldn't lose myself in the plots of the 3 stories. Too unbelievable? Maybe just me?

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book! Really sucked me into the story!

[Skjam! · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tamisan’s Dreaming power isn’t unique. While uncommon, enough women of her people possess the ability to create dreams for a client that there’s a thriving business involved, even drawing in tourists from off-planet. But Tamisan is skilled and more creative than many of her peers. So when she is assigned as the personal Dreamer of Lord Starrex, she wants to prove herself worthy of the task. Little does Tamisan realize just where the dream she’s weaving will take them.

Perilous Dreams
This book is actually four long stories about the Dreamers of Ty-Kry. The first, “Toys of Tamisan”, was originally published in If magazine in 1969. Lord Starrex was a space explorer before becoming disabled, and was well-educated even before then. Starrex seems dubious about the value of Dreaming, and was only talked into it by his cousin Lord Kas. So Tamisan figures Starrex won’t be won over by cheap travelogues or historical repeats. She needs something unique. And thus it is that Tamisan reinvents the field of alternate history.

She’s located some key points in Ty-Kry history that could have gone very differently, and chosen two to alter. Tamisan is pleased with her idea, but there’s a surprise when she’s finally called upon to demonstrate her talent. Lord Kas has altered the Dreaming machine to allow him to share in the dream as well. This is unusual, but not a violation of the contract, so Tamisan has to allow it.

But once inside the dream, Tamisan discovers that it’s far more realistic than she’s ever been able to make a dream before, she can’t control the events of the dream, and she can’t make the dream end. Uh-oh! She needs to find Lords Starrex and Kas wherever they are in this dream world and secure their help if there’s any hope of escaping.

“Ship of Mist” picks up where the previous story left off, with Tamisan in a new alternate world, mated to Starrex but with Kas nowhere to be found. More pressing at the moment is a mysterious ghost ship which is causing sailors to disappear. (The cover is from this second story.) Even if this world is just a dream, they still must solve this problem to survive!

“Get Out of My Dream” switches the protagonist to Itlothis Sb Nath, a Per-Search agent. The missing person she’s looking for is Oslan Sb Atto, heir to the Atto fortune. He needs to return to his homeworld to assume his duties before they are taken by an usurper. But when Itlothis arrives on Ty-Kry, she discovers that Oslan is in the middle of a dream, and cannot be awoken without his permission. There’s nothing for it but to enter the dream herself and persuade Oslan to come out.

When Itlothis does this, however, Oslan is in no mood to wake up. Turns out he’s figured out another way to deal with his homeworld’s problems, a way only the Dreamers of Ty-Kry can accomplish!

“Nightmare” stars Burr Neklass, interstellar government agent. He went a little outside the rules on his last assignment, which means the agency has leverage to assign him to a mission which almost certainly means death. Five prominent citizens have died during dreams on Ty-Kry in the last galactic year. Given that one death per year is considered high, the suspicion is that someone is somehow rigging the dreams to kill. Burr will be given a new identity as a man who’s recently come into extreme wealth and has a greedy relative. That should attract the killer, if they exist.

Burr’s not entirely alone, though. The agency has slipped their own artificial Dreamer into the Hive and maybe she can help Burr figure out what’s going on–if she doesn’t get caught and executed for blasphemy first!

These stories are more science fantasy than science fiction; while the Dreamer’s abilities are explained with “Esper abilities” and technological equipment, their actual effects are more like magic than anything that obeys the laws of physics. Since they were written some time ago, they also go with a “man fights, woman supports” style of action.

With that said, there’s plenty of exciting action, and the female characters are a vital part of that, moving the story along and thinking their way out of trouble.

Lord Starrex’s disability is a paralyzed leg (the cause is never explained) which you’d think a starfaring civilization would have the ability to fix, but there you go. He’s embittered enough by this to have retreated to his castle, and when it looks like he’ll have to spend the rest of his life in an alternate universe or maybe a dream, Starrex is okay with this as long as his leg now works.

There are two major types of Dreamers, the A dreamers who do action dreams, and the E dreamers, who handle more, um, intimate scenarios. We never see any of the latter in action, which means that junior high readers on up should be able to handle this book even though it’s written for adults.

Recommended to science fantasy fans who like a little romance in their action stories.

[Flo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat less sexist and pedantic than the other old fantasy I've been reading, but still not quite good enough. Unresolved plots, abrupt endings, and an absurd continuity which lasted for parts 1 & 2 and then gave way to completely different stories. The idea is interesting, though.

[Valerie]

This book is a deliberate expansion on the earlier short stoy The Toys of Tamisan. As such, it's not surprising that it creaks at the seams at times. The first two stories are the aforesaid "The Toys of Tamisan" and its sequel "Ship of Mists". The latter two "Get Out of My Dream" and "Nightmare" seem to be more or less a matter of "I've invented a concept, might as well play with it."

The connection between the 'dreams' and reality is never very well explored, and morality, which is somewhat shelved on the assumption that the creatures in the dreams are unreal, is nevertheless eerily in question, if in a nebulous way.

I should say that I absolutely disbelieve the posited intelligent, malignant viruses, which 'revive' their (un)dead hosts to spread themselves. It sounds like a nightmare, indeed, and one that has very little bearing on actual living (or in the case of viruses,
quasi-living) things.

[Unwisely · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was published in 1976, and it reads like it. There's nothing specifically *wrong* with it, but it feels dated. (I tried to narrow down why. I *think* it's mostly because of the third-person narration with zero insight into people's thoughts, but the gender relations is a little more pat than I think you could get away with today.)

Having said that, the world building is interesting, the short stories themselves are quick and not unpleasant. I have been wavering between two and three stars on this; whichever I finally end up with know that it's solidly between those two rankings.

[Ero · Rating 4 out of 5]

34 years before Inception, and a bazillion times more imaginative. Dreams within dreams within dreams.

A novella and two long short stories using similar concepts. (I wish the book jacket would tell you this, it sucks waiting for your initial characters to come back, when they won't). Parts of this are improvisatory-- you can sort of sense that the author doesn't know where things are going-- but the overall air of deep dream is very heady, and there's a constant swirl of new imagery and invention.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andre Norton is always a good read, and this was a fine collection. The four stories all involve dreamers, special psychics trained to sell dreams. Saying pretty much anything else about the stories will involve spoilers because they start right out with surprises.

The cover of the edition I read seems like it must have inspired the Loc-Nar from Heavy Metal; in fact, the green glowing thing is involved with people from a land Norton calls, several years before the movie, LockNar!

[Lorelei · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of Andre Norton's best. Usually her stories flow - this book was a bit of an effort to get through. The parts are loosely connected, but it is not clear from the beginning if they are all part of the same story or merely using the same background. I would not recommend this book.

[Kelli Mcbride · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree that this is an odd and often clunky book. However, I really like most of it. I always like a little romance, so I enjoy that twist. I also like the idea of being able to escape a horrible reality and find a better life, even if through dreams.

[Doris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a difficult book to get into, as it tended to limit the reader's imagination. It was difficult to follow and the characters seemed mainly one dimensional. However the romance was well written.

[colleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

read 08.15.85

[Merry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun Fantasy Read

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange book. It's split into 4 parts--the first two are interesting, the second two I didn't like too much. It wasn't a bad book, but I don't know if I really liked it.

[Kate Millin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not read many by this author before - but found this really gripping. I loved the concept of people who can take others in and out of dreams at will.

[Gautsho]

Väga vaevaline lugemine. Väga halvasti valitud raamat auväärt autoriga tutvumiseks.

[SciFiOne · Rating 4 out of 5]

1981 grade B+

Short novel